Library clips

This is very much so one of those What if…? posts.

Here are some posts of late as some background:

Subscribe to an OPML in your own OPML: changes are dynamic
BlogBridge: use and create your own reading lists
Reading Lists: where are you?
Search in an OPML
OPML inclusion
Back up blog via OPML
del.icio.us outline tree
OPML and RSS Reader in one
OPML Workstation: that’s for sure!
Bitty Browser: the sidebar RSS Reader or even OPML Reader
Meta-search via an OPML URL?
OPML Reader
OPML for comments
Bookmarklet for OPML
Listible and H2O Playlist
Grazing Lists

So far I have seen OPML outlines that have items or nodes that are normal HTML links or RSS links, or even just text.

The way this is denoted in an OPML file is by attributes called “xmlUrl” and/or “htmlUrl” (the terms “link” or “rss” are alternately used)

What about if the items in the OPML are an OPML URL itself (OPML Inclusion), at the moment these are being listed as “links”, but really they could be listed as “opmlUrl”.
eg. see the OPML URL for the PubSub Community Lists it basically identifies those OPML URL’s as being regular links.

If you look at this OPML it has a head and a body (you can collapse/expand these sections), the head is the title “PubSub Community Lists” and the body is the name of each list.
If you cut ‘n paste the OPML URL of one of the lists (eg. Librarian List) into a new browser, you will see the head is the list name and the body is each feed within the list.

So I was thinking if there could be another level in an OPML URL that contains OPMLURL’s as items…with enabling you to collapse/expand the items within each OPML item all in the same page, eg. being able to see all the items (feeds) in the Librarians List from the Community List OPML URL.

Here is the PubSub Community Lists OPML directory in OPML Surfer and OPML Browser.

The benefit of pointing to other OPML’s within your own is this:

- Instead of importing the contents of a static OPML file into your OPML, you can just subscribe to the URL of the OPML itself, when the owner update their work it will reflect in your OPML.

- You can showcase other people’s work in your OPML directory

OPML inclusion allows you to make a mega or Root OPML so much easier, no importing really, just adding links that happen to be OPML URL’s

…and the magic part is that your new OPML is dynamic as it will reflect changes in the contents from OPML’s that it points to, as it only points to them, and doesn’t absorb them, so to speak.

RSS Reader

OPML is a way to batch load (import) heaps of RSS feeds in one go.

What about batch loading heaps of OPML’s in one go?

Say you have 5 OPML URL’s containing 10 feeds each, instead of importing each of the 5 OPML’s separately, can you load them all in one go by placing them firstly in a mega OPML URL, and then importing that into your RSS Reader…this way you will have 50 feeds in one go, instead of 5 separate goes…all batch loaded in the right folders…is this possible?

I wonder how this would work with using Reading Lists, that is not with the intention of batch loading feeds but instead being subscribed to the 5 OPML URL’s via actually subscribing to the root or mega OPML URL.
…what would happen if you subscribed to a Reading List that contained Reading Lists, that is, a mega Reading List…this is one for Pito@BlogBridge.

That is, can you subscribe to an OPML URL that represents 5 OPML URL’s within it?

…more

This could also be built for services like del.icio.us

…a del.icio.us tag bundle could be at a similar level to one of the PubSub Community Lists eg. the Librarians List.

The tag bundle would have an OPML URL where the items within are the RSS feeds of each of the del.icio.us tags included (this has more of a chance working at Raw Sugar, as a directory (tag bundle), does have it’s own URL, all it now needs is an OPML URL).

It doesn’t have to be confined to a tag bundle, maybe you could make OPML’s on the fly by selecting the RSS feeds of several del.icio.us tags (at the moment you can do this very conveniently at Social Bookmarking RSS Feeds - OPML Generator (code only - save it locally, then import it to a service that can host it on a URL))
…but this needs to be done within del.icio.us so changes that are made at del.icio.us will reflect in the OPML URL.

At a bigger level akin to the PubSub Community Lists, you could select any of these tag bundle OPML’s or “fly OPML’s” and make a mega or root OPML.

In this way you could goto a user account/s or the general level and collect the RSS feeds of several tags based on a topic and put them into an OPML URL, then do the same for another 4 topics…now you have 5 del.icio.us topic OPML URL’s.

Then the next step is to make a root OPML, where the items point to each of the 5 OPML’s.

Or you could browse del.icio.us and collect 5 tag bundle OPML URL’s and put these as items into a root OPML.

I would hope to import this root OPML into my RSS Reader where it will batch load all feeds from each OPML (each acting as a sub-folder within the root OPML folder…only thing is not all RSS Readers have sub-folders).

Or, even better, just subscribe to the root OPML URL as a Reading List, that represents 5 Reading Lists (so instead of subscribing to 5 Reading Lists (OPML URL’s) you only have to subscribe to the root OPML URL)…again, I’m not sure if this works.

