Library clips

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.