Library clips

Back to reading lists.

Feedster has just released their new Top 500 blogs/feeds, and these are all grouped into tags, thankgod for that, as the list is too long to go through a page at a time, browsing by tag is more targeted to my needs…actually there is also a summary version…Feedster have applied the initial tags, but as you will see next to each entry there is a link for users to tag these blogs.

I’d also like to search by title field for quicker findability.

They also supply an OPML file for all 500 blogs, this would be a heavy load into your RSS Reader…maybe you can limit this by changing the value of the 500 in the URL.

Anyway why not offer an OPML file for each tag…imagine when reading lists (dynamic OPML) are the norm, you could subscibe to the URL of an OPML file of user defined topics of the most linked to (talked about) blogs.
Since Feedster Top500 is based on popularity, blogs would drop in and out of each tag each minute/hour, and you would always be subscribed to the hottest stuff from your favourite user topic as your OPML file is not static, it flows with the changes.

I imagined that Technorati could have OPML files for each Blog Finder topic, the difference is these topics are author-defined and the OPML file would be more stable as blogs wouldn’t be neccessarily deleted unless the author manually took their blog out of a topic, you would get blogs being added everyday, but this list wouldn’t be as volatile as a list decided on incoming links, which is constantly changing with every movement within the blogosphere.

Technorati Top 100 doesn’t have tags or an OPML file, but it would be a good idea, they could use the author-defined tags at least from their BlogFinder, I mean the information is sitting there anyway…then just add an OPML file to each tag.
Actually this would depend if every blog within the Top 100 was listed in Technorati Blog Finder, if it wasn’t then it wouldn’t have a topic/s.

PubSub has released house edited lists, instead of having a Top 100, they have collated some blogs into topics, and then these blogs compete for positioning based on their popularity (not sure if the list is a closed set of blogs or if they have categorised all the library related blogs in their database, if so you might see new blogs appear on the list)…also not sure how they went about categorising blogs.
The OPML file for this blog would be similar to a tag OPML file in the Feedster Top500.

Imagine if Bloglines had a robust search engine and had something like this, they could also offer popularity for each feed according to reading behaviour of users, so ranking would not only be based on incoming links, but also from density of readership, or offer 2 separate lists.

Rojo could offer an OPML file for feeds by user-defined tags ranked on user reading behaviour, as they already have tags for feeds.
Similar to the Technorati BlogFinder example above, these OPML lists won’t be as volatile as popularity OPML lists (based on incoming links) as once you have tagged a feed in your RSS reader you aren’t really going to move it to another tag, or apply a new tag to an existing feed that often…more often you will see new feeds in tags as people add them to their readers, or feeds dropped from tags as users drop them from their readers (in saying this if one person drops a tag from their reader, it doesn’t mean it will disappear from that tag as another user may have tagged the same feed with the same tag).

So even though you won’t see blogs coming and going from each tag OPML file as often as one based on incoming links, you will see them ranked higher in the list due to the aggregated reading behaviour of all Rojo users (visits, clicks, flagging, maybe even ratings).

We tag the blogs in the top100 lists
We tag the blogs in the RSS readers
Ranking is based on our reading behaviour
Ranking is based on our ratings
Ranking is based on us linking to people
We make the blog posts

Not long ago I was trying to understand how people make blog posts via an outlining tool.
Mike at Crunchnotes has informed us that soon enough this will be officially possible…although when you compare the screen shot of the outliner to the sample blog post , the blog post doesn’t seem to have collapsable nodes for each paragraph.

So if you constantly blog from an outliner, this will mean you have 2 lots of contents for your blog, one in the outliner, and one in the blog, so the outliner is a back up of your blog.
Not only will the outline have every post from your blog, but it will be organised in an outline format, kind of like a quick view index of your blog, but it also contains all the contents as well (if you expand the nodes).
1st level folder - blog title, followed by date, followed by post title, followed by the post contents, this is like a directory of your blog, that includes the contents if you wish to see it.
The best part about it is you can do what ever you want with it as it has an OPML file.

