Library clips

Marjolein, from Robin Good’s crew and other stuff, has a brand new review type blog called CleverClogs, what I find fascinating about her post on Clipmarks is that at the end of the post she has items that are re-syndicated via FeedDigest right there in the post.

So for every post she makes, she will have to make a spliced feed at FeedDigest around the subject matter of the post.

Not sure what feeds are spliced but I presume they may be search feeds, and tag feeds at the popular blog and bookmark engines…based on the search term or tag “Clipmarks” for this particular post.

So instead of listing a few links at the end of her post that will launch to a tag or search page at numerous blog and bookmark services, she is splicing these all into one feed and having the contents appear within the post, you don’t have to go out of the blog to see related content.

Improbulus kind of does this in the Consuming Experience blog…there is a link to Google Blog Search incoming links for every post (amongst others)…if people are linking to the post, it will actually show the title of each incoming link…instead of going to Google blog search to see all the incoming links, you can launch to the exact incoming link from within the blog post itself…see this random post.

Anyway, if Clever Clogs re-syndicates the content from a spliced feed at the end of a post, she could also choose to show the feed icon, so you can subscribe to that spliced feed in your RSS Reader.

Once she has accumulated lots of posts she could list all these spliced feeds somewhere on her blog (this is considering she makes a spliced feed for every post)…or even store them in a service like RSSor.

I asked Marjolein since she has content being re-syndicated into her posts, will her posts keep getting longer as time goes on, but she has told me that FeedDigest stops at 20 items, although maybe a service like FeedCatch would keep going.
You wouldn’t want to re-syndicate the term or tag “RSS” even from one engine or bookmark service, your post would be miles long in one day.

Hmmm

This has made me re-think trying to have a feed at the post level, because often I add updates to blog posts, but people who have already read the post won’t be aware of my updates…if I had a feed at the post level people could subscribe to a post.

In this respect I could list updates at a note blog like TagFacts…what I would do is make a tag name that represents a Library clips blog post (so each tag would represent a Library clips post).
Then every time I want to update that Library clips post, I go to the tag at TagFacts (that represents that Library Clips post) and write a little update post…and write as many update posts within that tag as I like.

So what I would do is re-syndicate the RSS feed of that particular TagFacts tag (via a RSS-to-HTML tool, like FeedDigest) into the end of the Library clips blog post, and also include the feed icon for that post so people can subscribe to a feed at the post level.

Of course I wouldn’t do this for every post, only those seminal posts that you keep adding to.

Then I could showcase the links to these posts in a special section on the sidebar of my blog along with the RSS feeds

…just an idea!

[ADDED 12/05/06: RSS for your blog post hack]

Newspage is a new service by Svartling who has another newsmastering project called Informatory, but this new project allows users to login and make their own news streams, or you can just simply view news pages from other people…see more.

…in essence this is a Public RSS Aggregator in the vein of Blogdigger Groups, kickRSS, and SuprGlu.

Once you click on a user name or login yourself, you will see a profile, clicking on the Track tab will reveal the Newspages created by that user.

On the right sidebar is a link to creating a news page, but firstly have a look at the feed aggregator link.

Feed Aggregator

Home level

- river of news posts, each post has a source, and a category the source belongs in
- lacks a feed

Category level

- river of news sorted by category (shows the latest posts in each category)…lacks a feed
- click on any category for a full view (river of news - this is not sorted by source)…lacks a feed

Source level

- river of news sorted by sources (shows the latest posts in each source)…lacks a feed
- click on any source for a full view…native feed available

So far this seems great, the only thing missing is RSS feeds.

Basically this is an RSS Reader for public viewing, where you can read the whole thing as a river of news, aggregated categories, one category, aggregated sources, or one source…not too far from a Public Bloglines account.

This feed aggregator is based on the feeds in the system, and the feeds are categorised by the system, there is a Suggest a Feed link.

My Bookmarks

There is also a link to save your favourite websites, no tagging or folders, just keeping it simple.

Create a Newspage

So besides viewing the public feed aggregator that Svartling has produced, you can make derivatives of this aggregator, as many as you like, although, these Newspages are based on the feeds in the system, you have to request additional feeds.

