Library clips

Some of my posts refer to keeping an OPML of your daily bookmarks, a while ago I called this my OPML Daily Catch (scroll to the bold heading “OPML Catcher”).

The idea was that instead of bookmarking to del.icio.us I could bookmark to an OPML, and then at the end of the day I could choose where I want to put this data…I could add it as an inclusion to an OPML, I could (when possible) import it into a bookmark manager, I could (if the, bookmarks are feeds) import or subscribe to the OPML with an RSS Reader…or I could just browse the OPML in an OPML Browser/Reader/Grazer…I have a choice to do one or all of these things.

So what I’m getting at, is instead of committing to webpages/feeds as I come across them, that is bookmark to del.icio.us, subscribe to Rojo…I could collect them in a daily OPML and then to decide to do numerous things with the data later on. If I commit to del.icio.us or Rojo as I go along, then that’s it, it is part of those systems, the data is no longer on its own.

The problem is del.icio.us currently doesn’t import OPML

…also the bookmarks in the OPML need to be assigned tags somehow when going into del.icio.us…or maybe they could already have tags when we bookmark them into our OPML daily catch

…and how do we exactly add webpages to our daily catch…via a bookmarklet perhaps.

So what do we use for our OPML Daily Catch…if del.icio.us had OPML functionality, we could then use del.icio.us itself…although we may want to keep our del.icio.us collection separate from our daily catch.

The reason for this is that some of what is in your daily catch may be of no interest to you after all, so having these bookmarks in a waiting bay is a good idea…see ListMixer.

Fictional Scenario

- Rojo is your RSS Reader
- del.icio.us is your bookmark manager
- Jots is your OPML Daily Catch

As I come across webpages I bookmark them with a bookmarklet in Jots…the types of webpages I’m bookmarking are feeds, HTML links and PDF’s, OPML URL’s, etc…as I bookmark I can also assign tags to these items.

Then at the end of the day I go to my Jots calendar and click on todays date to see all todays entries, then I click on the OPML icon for the raw OPML from todays date.

Now, what do I want to do with the items in this OPML.

Firstly I’ll load some feeds into Rojo, and a few other RSS Readers (load in the whole OPML and hopefully it will ignore non-feed items)

…better still, maybe I could make variations of this OPML on the fly, by selecting only the feed items from this OPML I will make a new OPML, then load this into Rojo or subscribe to it as Reading List (remember this is fictional, NewsRiver and BlogBridge are the only RSS Readers so far that can subscribe to Reading Lists).

Or I could take this Reading List above (variation OPML on the fly) and graze it in a Feed Grazer or OPML Browser/Reader…or even plug it into OPML2PDF and print out a PDF of my Daily Catch to read on the train.

NOTE: I could also browse the original date OPML in an OPML Browser/Reader…but I’d need to make one on the fly to use it in OPML2PDF (the items in OPML2PDF can only be feeds).

Then I could pick which items in my daily OPML I want to load into del.icio.us, furl, simpy, etc… (remember these services don’t currently import OPML).

Then I could decide which items (whether they are feeds, HTML links, or OPML) will go into my OPML Directory.

Then I could decide which of these items I will blog about, etc…

So you see, instead of bookmarking/subscribing straight into a service as I go along, I could do it at the end of the day, where the same items can go into multiple services.

Others could also goto the date of an OPML in my Daily Catch and do what they want with the data

…later on if I decide to use another RSS Reader, bookmark manager, or any type of service, I could go back to my Daily Catch and use the data again.

This is what I like about having data in OPML, I can do what I want with it now, later, whenever…the data is in an open format…often our data is in a service, and if we want to change service it’s hard to get it out and load it into a new service.

This idea will only work if a tool like Jots had an OPML URL for each date, heck the RSS feed of your Jots account could be re-syndicated into a blog, so now your OPML Daily Catch is also a link blog.
But you may decide you don’t want the public to see your daily catch as it will represent you and you may not want items you haven’t read yet to represent you.