Library clips

Steve Rubel points to the new Technorati authority slider, although he would like to call it Popularity Slider, and so would I.

I won’t add to this discussion, as my relevancing and ranking comments have been made in an earlier discussion initiated by Mary Shelley.

All I’ll say is that Authority doesn’t equal Popularity.

The thing I like about the slider is that now you can view results by less popular or linked to blogs/posts, whereas before it defaulted to maximum popularity…this is good for the long tail.
Now when you are searching in Technorati, you can see what the popular people are saying about a search term, as well as the lesser known people…good going Technorati.

If you haven’t checked out Technorati Explore, it shows the latest posts from Blog Finder topics

…you can also search within these expert topics via Technorati search.

So the next step is to view Technorati Explore and Technorati Tags, by not only date, but also by popularity…slide away!

So far

TECHNORATI SEARCH
Search blogosphere by date, or popularity
RSS feed
Chart
Mini

Search within a URL.
Link searches (by date, or popularity)

Search in blogs by topic experts (sub-set of the blogosphere), via date, or popularity
(lacks RSS feed)
(lacks chart)
(lacks mini)

TECHNORATI TAGS
Browse blogosphere by tags, via date only
(lacks popularity)
(lacks searching within a tag/s)
RSS feed
Charts
Mini

TECHNORATI BLOGFINDER
Browse blogs by claimed topic experts, via date, or popularity
(lacks RSS feed)
(Doesn’t really require a chart, or mini)

TECHNORATI EXPLORE
Browse blogosphere by claimed experts , via date
(lacks popularity)
(lacks chart)
(lacks mini)
RSS feed

TECHNORATI POPULAR BLOGS
(Doesn’t require a date view)
(lacks RSS feed)
(Doesn’t really require a chart, or mini)

TECHNORATI PROFILE
Search within a blog
User tags

There are no OPML URL’s anywhere!

The new Attensa Online is a great light weight RSS Reader, it’s only new, so no doubt there will be some power features coming later on.

What I like about it is the different ways you can view your feeds, and marking read/unread…it attacks these simple features better than any reader I’ve seen so far…although it does lack a clippings folder at the moment.

MANAGE

Can’t manually sort order of feeds

Can have sub-category

Can only import OPML files

Built in feed directory, or add manually

Lacks a check all feature, I loaded in an OPML then it asked which of these feeds I wanted for subscription, I wanted all of them, but had to check every box, apparently this is being seen to.

Synching, across it’s range of RSS Readers, like Newsgator

READING

River of News or by feed

The different reading views of Attensa is where it shines

2 PANES

- Title index
(clicking on a title will launch to the native post)

- Excerpt index
(clicking on a title will launch to the native post)

_ Full-text
(read the full post within Attensa)

3 PANES

- Title index
(clicking on an item will show full post in the 3rd pane underneath)

- Excerpt index
(clicking on an item will show full post in the 3rd pane underneath)

Also the 3 pane view has a choice of the post in the 3rd pane showing the RSS version of the post, or the web version (actual native post).

I really like that I can read from the actual blog post within my RSS Reader (if you don’t mind the load time).

READ/UNREAD

When you click on a post is greys out (this marks it as read).
You can also mark all posts as read.
You can even delete a post or all posts.
To mark a read post as unread again just tick it.

If you right click on a title you can you can mark a post as read, unread, delete it, or email it.

You can also right click on your subscriptions and folders: mark all read, mark all unread, delete articles, delete subscription, or delete category.

At the moment I don’t see any personalisation, or clipping features, but it is a great start.

The important thing is organising my feeds, viewing them, and marking them, and Attensa covers the basics much better than Rojo or Bloglines.

The gripe with Bloglines, is that it doesn’t have a River of News, and instead of marking a post as unread you have to tick it to keep it new (this is a kind of a round about way of doing this)

Also when you want to mark the feed you are reading as unread (Mark as Unread), it will keep all the posts unread, whereas you might of read at least some of them.

Read here for my Rojo woes.

Bloglines has great feed management, Newsgator Online is OK, and Rojo is just a super RSS Reader, but it does have many fundamental flaws…and Attensa has the best views, marking features, synching and right click action (just like Newsgator Online).

