Library clips

I just came across my feed being re-syndicated on The Ubiquitous Web News…a simple homemade piece of newsmastering.

TailRank is really looking great these days, it is clean and simple to use…I really like that I can filter my OPML by how many incoming links a post has…(each of these limits generates a feed).

I’d like to also filter my OPML by time like on the front page
eg. see posts from my OPML where items have 4 or more incoming links within the last 24 hours.

I also noticed TailRank recommends feeds based on my OPML, the only thing is that I can’t preview these feeds to see if their worth adding to my filter…seems like some feed grazing is in order.

I’ve posted on feed folksonomies, and the potential for an OPML folksonomy…Kinja is a newmastering (river of news) folksonomy, and they have come the closest I’ve seen to a Reading List folksonomy…they are just one step away…other candidates are Feedbite and pulverati (OPML Factory gets a mention).

Kinja

This one step is being able to tag your river of news, which would be basically tagging your Reading List…at the moment your Kinja mix generates a spliced feed and an OPML Reading List, as mentioned all we need is to tag your Kinja mix.

But you can group your feeds into a tag to see a section river of news from your account (this also serves as a basis for discovery so people can discover a source/feed via this tag)…this generates a spliced feed and an OPML Reading List…so at this level it is a Reading List Folksonomy.

At the community level if you click on a tag it shows all feeds that people have assigned with that tag (generates a spliced feed and an OPML Reading List)
…what I would like to see is that when you click on a tag, it lists user names that have used that tag, so you can click on a user level tag…this would be a folksonomy to share and discover Reading Lists

I think this could be split into three features…tag your sources for discovery, as separate from grouping a selection of feeds into a topic.

So…

You could tag all your feeds, which helps others to discover feeds via tags.

You could organise your Reading List (river of news) folders or sections, so you can have category based river of news within your greater river of news…these categories could also have a Reading List…these would also have tags for sharing and discovery.

You could tag your Reading List (river of news…this is your whole account), which helps others to share and discover Reading Lists via tags
…this Reading List would be your mother OPML Reading List, where each category Reading List would be an OPML inclusion.

Recap

A Feed folksonomy
(read feeds within this service)

A Category Reading List folksonomy

A Mother Reading List (user account) folksonomy
- each Category Reading List as an OPML inclusion

NOTE: The last two points are a River of news (newsmaster) folksonomy

FeedBite

UPDATED 27/04/06: Feedbite : Reading List folksonomy

FeedBite enables you to make as many bundles as you like, the only thing is that they lack an OPML…that’s a pity because you can tag each bundle…this is also one step away from being a Reading List Folksonomy.

So FeedBite is like creating heaps of category river of news in Kinja, make as many as you like, only in Kinja you can view all your categories in one mega-river of news (as well as a spliced feed and OPML)
…in this respect you have a newsmastering portal, where you can read content by river of news, category river of news, or by one feed.

The added feature of FeedBite is creating your own feed, you can use it as a link-log or to blog text (no permalinks), or use it as a clip log…the only draw back is it doesn’t stand alone, it needs to be included in a bundle (a hack for this is to create a new bundle with just this feed in it).

continue…

pulverati

At the moment you can only make one watchlist…you can apply tags to a watchlist, it’s just missing an OPML.
(you can also categorise the native feeds)

Great search filtering features and the slick design, very easy to use and understand.

Feed Collectors

[ADDED 28/04/06: Feed Collectors : Reading List folksonomy and more]

[ADDED 1/05/06: Is a Reading List folksonomy appropriate?]

It’s getting more interesting by the minute…these newsmastering portals are looking better and better, and most are incorporated into a folksonomy environment.

pulverati is the latest of these tools and it is only new, there seems more to come.

Basically you splice up some feeds and make yourself a river of news (public/private)…at the moment you can only make one watchlist per account, it also seems that you can add tags to your watchlist.

Here is a list of users, notice you can discover a watchlist by clicking on a tag, or using the search box.

Here is a watchlist (river of news)

…each item clearly lists the author, category/tag, and the home page, and also a link to read the native post.
You’ll also notice if you click on an author or category it will filter your river of news by author or category…this is such a clean and easy interface.

