Library clips

Feed43 converts a webpage into an RSS feed.

I was using FeedTier or Feedfire, but this new tool allows you to pick a section of a page
…this is handy as it will scrape only relevant stuff off the webpage.

Other choices are to use WebSite Watcher, this is a webpage monitoring service that not only notifies you by email but also RSS.

At the moment Feed43 is by invitation only, keep an eye on their blog.

One of their posts describes how to create a feed for search results in Technorati without having to sign up for a Watchlist.

This would be even more handy for searches within “blogs about…” as this type of search doesn’t generate a Watchlist…same goes with tag searches (and search within a tag if it will ever exist).

Anyway this may be another way to generate a Bloglines Citations feed.

Here is someones experience using Feed43.

[ADDED 06/05/06: Ponyfish : scrape a Bloglines citation feed]

I mentioned Chuquet in a previous post about Rojo…I found it via this comment.

As far as I can work out this engine is based on a bunch of feeds, but you aren’t reading the posts from these feeds ranked by popularity, you are reading what they are linking to (the results are then ranking by popularity)…each item will list the posts from your feeds that mention them.

Example

Just say you could personalise Chuquet on your OPML, which they plan to offer in the near future.

Just say your OPML contains 50 blog feeds, and from all the posts in these 50 feeds, 16 posts point to a particular website or blog post in the web or blogosphere, a further 10 posts point to another website, then another 7 posts point to another website, and so on.

NOTE: by “point to”, I mean in the blog post the blogger includes a hyperlink to somewhere (a website or a blog homepage or a blog post, etc…), this is usually called an “outgoing link”.

As mentioned before next to each item it will list the blog posts from your OPML that linked to it

…I guess it could also list the Technorati Cosmos for each item to see how many other blog posts outside your OPML are also pointing to this item.

Each item also lists how long ago it was when the last blog post from your OPML pointed to it.

So as you can see the items in the results are ranked according to how many blog posts in my OPML are pointing to them (popularity).

But on a second look I see that some items further down the list have more links pointing to them than items at the top of the list…so I’m not to sure how the ranking works.

I can imagine they have to avoid a post staying on the top as no other post may topple it for months, this just wouldn’t make sense…the tagline for this service is: “The Buzz: most linked-to sites of the moment”…so maybe the ranking is based on which post has the most links pointing to it in the last hour.

Clarify

So this engine actually might not show any posts from the source feeds (like a personal RSS Reader), it only shows posts that the source feeds link to…this will only happen (show any posts from a source feed) if a source feed points to a post that happens to come from another source feed.

Again it does not show every post from your feeds ranked by popularity, it shows what the posts from your source feeds are linking to (ordered by popularity)…so it’s an outgoing links engine…I think.

I mean the items are generated by the outgoing links from a bunch of source feeds…so every item in the results has incoming links from the source feeds, that’s the only way an item will be featured in the results.

…so then it must be popular items (via incoming links) based on the outgoing links of items in an OPML (bunch of source feeds).

RSS Reader

Rojo has utilised this data in their RSS Reader in the “Recommended Links” section…not sure of the ranking, but it shows outgoing links from all the blog posts in your subscriptions for the last 7 days.

It would be great if the results could be ranked by the last hour, last day, last week, etc…this way you could see what the most popular blog post or website your subscriptions are talking about within the last hour, last day, last week, last year…same goes for Chuquet.

Chuquet Tag cloud

Chuquet has a tag cloud view of the most linked to site (not sites) of the moment…not sure if they are based on the tags from the native posts.

So this is the same as the main screen but just based on a topic…again not sure how topics are defined, or more importantly what items belong in a topic. It could be based on tags in the native posts, but I think it may be more based on text analysis, like TagCloud, or even context analysis.

As an alternative to the tag cloud you can also search for a tag in the search box.

Actually whether you click on the tag cloud or search for a tag, on the results page the tagline is “Search results for…”…so now I realise the tags are keyword searches.

Also each tag (search result) generates an RSS feed…cool!

Recap

So you are not reading your feeds per se, you are reading what your feeds are pointing to…in fact you may never come across an actual post from one of your feeds, you are just using these feeds as your back end sources.

To my understanding Chuquet does not say “here is a bunch of feeds, rank posts by most incoming links”…instead it says “here is a bunch of feeds, collect all the websites each post in each feed links to, and will present these websites in most popular order (and next to each item you can see the posts from your OPML that pointed to the item).

It is not a replacement to your ususal feed reading in an RSS Reader, it’s using data from your posts to generate some recommended links, and this is what Rojo does.
Gee, I haven’t even got time to read my feeds, now I have to make time to read recommended posts as well.
If I read just recommended posts I’d be up on the most popular talk of the moment, but I also like reading what I personally like, not just what’s popular.

Is this like your own personal Memeorandum?

Memeorandum may be different…it may have a bunch of source feeds and then showcase the posts from these feeds that are most popular (as well as its clever related items feature).

Whereas Chuquet doesn’t showcase any posts from its source feeds intentionally, the items instead are the most popular outgoing links based on the source feeds

…if I am correct, there is a difference here.

I guess Memeorandum is closer to arranging posts in your RSS Reader by popularity, just like OPML Sampler…to mimick it we would then need FeedFlare to show incoming links from the Technorati Cosmos and Waypath Related to find similar items.

Anyway I would like my RSS Reader to have my own personal Memeorandum as well as my own personal Chuquet.

At the moment Rojo has “Recommended Links” which is a watered down version of Chuquet, and for a personal Memeorandum, we’d have to use the tools mentioned above for now.