Library clips

Similar to rasasa, ZapTXT is an RSS alert system that delivers content to where you are…SMS, IM or email.

Just enter a feed, filter a search term with full Boolean power, set how often you would like to be alerted, choose your method of delivery (SMS, IM, or email) and you are away…they also have a widget for your phone so you can go beyond SMS limitations.

People can tag feeds they are following and these are shared, so now you can discover feeds within ZapTXT, or even add the feed of the page you are on via the bookmarklet.

Promote people to add your blog to their ZapTXT account with their button…check out the FAQ and blog for more.

RSS to SMS, IM, and email are a big thing now, as there is so much information overload we are starting to segment our feeds…I know I want my essential reads shoved in my face via my GTalk IM.

At a glance the only difference I see compared to rasasa is a user directory compared to a house directory, archives your alerts, shows you which feeds (ZapTasks) are inactive, and the mobile widget.
Actually, rasasa also provides you with a spliced feed, and it allows OPML file import.

TechCrunch announces blog sidebar widgets from Typepad and Wordpress…more.

Wow that was quick, it was not long ago I mentioned , logahead, a blog software that incorporates widgets.

Widgets are the go, I’d like to see these cross over platforms, connect them to whatever you want…the interconnected web.

Zaptxt has a simple question…create a keyword filter across several feeds.

My RSS re-mix compile lists several tools to splice lots of feeds, then filter them, but few allow to do this at the OPML level.

Once upon a time at Feedster you could search for a term for a given OPML URL (the items have to be feeds, ie. a Reading List)…this would generate a feed.

But the idea is that you still want all the native feeds, but each one to be filtered for the same term, without having to manually do this for, eg. 50 feeds.

You can create a search feed for your Bloglines subscriptions, but this only creates a search feed, and plus this does it across all your subscriptions, you can’t select feed/s or a folder to search across.

MySyndicaat enables you to import your OPML, filter each feed, this creates a spliced feed, then you can take this newly modified spliced feed…but this is the same result, we have one spliced feed instead of 50 filtered feeds…plus we had to filter each feed individually.
Blogdigger Groups works the same way, only you can’t import via an OPML URL or file…FeedDigest, is much the same (this just splices and filters feeds, it does not present the content in a portal), and like Blogdigger Groups you can’t import OPML.

FeedRinse is different, you enter all your feeds via OPML (that’s relieved the manual process of step one), then you apply filters to your feeds, then export them again (that’s relieved the manual process of step three)…what this does is create an new OPML .

What happened to Step two…what I mean is that there is no way to apply the same filter across all the feeds, you have to do each one individually.

So it seems FeedRinse is the answer…if only it could have check boxes next to each feed so you could select these and apply the same filter in a bulk load.

Recap

Feed Rinse is yet another feed filter tool for keywords…it also offers filtering for tags, authors, etc…that’s different.

Easy batch load your feeds via OPML, and then once they are rinsed you can load them back into your RSS Reader via OPML, or one at a time…see the tour.

Now what would be great is if FeedRinse created an OPML URL, that is, a filtered Reading List…I can see this happening in the future.
At the moment it only creates an OPML file (which is a filtered Reading List, but it does not live at a URL, therefore technically not a dynamic Reading List)

Why an OPML URL rather than an OPML file?

If you subscribed to the OPML URL of your FeedRinse (see BlogBridge) in your RSS Reader (instead of subscribing to each feed individually, you are subscribing to the OPML URL that contains all these feeds), then when you make changes to one of your FeedRinse OPML’s, this will reflect in your subscription to it in your RSS Reader.

Subscribing to Reading Lists (OPML URL’s) is so much easier…we no longer have to subscribe to feeds, we can subscribe to groups of feeds hosted elsewhere…whatever changes happen to the feeds in that group will reflect in your subscription of it.
And where will these groups of feeds be hosted…well, everywhere that has OPML…you can create a Reading List (OPML URL) with lots of different tools, and once many of the current services OPMLiffy then Reading Lists will be created from lots of different applications…then we will see places to discover these, eg. folksonomy…and search these lists.

I can see RSS Readers like BlogBridge incorporating FeedRinse features
eg. when you subscribe to a feed it asks if you want to filter for a keyword eg. Web RSS Reader (not sure of other RSS Readers that have this feature)

…next step would be to filter a whole folder of feeds.

If each folder you keep your feeds in had an OPML URL, then people could subscribe to this Reading List (NOTE: BlogBridge has a special section to make Reading Lists)…if you decided to filter a few of these feeds within a folder or filter the whole folder, this would automagically reflect in whoever subscribes to your Reading List.

Knowing BlogBridge they may already have this feature, if not, don’t blink they are pretty quick.

Slawesome and others enable you to record audio and send it as an email, the recipient will click on the link to hear the message hosted on the server of the service (not sure if it launches to their site or you can listen to it within your email client).

Anyway beside features such as video conferencing, helloWorld enables you to send video emails…click for an example on the film strip at the bottom of this page.

You can also set up the email message with personalised banners, making the email message look like a webpage (NOTE: this is not a free service).

So all you do is record yourself with a webcam or shoot a professional video and upload the file to the server, then send that email to your clients or friends.

When they receive the email, they just click on the play button on the video box (it takes about 10 seconds to fetch the clip from the server), and watch the video in a small box from within your email client.

At the moment you can grab a JavaScript code for each youtube clip and place that in a website or blog…from your blog you can view the clip that is hosted on youtube…I wonder if you can put this code within an email.

Back to helloWorld…

This video clip is not an attachment or embedded(?) in your message, it lives on their server and is streamed within your email client…in this respect you can’t log on to the net to receive all your emails then read the video mails offline.

Like any other email you can save these video mails, in that case, it would be great to save a video conference.
You could interview someone, both having a webcam (as mentioned before helloWorld can do live video conference), then save this conference (hoping you can view 2 boxes at the same time, one for each person), and then send this as a video email, or even put it in a blog post.

I wonder how long it will take till Outlook enables a videomail plugin, or maybe skype.

All you need is some server space, and to be able to view the video within your email client, and maybe some templates to create banners and information around the video box.

Examples

Many CEO’s send out a broadcast email to all employees every so often, these emails usually look like webpages, well now instead of or addition to this, you can hear and see the CEO give his address.

If this really takes off, I’d like a table of contents to go to relevant bits (like choosing a scene to a film on a DVD), that’s why I like text, because you can skim to what you like…maybe helloWorld could also offer a transcription so you can print the email, otherwise hear or watch it on your mobile device.

I can see video mail as a promotional tool for many businesses eg. Real Estate.

At the moment I get email updates for houses I’m interested in…what I get is a HTML email, pretty much what you would see on the web page. Imagine this with video features, I would no longer just see an image of a house, I could see a video of the house, right there within my email alert.

It would be a great idea to record video conference calls, and then email the video to people who missed out on the call, they can watch what happened from within their email.