Another thing is that you can vote or comment on an item (similar memedigging concept to FeedButler).

Over to the right is where the fun continues:
- search
- filter river of news to a single feed, category, and/or date (you can also search within these filters…generating search feeds)
- sort by newest, most relevant, most popular (generates a feed for each)

Not sure what relevancy is based on, maybe some sort of text analysis…and popularity would obviously be based on citations (incoming links).

Here is the feeds page for this users watchlist
…where’s the OPML Reading List?

The only thing that seems to be missing is a personal memetracking view that displays only the hot items with discussion links, and related links…also a digest where you can clip items to is coming back in vogue.

Lastly is a friends tab where you can bookmark your favourite users…you can also see a river of news from all the friends in your list, but not one river at a time, it’s all your friends watchlist mixed into a mega watchlist…well, at least that’s what it seems.

Feedback
- Filter feeds when you add them to the watchlist (seems to be splice only)
- Where’s the OPML for each watchlist, together with tags this will be a Reading List and Newsmaster folksonomy (spliced/filtered feed)…and maybe a native feed folksonomy as it seems all native feeds have a category assigned.
- You can filter to see content by one author, category/tag, feed…what about a selection?
- What about a tag cloud..actually the home page features a user watchlist and this does have a tag cloud.

The only other Public RSS Aggregators I have seen that transport tags/categories within the feeds are SuprGlu and MySyndicaat.

MySyndicaat has the processing power, and SuprGlu has the personalised look, and Blogdigger Groups spits out an OPML Reading List (so does Kinja), but Pulverati really looks the best and is very slick, and is in a folksonomy environment like Kinja and Feedbite.
Whooo it’s really heating up in this market…public feed readers are becoming as numerous as personal feed readers (well, not quite, but…)

OPML Factory seems to be taking over from where Share Your OPML left off.

Add your Reading List
View the top 100 Reading Lists
Click on a user
Grab the OPML of a users Reading List

NOTE: this OPML is different than the one the user entered…I entered my OPML Workstation URL, will OPML Factory consult with that URL to keep up-to-date.

Click on a feed within a Reading List, and it will show which Reading Lists (users) this feed features in, if it features in a lot of Reading Lists it will make the Top 100 feeds (this also has an OPML)

There is also a built in RSS Reader that shows a river of news from the top 100 feeds.

[via thisislisa]

Feed Digest has been everyone’s favourite to create a spliced and/or filtered feed, including de-duping features…now they also offer OPML export.

In one step this means you can now create Reading Lists at Feed Digest…now let’s give ‘em tags so we can share and discover reading packets.

Atiki in a nutshell…from the blog:

“Atiki is a “Social Feed Mixer”:

-mix up to 25 different feeds into a single one
-filter your feeds with advanced search queries
-tag and share your feeds with the community “

Create a spliced feed with boolean searching…each feed has a river of news.

Search for feeds people have created or browse/search them by tags…when you view a feed you can clone it as a starting pad to make your own spliced/filtered feed.

There are a few sites that are native feed folksonomies, and a few that are spliced feed folksonomies…it’s a pity that they stop at generating a spliced feed and don’t offer an OPML Reading List.

Related:
aggRSSive feed folksonomy
RSSor: Webfeed folksonomy
Flitic: feed folksonomy
Etamp: feed folksonomy
Rojo
Kinja : newsmaster folksonomy
Feedbite : Newsmaster folksonomy
OPML folksonomy

[via IM chat with chopianissima]

When you list a batch of links in a blog post it usually looks like this:

Google Challenges for Academic Libraries (web page)
Do libraries matter? The rise of Library 2.0 (pdf)
Library Success Wiki - Web Browser Extensions (wiki page)
Where Do We Begin? A Library 2.0 Conversation with Michael Casey (blog post)
Podcasting: Easy Audio Casting (ppt)

From this list people can launch to every website, but what if they could read these sites from within the blog post
…along comes Bitty to the rescue.

Just load all the HTML links into an OPML.

Is there a quick way of doing this, ie. whack in 5 HTML URL’s and submit to wrap them in OPML
…you can do this with feed URL’s via RSS to OPML, but what about with normal URL’s…it will still work but the type will still be “rss” and not “link”…fix this up by pasting it into MSword, do a find and replace - find “rss” and replace with “link”…and another one - find xmlUrl and replace with “url”.

