Library clips

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!