Basically a Newspage is a search feed based on the sources from this feed aggregator, to create a Newspage, enter a:

- Title
- Description
- Select a category
- Search terms (this will define the content and its quality)
- Number of items on a page

The result is a stream of post excerpts based on your search term, and it has an RSS feed
…users can even leave a comment on your Newspage to tell you how great it is.

Make as many Newspages as you wish.

I guess it’s kind of like making a Blogdigger Group, although in this instance Svartling has created the public feed aggregator, then doing a search on your Blogdigger group is like presenting the results of a Newspage, and you also get a search feed…only with the Blogdigger Group you have to keep repeating the search to see a public version of the results (of course you can keep abreast privately by viewing the latest in your RSS reader)…so to set a permanent page of results, just like a Newspage, you’d have to make a new Blogdigger group and just whack in the search feed from the first Blogdigger group, or whack in the search feed in SuprGlu.
Actually you could whack in the search feed into the same Blogdigger group, and then filter out the other feeds to just see post by the one feed.

NOTE: you can also make search feeds in your Bloglines RSS reader, then just take the search feed and place it in SuprGlu or a Blogdigger group, etc…this way you are searching from your own set of source feeds.
Although, the good thing about Newspage is that you can make as many news pages as you like, with SuprGlu you’d have to create a new blog for every news page.

All these newsmastering aggregators are really bringing a lot of great stuff to the table, I just wish one of them would incorporate all the unique features from all of them.

I just posted on the new deluxe Protopage, and now another to add to the mix of this new breed of reading feeds is Etamp (here is a sample page). Although Etamp is a little different than Protopage in that it just focuses on one feature that Protopage offers, and that is RSS feed display boxes, so this makes it more similar to Fyuze or Box the Web
NOTE: You can strip Protopage of the other features, except the RSS display boxes, so it can act the same as Fyuze, Etamp, etc…

Protopage seems to be the only service that can display multiple feeds in the one RSS display box, this is a plus, as it allows topic windows…imagine if every folder in your RSS Reader had an OPML file, you could just import this into a display box, so every folder in your RSS Reader would be a display box.

So how do you like to read your daily feeds, in your RSS Reader or on a RSS Display Box page/s?

Multiple pages is another great feature that Prototype and Fyuze have, not sure if Etamp is onto this…

and unlike Netvibes or Protopage, you can’t collapse the display boxes in Etamp or Fyuze or Box the Web.

The one great feature of Etamp is that your pages are public (you can now do this also with Protopage).

Another thing that makes Etamp different is that it harnesses some web2.0 features such as aggregating all user accounts (inducing sharing and discovery). This means it has it’s own feed list to choose from (sort by: A-Z, date, best) based on the input from all the user accounts, and there are also tags…so when you come across a feed you like, it’s a simple click to add to your account, or to add to your browser favourites.

You can even add other user accounts to your favourites section.

You can of course add your own feeds.

So I guess this now makes Etamp a feed folksonomy, similar to RSSor…Rojo also leverages user accounts into a feed folksonomy.

You can search for feeds, sort results, refine search.
If you choose a tag from the tag cloud it just does a keyword search, I’m not sure what the tag cloud is based on because when I added a feed to my account I wasn’t asked to file or tag it.

There is also a most popular feeds section, you can also search for top feeds which generates an RSS feed.

I just noticed that every account page has a search box to search various search engines, and there is also a link for a photo page, this accumulates photos from items in all your feeds and shows them in one spot.

You can also expand one of your display boxes by choosing the My Feeds Entry link in your account, this prompts a small box listing all your feeds, if you click on one it will show that feed in the whole page, you can choose from summaries, headlines only, just photos…so this is basically a full page view of one of your feed boxes
…it does lack a mark as unread, mark as read feature.

There is also a section called “Today Feed”, this seems to trace what you have read for the day, clicking on the “Get Feed” icon reveals a button you can put on your website for people to easily add your blog to their Etamp account.

In all a great service, a little messy in some parts, if you could tag your feeds this would make it a little more like RSSor, the difference being that the feeds would be presented in display boxes, also this means your account would have a page for every tag, and every tag may have several pages

…that’s why collapsing/expanding feed boxes or allowing multiple feeds within the one box will package this more neatly.

[via MicroPersuasion]