You could also create another OPML file of your blog with category folders, you’d just have to drag and drop the contents from the first outline into the second outline after each post (so you are not posting to your blog from this outline, you are just copying the content from the 1st OPML file in order to view the contents by category)

Then, somehow, you could place 2 outline boxes into the sidebar of your blog, one to view content by date, the other to view content by category.

So if you outline your blog posts in an outliner and then publish it to your blog, you will have an outline version of your blog packaged in a neat OPML file.
Then there would be two places to read your blog, at the outline URL, or the blog itself (with the outline embedded into the sidebar).

NOTE: This OPML file can’t be imported into an RSS reader, as the items or nodes are just links, and text, not RSS feeds

Your RSS reader OPML file can reveal a lot about you, just read Alex’s post (which also references Lisa’s post) on how you could in turn share this data to a service so they can recommend stuff, just like Ultragleeper can recommend feeds.

Your OPML file not only reveals your interests but your behaviour or degree of interest (attention data).
Some RSS readers can automatically delete stuff or run reports on feeds that haven’t had new posts, more interesting is that it can also tell your most visited and viewed, and least visited and viewed feeds.
But this type of information is kind of ambiguous at revealing your degree of interest as you may click and view stuff, to realise you don’t like it, so the RSS reader doesn’t know the consequences of reading an item, ie. whether you liked it or not, also sometimes you click through because of the difference between summary and full-text feeds
…flagging an item is more definite.

Along these lines I did a post agreeing that explicit voting or rating a post is more reflective of your real interest, this is also a better method in ranking your feeds that don’t post often.
Only drawback is what if I couldn’t be bothered voting for a post if I have already read a very similar post previously, the second feed wouldn’t seem as important to your RSS reader statistics, but you still like reading this feed…I think that’s why voting and visits/click will work hand in hand.
If we have already read a similar post we probably couldn’t be bothered voting for a current post, but I suppose you have already read a similar post because it is ranked higher in your RSS reader list.

More on your OPML at attention data at DLTQ:
“OPML has so much potential. If I spend time on my OPML file, I will eventually build a multi-layered outline of my entire public life as well as parts of my personal life. For Amazon, this file would have some value. It would also have value for potential customers, employers, or partners in projects. With the growth of OPML browsers, we will be able to surf such accounts of people’s lives.”

Here is almost a real life scenario of OPML attention data, the items in this sort of OPML file are just text, but the idea is that a service could absorb this OPML file and recommend stuff.

There are many tools that deliver RSS feed content in an email format, this is RSS to email.

What about the other way around, email to RSS.
You can subscribe to email alerts with a special email address (such as Bloglines offers) and read that email content in RSS format…others are dodgeit, email2rss, pop2rss, egorrss, FutureMail, mailbucket…and many more.

eg. Gmail has a feed for it’s inbox, so you can read new mail in your RSS reader.

What about this at the tag level, you could set a rule so certain emails bypass your inbox and receive into a tag, this way you can subscribe to new mail by tag and not your whole inbox, as you may be only interested in receiving only select email from your Gmail RSS feed…or even extend this to a search feed…RSSMail comes close to this…also see AfterMail.

Another scenario

What about a feed notification, not for your inbox (as you receive the email), but a feed for a tag (after you have read the email and then file your email), if you don’t tag it and just archive, this will mean you have decided to not share that email.
So each tag can have a feed, if you want to file something in a tag but not want it re-syndicated, then just turn off the feed, tag it, then turn on the feed again…is this possible?
Anyway, this is a way to automatically re-syndicate or publish emails that you are OK to share.

I have posted about RSS to IM, what about IM to RSS, you could file an IM conversation in a tag that has a feed, this again is re-syndicating or publishing IM conversations…an RSS feed for your whole IM account wouldn’t be effective as you are taking part in it (it’s synchronous, you don’t need notification, it’s happenining in real time), although others may be interested in subscribing to the feed of an IM conversation in real-time (well as close to real time RSS can get)

These are just some thoughts I didn’t want to slip away, I can’t really see a great use for them, but others might see the value, or they may trigger other ideas…that’s what blogging is all about!

[ADDED 25/01/06: Check out Sabifoo (IM to RSS)]