Link Lists - htmlUrl (not Reading Lists)

Let’s take the del.icio.us example again but instead of xmlUrl, we will use htmlUrl as the items in our OPML’s (therefore, this type of OPML is not intended for use in an RSS Reader)
…so this OPML URL will contain HTML links, not RSS feeds.

Prior to this we were examining the tag bundle level, now we will just look at the tag level.

Wouldn’t it be good if each tag in del.icio.us had an OPML URL, where the tag name is the “head” and all the HTML links (bookmarks) are the items, why not also throw in a tree outline view of your del.icio.us tag.

So if you made an OPML at (OPML Workstation) by importing a few of your del.icio.us tag OPML’s, each folder in your outline would be a del.icio.us tag, and within each folder would be an archive of all the bookmarks (hopefully, as mentioned at the start of this post, an archive of all the bookmarks would be included).

Or better still, instead of importing these del.icio.us tag OPML’s, you just subscribed to each OPML URL (OPML inclusion) in your OPML outline.

When you browse your OPML outline, just click on an item (which will be the OPML URL of a del.icio.us tag) and you will see all the bookmarks in that tag, any new additions/deletions will automatically be reflected.

I guess this is how to make an outline version of del.icio.us that is always updated as you update the real del.icio.us.

This wouldn’t be limited to only your account, you could grab the OPML URL of any users del.icio.us tags, and make an outline tree based on these various user tags.

So all we need to do is ask del.icio.us to offer a OPML URL for each tag.

All this could be also done at the tag bundle level, the difference with the previous section is that the items in each tag bundle would be the HTML URL of the tag, not the RSS URL.

NOTE: If your blog had an OPML URL, or each of your blog categories had an OPML URL you could apply the same principle, and subscribe to each of these OPML URL’s in a root OPML URL, this would be an outline archive title index by category…then place a mini version of this outline on your sidebar via Bitty Browser…see more.

[ADDED: this can now be solved using H2O Playlist, create a list of links, this list has a permalink, an RSS feed, and an OPML URL.]

Import an OPML URL of a del.icio.us tag into del.icio.us

So far we have imagined what we could do if del.icio.us tags had an OPML URL, these could be exported into an OPML Outline (or just cut ‘n paste the URL into your outline)…to augment the process what if you could also import an OPML URL into del.icio.us.

You could browse around del.icio.us and collect several del.icio.us tags OPML URL’s (general or user level) and add these to your OPML outline, once you are finished you could batch load all of these into del.icio.us.
In one go you have added several new del.icio.us tags with all the bookmarks included
(not sure what happens if that tag name already exists, maybe you could alter the names in the outline to match tag names you already have, and then it will just add the new bookmarks).

What about if you collect heaps of bookmarks (HTML links) during the day, adding these to an OPML (file or URL), then at the end of the day bulk import these into del.icio.us
…which tag would it go in, would you sort this out before you import or after you import.

This might seem a bit useless, as you can bookmark things as you go along, but the beauty of it is you can import this OPML file into other bookmark managers you might use (although, you could use the Multi-submit bookmarklet), or do other things with it, it is in OPML format, do what you want with it.

Instead of using the bookmarklet to add things to your del.icio.us account as you go along, you can take an intermediate step (making an OPML file) and then add them in bulk later, this OPML file allows you to use the same information (this collection of bookmarks) elsewhere.

Actually this is a good idea for an OPML Catcher (daily catch)

…collect websites all day into an OPML (maybe with an easy bookmarklet) even give it a tag/folder…then at the end of the day you can import this OPML into any bookmark service, or an outline tree, or render it in HTML, etc…

So, instead of bookmarking them into del.icio.us as you go along, place them in a daily catcher, and at the end of the day import them where ever you want.

People may be interested in viewing your daily catcher, so this could be a publishing tool in itself, with an RSS feed.

Now this is starting to sound like a daily link blog, the difference is that each date in your blog could have an OPML URL…at the end of the day people can grab your OPML for the day and import it into an outline, bookmark service, etc…you’d have to tag the new entries later on.

This could be a normal blog, or even a tool like del.icio.us can act as a type of link blog, let’s take both examples:

DEL.ICIO.US LINK BLOG

Add bookmarks to del.icio.us as usual, as you go along…but for every bookmark you save it also saves into a daily del.icio.us OPML folder, here it will contain all the bookmarks you have added for the day, organised by tag. Better still, if you could view your bookmarks by date, and if this date URL had an OPML URL version, then this could be your daily catch, and you could import this daily OPML into whatever application you like.

NOTE: People can see your daily del.icio.us additions via the RSS feed, but then all these daily bookmarks aren’t packaged in OPML, having them in the OPML format allows you to do further things with this daily collection of bookmarks.

NORMAL BLOG

The same can be done in a normal blog, having an OPML URL for each date.