Then paste this code into OPML Workstation to give your OPML a URL.

Then whack this OPML URL into Bitty, and whack Bitty into your blog post.

NOTE: I posted about Tony Hirst’s bookmarklet that will make an OPML code out of all the links on the page you are viewing, you just have to save it as an OPML file/URL.
But with this post I’m looking for a textpad to enter all my HTML links into, then generate the OPML code…otherwise I could enter them one by one in OPML Workstation as a last resort.

Here is an OPML URL I knocked up with 5 links above, these are blog posts, webpages, PDF’s, wiki pages, presentations, any type of HTML link.

So instead of listing those 5 links like at the start of this post, I can list them in a browser, this way people can read those links from within my blog post…or take the OPML and dump those links into their own application.
NOTE: not sure if the powerpoint link works within Bitty.

This won’t work with Grazr or Optimal as they are not web browsers, they are only OPML Browsers/Readers, whereas Bitty is this, as well as a general web browser…see Adam Green’s illustration.
NOTE: Grazr also accepts an RSS feed, but to enter more than one you need to do it via an OPML URL.

NOTE: it seems Optimal can view HTML links within the box (iframe)…check out this example.
Left box - if you click on the item “TagCloud” (this is a normal HTML link) it will open in the whole window
Right box - if you click on the item “TagCloud” (this is a normal HTML link) it will open in the iframe just like Bitty.
Now, how do I make an iframe at Optimal for the sidebar of my blog, just like Bitty, and Grazr offer.

What about if you want to do the same thing for all the scattered hyperlinks within your post…once you have published your post you could hit a bookmarklet and it will list all these hyperlinks as a bibliography at the end of your posts…maybe a biblio bookmarklet.

An alternate step to listing the hyperlinks as a bibliography is; to first publish your blog post, then view it and hit Tony’s bookmarklet (pageLinks2OPML), this wraps all the hyperlinks in OPML, just save this as an OPML URL, then insert it into Bitty
…is it possible for all these things to happen all in one go from one click of a bookmarklet.

With one hit you would be able to have an instant bibliography listed in a mini-web browser at the end of your post…and you would be able to read these weblinks within the post itself.

If you don’t like a mini-web browser box within your blog post you could link to a pre-made box on the Bitty website

…or just include a Bitty button within your blog post (or even just a hyperlink), clicking on this button will launch a mini-browser (approx the size of an ipod).

NOTE: I can no longer find where to make Bitty buttons, or even a hyperlink that will launch a mini-browser…I made one from a previous version of Bitty (see below), perhaps they no longer offer this feature.

Related:
Bitty Browser: save space with OPML

A very compact way to save space on your blog sidebar is by using Bitty Browser.

If you notice on my sidebar check out some of the sections:

- Home
- About
- Recent Posts
- Technorati Profile
- Comments/Trackbacks
- My Comments Elsewhere via del.icio.us
- Incoming Links via Technorati
- Related Links via Findory
- Reading List
- TagCloud
- Statistics
- Latest del.icio.us bookmarks

As you can see this takes up a lot of space, one alternative is to use DHTML switch menu (via a comment from an older post)…I might get around to this one day, it’s just so neat and fun.
Another way to save space is including all this sidebar content in an OPML outline, using a service such as OPML Workstation, then displaying it in a bitty browser.

How to

Firstly you need to create an OPML outline for your Reading List, ie. create an OPML where all the items are feeds.

Secondly you need to create an OPML outline for the Statistics, this outline will have a combination of feeds, and links…you don’t really have to make a separate OPML for “Statistics” but it will be cleaner in it’s own OPML.

Now you are ready to make the root OPML

The first node/item will be a link to the Homepage

The second node/item will be a link to the About page, or you don’t need an About page, you could just write the contents of the About page as a text item in your outline.

The first two items in the OPML could be kept in a folder if you like…in fact you can organise any items in the outline into folders…I probably wouldn’t in this case as every item is quite unique.

The third node/item will be a link to the RSS feed of your blog
…you could also do this for each category feed in your blog, you’d probably keep all these in a folder.

The fourth node/item is a link to my Technorati Profile.

