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February 27, 2006

Web2.0 lists

Filed under: tools

Check out this Web2.0 list, it’s a logo collage…also see Part 1.

Steven Cohen is also doing something similar, but as a Reading List.

Then there is the list on Listable.

Similar: a beta list, a ruby on rails list.

Some handy link type blogs for the lastest web2.0 treats:
Webosphere
ehub
copy-log
I want to
mashable
techcrunch
New Media Picks Of The Week: Sharewood Picnic
(this doesn’t have a feed for this weekly post, so you could maybe make one at Feed Digest for the whole feed filtered with a search term like “picnic”).

[ADDED 06/05/06: lists lists lists web2.o lists lists lists]

More on OPML inclusion

Filed under: General, blogs, rss, readers, opml

Thought I’d clear this up for a few people I’ve been talking to.

If you create a Reading List in BlogBridge you can showcase it on your sidebar.

But what if you want to showcase two or more Reading Lists, this would take up a lot of room on your sidebar…I wonder if you could list just the Reading List titles as a folder, and click on a collapse/expand symbol to see all the feeds in each list.

This is exactly what you can do with OPML Renderer, here’s an example…but you can also do more.

You will notice the difference here is that the Reading List contains Reading Lists itself, so this Reading List in particular is pointing to Reading Lists other people have created…each has an arrow to the OPML URL….so it can be considered as a mother Reading List I suppose.
This too has an OPML (see the icon), I’m not sure if you can subscribe to this in BlogBridge, if you try it, it may just flatten out or merge the feeds into one long list, losing the organisation aspect.

At the moment you can’t make these types of Reading Lists in BlogBridge…when you make a Reading List in BlogBridge the items are RSS URL’s (feeds), but when you make a mother Reading List, the items are OPML URL’s (that contain feeds)…and to my knowledge BlogBridge won’t accept OPML inclusions as they are not feeds.

When a Reading List or any OPML for that matter contains OPML URL’s as items this is called OPML inclusion…you can create a mother Reading List/root OPML/OPML menu (that accepts OPML inclusion) at OPML Workstation.

NOTE: BlogBridge can only create and use one type of OPML, that is OPML’s where the items are feeds, we call these Reading Lists…this is a great feature for a service that is predominatly an RSS Reader.
You can make other types of OPML, and OPML Workstation is a focused tool to do just this…you can create OPML URL’s that contain feeds (Reading Lists), HTML (Link Lists), text, and OPML’s (OPML inclusion), or a combination.
I don’t think this is the market for BlogBridge as they are not an OPML outliner in general, they are an RSS Reader, that has some extra capabilities (read feeds via OPML).

Back to it…

I think OPML Renderer is just great to showcase your OPML outline on your blog sidebar, but the problem for me is it’s a plugin, this is a bit hard when you are using a hosted blog.

So my next choice would be OPod, but again it’s a plug in, but the bonus here is that you can also read the contents of your feeds, so besides being an OPML reader (like OPML Renderer, it also has a mini RSS reader built in).

So my next choice is the go, Bitty is similar to OPod but it will be hosted, and where OPod only accepts OPML URL’s, Bitty accepts OPML, HTML, RSS, etc…with easy subscription modules to boot, and not only that it is also a mini search browser.

Examples

Here is an example of an OPML URL that contains OPML’s that contain feeds (a Reading List that contains Reading Lists).

OPML Renderer
Here is the OPML.

Enter this same OPML URL into OPod and see the results.

See it in Bitty…this rocks.

As you can see it looks like a Reading List menu…so the idea is to make different topic based Reading Lists, or even grab your friends Reading List, and include them as items in a new OPML URL…as mentioned before this will be a Reading List Directory or menu. The bonus is that you can also read the feeds within the browser and it is all hosted on your sidebar.

Next I’d like to do this with Link Lists where my items in an OPML are just HTML links and not feeds, then put the OPML of each of these Link Lists into a new OPML (Link List Directory).

Since my Link Lists are all done in del.icio.us I wish each tag had an OPML URL, and each tag bundle had an OPML URL…this tag bundle would be the mother OPML (Link List Directory or menu).
All I’d have to do is put the OPML URL of the del.icio.us tag bundle in Bitty, and I’m done…a mini del.icio.us on my sidebar.

del.icio.us NOT hack

Filed under: General, tags, search

Tony Hirst has come up with another del.icio.us hack, this one is hiding results from a tag via a bookmarklet.

Once you have your results page, then you can hide bookmarks from a certain tag by highlighting it and hitting the bookmarklet…so you are doing the NOT step after the initial search.

Search full-text del.icio.us hack

Filed under: General, search

deli.sear.ch is an easier form to search the full-text of bookmarks within a del.icio.us user tag

…it is built on the idea from miniSearch.

Here’s a miniSearch example:

I put in a del.icio.us URL for my tag called “podcast”
http://del.icio.us/johnt/podcast
…and my search term is “williams”.

Result via Yahoo!

This is what the query in the search box looks like:

williams (url:http://www.podtranscript.com/ OR url:http://www.feed2podcast.com/ OR url:http://www.bigcontact.com/feedplayer.php?xmlurl= OR url:http://www.blogdigger.com/blog/2005/09/27/1127853231000.html OR url:http://contentfactor.blogspot.com/2005/05/podcasting-fast-forward.html OR url:http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/09/finding_the_gem.html OR url:http://odeo.com/blog/2005/08/collaborative-podcast.html OR url:http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/08/yahoo_launches__1.html OR url:http://lispodcasts.com/ OR url:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=printArticle&ID=1239 OR url:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)

As you can notice not all my 26 items within this tag have been searched…so this seems a limited method.

del.icio.us Reading List form

Filed under: General, rss, opml

Tony Hirst has made a form to generate Reading Lists via del.icio.us…nice and easy, thanks Tony.

Check out the bookmarklet…just goto one of your del.icio.us tags that is a Reading List, and hit the bookmarklet…it will automatically generate an OPML URL…quicker and easier.

Also check out the Social Bookmarking RSS feeds - OPML Generator…see more.

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