LACKS

OPML URL import

RSS feeds for folders, and whole account

Searching

Tags instead of folders, so feeds can live in multiple places

OPML URL for each folder or the whole account

No personalisation
(Recommendation, relevancy, etc…)

Threading

Key Navigation

Clippings

Don’t really need flagging, as you can keep a single post as unread, although flagging is good when all flagged items are kept in a folder

What I like about Rojo is that you can skim all you subscriptions, flagging as you go along, then goto your flagged folder and read in peace (what I mean by peace, is that there is no skimming, you can enjoy the seamless experience of reading every single article…you have already done the hunting and gathering).

I really think Attensa Online will have a great take up with new RSS users, as it is similar to the email view, and very intuitive to use, and it is not overloaded with too many features.

Check out the forums, where’s the feed…also I’m notified of replies to my posts, but what about new posts.

I’ve converted to Rojo from Bloglines, which I’m so far happy about when looking at the power features, the only thing is that Rojo has some fundamental issues which I hope are seen to…it needs to have the simple functions in place so my reading experience can be less frustrating.

Check out my Rojo post about it being a great power RSS Reader.

So far what I’m happy about is river of news reading, and using tags (feeds can live in more than one tag), and also the flagging folder…I also like the instant collapse/expand for all or each item/s.

Issues

These just cover the fundamental features

…but I’ll just quickly add that OPML export doesn’t work, and I wish it had it’s own URL anyway, and what about at the tag level (Reading Lists are the in thing).

Also I’d like to Print a feed or tag in one easy click

…and what about some key navigation.

OK, that’s it, back to the basic features.

- Lacks manually sorting feeds or tags

I’d like to put my most read tag at the top of my subscriptions.
Also I would like to order the feeds in this tag, so my most read feed is at the top.

- Lacks Reading posts by oldest first

Reason being, if I don’t read Rojo for a couple of days or a week, I have a stack of posts to read…reading these by newest doesn’t make sense as I sometimes don’t understand a post because I haven’t read an earlier post

- Lacks keep “Mark as Read”

When reading a subscription I understand you can manually mark it as read or have this automatically happen when you click off that feed.
But what if I’m reading a feed, and I decide I haven’t got time to finish reading it, I’d like to be able to “mark all new”…I feel I’m already committed.

- I want to mark all posts on a single page as read
(in Rojo, if a feed has more than 100 new posts, it shows them in pages)

Sometimes I don’t read Rojo for a week

If I read by feed tag there may be 5 pages of posts for a feed tag, I might only get through 1 or 2 pages, so I would like to mark just those pages as read (either manually or automatically when you click to the next page…if you did it manually it would probably take you to the next page anyway)

If I read by a single feed, there may be sometimes 2 or more pages to read, if I only get through the first, I would just like to manually mark just this page as read, and I’ll read the other page later.
At the moment my only option is to not mark the feed read at all, and later on I will have to go through all the posts I’ve seen again…or automatically mark the feed as read, which means I will have to remember to go through read posts for the feed one day, if I remember (to see the ones I actually didn’t get a chance to see).

I also agree that if you are on page 5 of a feed or feed tag, marking read (manually or automatically) will also mark posts that arrived during your reading…you will never know they existed…that’s a worry

…I think marking a page as read will solve all these problems.

[ADDED: re-naming folders]

BlogBridge have now added a code to place your Reading List on your blog sidebar…if you don’t use BlogBridge for your Reading Lists, try OPML Renderer, OPod, or Bitty Browser…these last 2 can even read the feed content.

Similar to Diggdot.us is DiggLicious, see the latest in Digg and del.icio.us in real time…powerful.

Or see them separately at digg spy, and LiveMarks.

James Corbett, the EirePreneur has some excellent posts of late about Grazing Lists.

I posted about this a while back but I called them Hot Topic lists…I guess they don’t have to be topic based, but the word “hot” was the major descriptor.
But I didn’t think about the actual concept of this type of Reading List, and this is what James has bought to our attention.

If I’m correct these seem to be a type of Reading List, the type where the feeds in the list are changing constantly, like every hour.

So how do you get a Reading List where the feeds within are changing so often?

And why would you want this?

The idea of a Reading List is a carefully chosen topic list of feeds, that can be updated and will dynamically reflect the changes with who ever subscribes to the OPML URL.
Sure you can prune this list from time to time, but maybe it might be annoying if the owner of the OPML (Reading List) kept changing the feeds on you…especially by the hour.
What is the use of this…”are you happy with your feed set or not…why do you keep changing it?”