AUTOMATIC SYNCHING

What if you really liked a particular blog or del.icio.us date blog (as mentioned above) and wanted each entry made within a date automatically imported into a bookmark service without you having to do it…maybe you could subscribe to the OPML URL of the whole blog, just like BlogBridge does with Reading Lists, only the items in the OPML aren’t feeds they are HTML links.
Actually that’s silly, as long as the blog has an RSS feed you could maybe set it up to synch the new content into your bookmark service (is this SSE?)…this is dangerous as you could easily make it automatically ping all your blog entries to a service like Digg, this would make it too easy to spam.

Or imagine if you could bookmark an OPML inclusion in del.icio.us, and then read/browse the contents, like you can in an OPML Browser, or an OPML Reader/Browser like KOZOPMLBROWSER…then you would not need synching as the bookmarks are in your account via a hosted OPML URL (but you probably couldn’t search these, although the KOZOPMLBROWSER has a search feature coming soon…see more on searching in an OPML URL and via an OPML URL).

If you got the OPML URL of someone’s whole del.icio.us account, or even a OPML URL of a users tag, you could bookmark or have a section to store these OPML inclusions and view other people’s accounts or sections of their accounts within your account…well you can already do this anyway without using OPML.
But what if the OPML inclusion was from a different bookmark service or it was a Reading List, or someone text or link outline, or an OPML of a whole blog, etc…then you could view all these within del.icio.us.

Whole blog having an OPML URL
- as mentioned earlier in this post, you could browse a title index of the blog by category at OPML Surfer or OPML Browser, or even subscribe to this OPML URL as an inclusion into your bigger root OPML.

Each date in your blog having an OPML URL
- this can be added as an OPML inclusion into a root OPML or browsed in an OPML Browser as mentioned immediately above
- this also allows anyone to load all entries within this date into another application (Daily catch OPML)

Each topic can have its own OPML URL
- this can be added as an OPML inclusion into a root OPML or browsed in an OPML Browser as mentioned immediately above.

What I’m getting at here is these features for a blog or link blog (del.icio.us):

- RSS feed (also for each category)
- OPML URL (sections of this OPML URL could be their own OPML URL’s, these sections are certain folders, such as category or date)

This means an OPML URL for your whole blog, for each category, and for each date

eg. OPML URL for each date - each item in the OPML is a normal HTML link (a blog post permalink)
…take this and import it into a bookmark service or an outliner, etc…

Some blogs can even have an OPML URL at the post level, see the OPML Renderer page at Yabfog, there is a section called “Errata and Gotchas”, the contents is like an outline, you will see it has an OPML, since changes are oftern made a feed would be handy as well

…see a related post.

Blog Category Reading List

…more thoughts

Many people have a feed for each blog category, as we said earlier, an OPML URL for each category would be handy to import an archive of all the contents in that category into an outliner, etc… NOTE: this is an OPML made up of HTML links not RSS feeds.

What about and OPML URL that contains the RSS feed of each category in your blog, this would be like a Reading List for just one blog.
This is handy for people who like to read entries in one blog by a selection of available categories, then you only have to subscribe to the OPML URL and not every blog category (once you subscribe to the OPML URL you have a choice to delete category feeds, or accept/reject any new category feeds created in that blog).

Recap

OPML URL within a OPML URL (OPML inclusion)

CAN YOU BATCH LOAD FEEDS CONTAINED WITHIN OPML INCLUSIONS VIA THE MOTHER OPML?

CAN AN OPML WITH OPML INCLUSIONS STILL BE USED AS A READING LIST?

A DEL.ICIO.US TAG BUNDLE OR A COLLECTION OF DEL.ICIO.US TAGS AS AN OPML URL

LINK LIST OPML URL (for each del.icio.us tag)

If the HTML of several del.icio.us tags were put into an OPML URL, all you would get when you imported this OPML URL into an outline are the links to the front page of each del.icio.us tag, you wouldn’t get all the bookmarks within each tag.

So, what if each tag was an OPML URL itself, if we took the OPML URL of several del.icio.us tags and placed them into a mother OPML URL, would this make a difference

…in the end I want to be able to get an archive of all bookmarks within tags of my choice, I want to be able to export all bookmarks within user tags of my choice (ie. not just the tag HTML page, but also every bookmark URL within that tag).

[ADDED: this can now be solved using H2O Playlist, create a list of links, this list has a permalink, an RSS feed, and an OPML URL.]

IMPORT A DEL.ICIO.US TAG OPML URL INTO DEL.ICIO.US (batch loading of bookmarks)

OPML URL FOR DAILY BOOKMARKS (via an outline, del.icio.us date, or blog date)

SYNCHING

OPML INCLUSIONS IN DEL.ICIO.US (as an OPML Browser)

BLOG OPML URL (also for each category, and each date)

BLOG READING LIST (via category feeds)

[ADDED 28/02/06: Ways to make Reading Lists so far]

[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]