Library clips

I mentioned ZapTXT the other day, and I also mentioned FeedRinse.
These are both different services FeedRinse is focused on feed filtering, and ZapTXT is RSS alerts via SMS, IM, or email (with feed filtering options, and a tag based feed discovery cloud).

ZapTXT has now announced it’s OPML filter tool.

Firstly you have My ZapTasks - these are filtered feeds as RSS alerts…even discover feeds if you like from within ZapTXT.
At this stage I will say that a similar tool rasasa also offers a spliced feed, and OPML file import.

Secondly you have My OPML - choose a tag from the tag cloud, then select which feeds are to go into your OPML, then apply the same filter over all feeds in on go…make as many OPML’s as you like.

Lacks importing an outside OPML (not for long), and the OPML’s that you create don’t have a raw OPML to view in an OPML Browser/Reader.

Now I know ZapTXT is a service more focused on delivering RSS alerts, and they have included the sophistication of filtered alerts, even across an OPML, but I want a little more functionality
…maybe not from ZapTXT, but more from a service like FeedRinse.

It’s quite simple:

- Import an OPML file or URL, or a feed at a time
- Filter search term/s across the whole OPML in one go, or different search terms for each feed
- Export a new OPML file or URL
(Also generate an old fashioned spliced feed, maybe this can also be an item in the new OPML)

An RSS alert system could be built on top of this, I guess ZapTXT is nearly there.

I just noticed that Optimal plays audio from within the outline (or you can download the enclosure).

So now not only can you read the contents of a feed, you can also listen to it…screen shot.

Other OPML Readers are OPod, Bitty, and Grazr.

Bitty displays a “play” button but it opens your PC music player.

Grazr lacks a play button full stop.

Something I noticed is that Grazr and Bitty go one more step by showing full-text of the post, whereas Optimal stops at the title of the post.

Also Grazr lacks to show the OPML URL of an inclusion, whereas Bitty displays it at the bottom of the screen, and Optimal offers it if you click on the red arrow.

[ADDED 04/04/06: Grazr announced it is adding an audio player and open the URL of individual nodes (handy for OPML inclusions).

Blogbridge have enabled users to combine their Reading Lists into one big OPML file…I wonder if you can select which Reading Lists you would like to include.

Anyway what this seems to do is organise your Reading Lists into folders within the one OPML.

An alternative could be for each BlogBridge user to have a root OPML URL (a mother OPML for all Reading Lists), where each Reading List could be an OPML inclusion in the mother OPML.

You could do this using OPML Workstation…just make an OPML, and each item is the OPML URL of each of your BlogBridge Reading Lists.

The difference here is that a flat Reading List, where each folder represents the contents of one Reading List, only has one OPML for the whole lot.

Whereas if each Reading List is included as an OPML inclusion, then someone grazing the list can choose to subscribe to the OPML of a single Reading List, or subscribe to the OPML of the mother Reading List.