So from what I gather a Reading List wouldn’t change too often as you may be happy with the feeds in the list, if a feed gets boring over time, or you find a new one that suits the topic of the Reading List, you make those changes…but if you were making these changes daily, it would seem that you can’t make up your mind or your tastes are changing ever so quickly

…in the end we create a Reading List because we are happy about the feeds in it, we like most of the content in these feeds.

So what is a Grazing List?

This type of Reading List seems to be one where the feeds change every hour…in knowing this you are not really subscribing to this list because of the set feeds….you can’t get attached to these feeds as they won’t be around for long.

This type of list wouldn’t be modified by a human, it would automatically happen programatically.

Check on the sidebar of this blog, and you will see a hack for a Tech. Memeorandum Reading List…Bokardo is also talking about it…here is a link to the Grazing List hack.

The top posts on Memeorandum are changing all the time, what this hack does is collect all the feeds from where these top posts came from and puts them in an OPML URL.
As the post drops off the Memeorandum page, the feed will drop out of the OPML URL

…but what’s the big deal if you can subscribe to the Memeorandum RSS feed for a river of news of the latest posts anyway.

The reason you subscribe to a Grazing List is because you can discover and shop for feeds in this showcase…all the feeds in the OPML have a winning post in Memeorandum, so they must be good…you can dig around, checking out the posts to see if you want to subscribe to them.

It’s just another way of shopping for feeds, instead of looking at an RSS feed directory, or finding feeds in a blog engine via the posts in the results
…and the beauty of Grazing Lists is that you are shopping in your own home (your RSS Reader).

If you are not interested in feeds, but posts, then you can subscribe to the Memeorandum RSS feed.

Again

So, with Grazing Lists you can subscribe to the feeds of these popular posts, as these feeds may have other posts you find interesting…cool for discovery…so you get a little bit extra by subscribing to the OPML, than the RSS feed.

I guess this is convenient, as when you subscribe to the RSS feed, you may see a post you like, then launch to the blog, look around read other posts from this blog to see if it’s a worthwhile subscription…so this is like shopping around.

Subscribing to the OPML may make this easier as you can shop around within your RSS Reader, as you not only have one post from a feed, you can see all the other posts as well, you don’t neccessarily have to launch to the actual blog to discover other posts.

With Reading Lists you are kind of happy with your feed set, so this doesn’t as change as much…but with Grazing Lists (a type of Reading List), it is not a consistent feed set (in fact it is perpetually changing), so it is more like a way to discover new feeds…whereas with a Reading List you are not really discovering new feeds as much in comparison.

In fact, you may discover new feeds in a Grazing List, and decide to add them to your Reading List.

This post has built up up from a comment I left on James Corbett’s blog. He also mentions including the feeds from the conversational posts linking to the posts on Memeorandum as being another level in the OPML…ie. the Grazing List would not only include the feeds from the posts on Memeorandum, but also the feeds from the posts that link to these posts in Memeorandum.

Check out Bokardo’s post on the evolution of our information grazing methods…this goes beyond feed grazing, and into post grazing.

Post Grazing

Post grazing could mean simply browsing the Memeorandum RSS feed, it is just reading posts from a perpetual changing set of feeds as a river of news.
NOTE: in Memeorandum you are not getting all posts from the feeds (like a spliced feed), you only see popular posts, this can be post grazing as well.

And sometimes the feed and post grazing is done for you, via a recommendation based on your reading behaviour, etc…

Relevance

Reading your feeds in some sort of relevance order river of news…relevance reading based on a set of feeds…the variation is how the relevance is determined.

We are always feed and post grazing in the backround for discovery, but once we have our feed set we would like a way to read the posts in our mini blogosphere by relevancy.

This is taking your feed set and instead of reading it in date order, reading it in relevance order…see OPML Sampler.

So we are back to not discovery, but reading only what we want to read, increasing the relevance and reducing the overload (but we want to know we are still being exhaustive).
Check out Scoble’s link to Megite, seems to be what we are seeking, a personal memetracker…this post has some insightful comments (especially the echo-chamber effect).

Relevance can work in different ways, based on your reading behaviour, based on popular posts (like OPML Sampler).

Others already working on this are Findory, TailRank (I think, or maybe this is more for discovery), Rojo, Attensa, Chuquet, etc…

[ADDED 28/02/06: OPML Browser is now called Optimal…it reads RSS feed content, and also opens OPML inclusions within the same page as an outline]