Library clips

Lately I’ve been harping on about two related ideas, one is an OPML Daily Catch, and the other RSS/OPML Submit and Print.

OPML Daily Catch refers to bookmarking webpage and feeds to a service, and at the end of the day, export the day/date OPML into what ever service/s you like.

RSS/OPML Submit and Print is bookmarking any webpage into a personal RSS object (this will actually make an RSS version of the object)…I guess this could even be re-syndicated into a blog. At the end of the day this RSS feed or OPML (if you have lots of these feeds) can be printed out via OPML2PDF to read on the train.

As you can see they are similar ideas, the first is catching data into a format, then doing what you want with it later…the other is RSSifying webpages, which can be shown in a blog, or printed out as a daily full-text folio.
NOTE: this wouldn’t be just a link blog, you would be manually clipping into a full-text blog.

For the moment lets take the RSS/OPML Submit and Print idea

NOTE: What about submitting non-web pages like word documents, Marjolein (of Clever Clogs) suggests a CTRL-P scenario.

In the earlier post I mentioned that del.icio.us is virtually a linkblog (if you re-syndicated your del.icio.us feed into a blog, this is certainly what it would be).

But all you will get in this blog are links to webpages, what a about a full-text blog…well I guess you could splice a few real blog feeds and re-syndicate this into a blog, then this blog will show full-text posts

…but this is automatic newsmastering, what if I want to manually curate content…more.

The middle ground is Clipmarks, this goes a step further than del.icio.us and allows you to clip parts of the webpage, and each of your clips has a permalink…Furl could do similar.

A step even further is the Bloglines Clip Blog, this allows you to clip the contents from the Bloglines RSS Reader into the Bloglines Clip Blog…so you are not just bookmarking/clipping a title (like in del.icio.us), you are clipping the whole post from your RSS Reader into the blog.

Also a notable is that when you clip an item into your NewsGator folders, since these folders have RSS feeds, they could be re-syndicated into a blog.

reBlog

Check out reBlog, I’ve posted about this a long while back.
It is basically the same as the Bloglines Clip Blog, only from the reFeeds RSS Reader you can clip an item to your own blog via a plugin.

This is for those who don’t want to write their own content, they’d rather curate content already out there.

To recap, in del.icio.us you can clip only a title link to the native post, and del.icio.us isn’t exactly your own proper blog, it is a generic looking linkblog…with reBlog you can clip the whole contents of the item into your own blog (of course you have to link back to the native site).

Have a look at a sample post from this blog, all the contents is clipped, nothing is original…you will see the title links to the native post, the footer identifies the author and there is a link to the blog homepage…it also gives the name of the reBlogger and the time they re-posted this item (this is a permalink).

But

What if you see a webpage you want to add that isn’t in your reFeeds RSS Reader…how do we clip a webpage…we need a reBlogger bookmarklet, this way you don’t neccessarily require the reFeeds RSS Reader.

With reFeeds we are clipping the RSS version of a particular web or blog page…how do you re-publish a random webpage?
Maybe the bookmarklet will look for the RSS version of that webpage…but what if the webpage you are on doesn’t have an RSS feed?

So this takes us back to our RSS/OPML Submit and Print post, we need a personal RSSify bookmarklet.

This helps as we don’t have to clip only from within an RSS Reader, and it will scrape the page you are on if it doesn’t have a feed…even better is a key command like CTRL-P as then we can also RSSify non-web pages.

OPML Catcher and OPML Submit Print come together (Fictional Scenario again)

All day via a bookmarklet or a key command I could re-publish whatever I see on my screen into an RSS feed, if the webpage you are on doesn’t have an RSS feed it will scrape (RSSify) the HTML to make an RSS version.

In turn you could take this RSS feed you are submitting stuff to, and re-syndicate it into a blog…now you are publishing your Daily Catch.

The first hiccup is, what if I have a 50 page HTML or PDF document on my screen, would that be submitted into my personal RSS feed, and then be re-syndicated into my blog as a massive blog post?
Now I see why reBlog re-posts content from an RSS Reader and not a bookmarklet, firstly the content already has an RSS version, and the content is usually from blog posts, which aren’t usually 50 pages long.

Anyway, while you re-post, or re-publish, you may want to stay with your RSS version of the content, without re-syndicating to a blog as your purpose may be to read this stuff later on to decide if you like it…maybe you can re-syndicate to a private blog of some sort.

So this is my Daily Catch to read later, it’s just handy that you are catching to a blog, where your clips are re-published in full, and people can subscribe to your feed just like people subscribe to your del.icio.us account (except this will show full-text posts, not just a link to the posts).

At the end of the day I could convert the feed from RSS to HTML and take a print out, or run it through RSS2PDF to get a print out from the latest in my Daily Catch (or even OPML2PDF if I’m re-publishing to multiple RSS feeds).

If this Daily Catch blog had an OPML for each date I could decide to do more things with my Daily Catch data, maybe export some items to a bookmark service (if it accepts OPML), include the OPML for this date into my OPML outline, etc…the data for each date is always there, anyone can use it at any point in time an do stuff with it.

What about printing an OPML?

OPML2PDF only prints OPML’s that contain feeds…for each feed in this OPML you would see and print the latest items…what if you want to print all items from a particular date?

If my blog had an OPML for each date, I could put that into an OPML PDF/Print service, and get a print out of all posts from that date…or if I had an OPML for each category I could do likewise.

Related thoughts

I’d like to clear up that I’ve just come across some semantic definitions…some people consider a difference between a linklog and a linkblog…from the post:

“I use the term “LinkLogs” for sites with RSS feeds that point to external links, versus “LinkBlogs”: sites that discuss, annotate or comment a linked page, but whose RSS feed point to the permalink of this discussion. “

So basically del.icio.us is a Linklog, if each link had a permalink then it would be considered a kind of LinkBlog (even though it’s not a traditional blog, it’s more in a bookmark folksonomy environment)…I guess you could consider Furl a type of LinkBlog as each bookmark has a permalink…more.

What about half way between a LinkLog and a LinkBlog

…each bookmark in del.icio.us points to the native site and not its own permalink (therefore it is a LinkLog), but imagine if you could click on a collapse/expand arrow and it would show the full-text of the site you have bookmarked, kind of like a thumbnail image, but more like a mini scrollable box.
del.irio.us used to have a collapse/expand feature, but it was more to show/hide some clipped text, and that’s all it is text, not the HTML of the actual webpage.

What about more than just a LinkBlog

…each item in Clipmarks is a permalink, making it a type of LinkBlog, but you get more thank a link, you can get whatever you have clipped in a scrollable box…clip the whole webpage if you like.