Library clips

Content aggregation is the new thing, we all do our fair share of Newsmastering, by splicing blog feeds, or splicing tag feeds, to show a topic based river of news…the most talked about tool at the moment is SuprGlu.

Well now developers are going beyond just a river of news and creating a whole service around aggregated tag content or structured blogging content…data is king at the moment.

eg. edgeio collects blog posts with the tag “listing”, and lists the post as a classified listing…it also sends a trackback to the blog post saying it’s now listed (which you can then go to the edgeio site and tags to your listing).

eg. KritX collects blog posts that are “reviews”…using structured blogging (microformats), ie. a review markup or field in the blog post will ping KritX, and it will add your post.

eg. Podcast Tags will aggregate posts using the rel= format popularised by Technorati…only it wants you to point to their URL and not Technorati…no problem, Technorati will pick this up anyway (it doesn’t care who you point to).

So, now if we can define the type of blog post it is, services can pick up this up and aggregate this content into their service. The competitive edge is no longer content, it is how you use your content (eg. memeorandum), the user interface, personalisation, customisation, and of course social features that are the go at the moment.

I spoke of this a while ago:

“The notion of structured blogging and dataBlogging will contribute to the semantic web; by adding tags to blog content we can derive context. As is mentioned in this article if content such as a job listing is tagged with the appropriate tag, then any website can aggregate all job listings, the current players will need to re-think their services other than just providing content…lots of players are starting to aggregate content, just look at Yahoo! News or Google News, they are the new competition to traditional news aggregators, so now services are moving forward beyond just delivering content, and into customer service such as personalisation, customisation and integration.”

Also check out Community Engine to see how to make your own using the xFolk microformat.

Also see the come to me web.

You can easily make a Reading List with an OPML editor like OPML Manager or OPML Workstation, the only thing is that when you want to add a feed you have to launch your editor and make the changes.
It’s probably most convenient making a Reading List in your RSS Reader, like BlogBridge, as this is where you read and subscribe to feeds anyway.

As I mentioned in my last post Danny Ayers has hacked del.icio.us, so you can use it to make Reading Lists
…the benefit of this is that you can add an item to your Reading List via the bookmarklet…very convenient, and if you want to delete an item, all it takes is two clicks in del.icio.us (click the tag to browse, click the delete next to the item).

So how is it done?

Well firstly instead of bookmarking HTML pages to del.icio.us you are bookmarking feed URL, so I wouldn’t bookmark the blog homepage, I would bookmark the blog feed page.

What you need?

The RSS URL of your tag

Then you need Danny’s special conversion URL

Whack both of these into this processing form

Here’s your OPML URL for that tag…now is this URL hosted by w3?

There you have it, each time you add/delete a feed in that tag, it will be reflected in the OPML version (dynamic)

Here is Danny’s sample in Bitty Browser.

Now my question was to make one for the tag bundle, but it doesn’t have a URL so I’ve already hit a wall.

From my earlier post:

“Now what about doing this for tag bundles, probably not because they haven’t got a URL, but if they did (like Raw Sugar) you could make a Reading List (tag bundle), where all the items are also Reading Lists (tags)…kind of like a mother Reading List or a Reading List menu…this is called OPML inclusion…see more.”

Doesn’t matter really, all I have to do is make an OPML at OPML Workstation, and include the various del.icio.us tag OPML’s as items…done.

See more.

Continuing from an earlier post.

I want every tag in del.icio.us to have an OPML URL, and I want the whole account to have an OPML URL (this would be the root OPML URL, and the tags would be the inclusion OPML URL’s).

Then I could put the root OPML into Bitty Browser or OPod on the sidebar of my blog….this would show a menu of all my OPML URL inclusions, these represent each del.icio.us tag…by clicking on an OPML inclusion (a del.icio.us tag) I will see every entry.

So here’s an example in Bitty Browser of a root OPML called PubSub Community List (this could be our whole del.icio.us account), then there are the OPML inclusions which are the PubSub Librarian List, etc…(these could be each del.icio.us tag).

NOTE: in this example the items in the OPML are feeds, whereas in our example the items in the OPML are just HTML links….this doesn’t make a difference.

So if I start this new del.icio.us account with the intention to only list web2.0 services, each tag can be a topic eg.blog…then each bookmark would be - wordpress, typepad, blogger, etc…

This way I will have a list of services (bookmarks) by topic (tag)…and since each tag has an OPML URL, you can view an archive of all the bookmarks.
If I can represent this data in OPML, then I can browse my whole del.icio.us account on my sidebar, and the latest entries will dynamically appear.

Only problem is that del.icio.us doesn’t use OPML

NOTE: the root OPML doesn’t have to be the whole account, maybe it could be for the tag bundle.

The great thing is as I add bookmarks with my bookmarklet, they will dynamically appear on my blog sidebar…this is slightly different to re-syndicating a feed to see the latest bookmarks…instead this will not only have the latest bookmarks, but it will have all the bookmarks listed in every tag…a directory right there in my sidebar.

Instead of making this a link list directory I could make it a Reading List directory, so instead of saving the homepage URL’s of services, I would save the RSS feed URL of the blog/homepage of each service…then I can click once more and read the feeds contents within OPod or Bitty Browser.
But I feel a Reading List is much more convenient to be created in your RSS Reader, because this is where you read your feeds…otherwise every time I add/delete a feed in my RSS Reader I would have to do the same in del.icio.us.

Also see how BlogBridge itself enables you to list a Reading List in your blog sidebar, what about a menu of Reading Lists…this is exactly what I want from del.icio.us, but for links not feeds.

So Reading Lists are better off being created in an RSS Reader (because this is where you subscribe/read your feeds), and Link Lists are better off being created in a bookmark managers (because this is where you add/read your links)…this way you don’t have to duplicate your efforts.

In saying this all applications could do us a favour and OPMLify…(some might not even know what RSS is…it’s such a waiting game for some, I wish I was a programmer)

…actually Danny Ayers has hacked an OPML into his del.icio.us tags, and it seems to be hosted by w3. He is using del.icio.us as a reading list (the items in the OPML are feeds, ie. his bookmarks are not blog homepages, but the feed URL’s). Now what about doing this for tag bundles, probably not because they haven’t got a URL, but if they did (like Raw Sugar) you could make a Reading List (tag bundle), where all the items are also Reading Lists (tags)…kind of like a mother Reading List or a Reading List menu…this is called OPML inclusion…see more.

So I wonder if Danny can do a similar thing, but where the del.icio.us bookmarks are just normal HTML pages…ie. a Link List in OPML.

Another bonus of this, is that having your data in OPML makes it easy to export/import anywhere you like…portable data.

Anyway, this is something I want to do, and the bookmark managers are really behind with OPML.

H2O Playlist has an OPML URL, but each section heading doesn’t have one, (as each section heading doesn’t have it’s own URL).

The plus of OPML for your data is that you can export it into other services…even better if it has a URL of it’s own so you can also choose to subscribe to it.

Just had a thought…I noticed that netvibes now has a del.icio.us module…so if I don’t acheive it with OPML and present it in Bitty Browser or OPod…I can somehow maybe place a widget on my blog.

Is there such a thing as widgets for blogs…imagine that, sections of your blog made up of widgets, these widgets could also be used elsewhere…so the del.icio.us widget, or weather widget in my netvibes account could also be used in my blog

…the interchangable or interoperable web.