The fifth node/item is a link to my Comments RSS feed.

The sixth item node/item is a link to the RSS feed of the My Comments Elsewhere tag in del.icio.us.

The seventh node/item is a link to the RSS feed watchlist in Technorati for incoming links to my blog.

The eighth node/item is a link to the RSS feed of Related Links to my blog in Findory.

The ninth node/item is an OPML inclusion…a link to the OPML of your Reading List that we created earlier
…if you have a spliced feed for your Reading List this could be the tenth item, this way you could read by a river of news.

The tenth node/item is a link to your blog TagCloud.

The eleventh node/item is an OPML inclusion…a link to the OPML for statistics we created earlier
(you will be able to read the latest statistics within the Bitty Browser for the items that are RSS feeds…the items that are HTML links will launch you to the native site)

The twelfth node/item is a link to the feed to my del.icio.us account

So as you can see this list could go on and on…you could include other peoples OPML’s, Technorati BlogFinder OPML’s, PubSub Community Lists, other Reading Lists eg. Bloglines OPML’s, etc…

What makes Bitty different than a lot of other OPML Browsers/Readers is that bitty is also a web browser, so you can view anything you like within this mini-web browser.

Once OPML Renderer includes the reading feed content feature from Optimal, this will be an alternative choice…actually if you check out the right box in this test screen at Optimal, you will see that you can open normal HTML links within the box (iframe) just like Bitty.
Grazr only allows you to view OPML’s or feed URL’s, other than that it isn’t a web browser.

Results

In the end you will have a root OPML, kind of like an OPML menu or directory…in this example our OPML has all the different items possible, these are text, links, feeds, OPML inclusions…and all these can be browsed in your sidebar via Bitty (which also reads feed content as well).

Here is the raw OPML…and the OPML Workstation outline.

See it in OPod (try yourself), Grazr…also Optimal.

Here it is in Bitty:

Some OPML basics…

When you add an item to an OPML there are 3 essential fields or elements or attributes…of

course you can add others, such as created, etc…

1. text
2. type
3. htmlUrl or xmlUrl

Text/Folder
If you have just text then you don’t need fields 2 and 3…same goes if the item is going to serve as a folder

HTML Link
text = give it a name
type = link
htmlUrl = http://type in a non-feed URL

RSS Feed
text = give it a name
type = rss
xmlUrl = http://type in the feed URL

OPML Inclusion
You can include another OPML URL as an item in your OPML URL
text = give it a name
type = include
htmlUrl = http://type in a non-feed URL, and it must end in .opml (actually I don’t think this matters anymore)

Problem
With the assistance of Dan MacTough (from Optimal) and Adam Green (OPML Camp) I worked out how to append an OPML so it ends in .opml, but as you read at the end this may not matter anymore.

Some OPML URL’s don’t end in .opml, here are 2 examples:

TECHNORATI BLOG FINDER

Here is blogs about Folksonomies
…here is the OPML - http://feeds.technorati.com/blogs/folksonomy?format=opml&start=

You’ll notice it doesn’t end in .opml, so what you have to do is append it with &foo=.opml, so it looks like this:

http://feeds.technorati.com/blogs/folksonomy?format=opml&start=&foo=.opml

The term foo can be anything, it doesn’t matter.

Now this will work when you graze it in an OPML Reader…hmm, I just tested this and it still works in a few OPML Readers even if it doesn’t end in .opml, oh well hopefully this may come in handy with an application that decides to give you trouble.

GADA.BE

Here is a meta-search in the blogosphere for the term folksonomy…here is the OPML - http://gada.be/b/folkonomy/opml

You’ll notice it doesn’t end in .opml, so what you have to do is append it with ?foo=.opml, so it looks like this:

http://gada.be/b/folkonomy/opml?foo=.opml

NOTE: this time we used a ? instead of a &.

Still works without applying any changes…OK so maybe it doesn’t have to end in .opml…it did a while back.

Now with the new OPML 2.0 spec an OPML inclusion is defined as type=include, beforehand it was defined as type=link (same as an HTML link)…that’s probably why it had to end in .opml, so it could be recognised as an OPML file and not an HTML link.

Oh well, you can disregard this post!