Library clips

xFruits has just released and it lets you do alot of stuff with RSS, and more to come.

Aggregator RSS

Firstly, I spliced some feeds (no filtering options), gave it a title and some tags, it also creates a gallery of feed buttons.

I was given this user space URL, http://xfruits.com/johnt/?id=703…it even asked if I want to create my own directory instead of the default ?id=703…so here is my web2.0 essentials spliced feed (note how the the feed is rendered nicely and doesn’t look like ugly raw XML)…it’s so nice it is basically a web page for your river of news (don’t need a HTML page, this will do nicely).

Actually this page looks a lot like a rendered RSS feed XML page like Feedburner or Feedpass…if you scroll to the end you will see the quick subscriber buttons…pity they don’t promote a regular RSS button on this page (oops, you could just cut n’ paste the web address)

To make a spliced feed you can even enter several OPML URL’s rather than feeds or even a combination.
I imported two separate OPML’s (these are both flat lists, and each item in the OPML’s are feeds, this makes it a Reading List)…the import was successful, check out my LIS and KM essentials feed (remember this same URL is my river of news, 2 in 1).

It would be good if the two OPML URL’s I entered became “includes” where xFruits would generate an OPML
…so you would basically enter feeds, OPML’s or a combination, and then you would have a choice of generating a spliced feed or a mother OPML.

RSS to Web

At first I thought this was re-syndicating a feed, instead what you can do is make a website for your feed.

But haven’t I already done this in the Aggregator RSS section (no I haven’t it just looks like a HTML website).

Just say you have a feed from a service like publi.sh…this service just has an admin section and a feed, it doesn’t supply a HTML URL (a public place to view the rendered content)…you have to read it in an RSS Reader or re-syndicate it elsewhere.
So now you can give it web presence by using the xFruits RSS to web, but couldn’t I just do this in the Aggregator RSS section (I don’t have to splice feeds, I could enter just one feed).

Now I get it, put in one of your spliced feeds you just made, and get a web page to see the river of news…similar to SuprGlu.

Here is my web2.0 essentials spliced feed as a river of news (RSS to web)…this really doesn’t look much different to the Aggregator RSS version.

OK, here’s the difference, the spliced feed (Aggregator RSS) is a feed…even though it doesn’t look like a typical feed page, and the website (RSS to web) isn’t a feed, it’s a website.

This means the website (RSS to web) is more similar to SuprGlu, so there is room for future development in customising the sidebar, even promoting the feed at least (the feed is what you entered to make this webpage)…could get dangerous as people could then put in ads and make money off other peoples content…actually how do Technorati get away with that…a lot about Feedpass in this space.

Get my head around this…

1. So let me get this, if I put the feed of this blog (my Feedburner feed) in the xFruits Aggregator RSS (takes up from 1 to 20 feeds to splice), I will make another feed for my blog, I don’t want to do this as I want people subscribing to my Feedburner feed so I can keep subscriber numbers.

2. Or if I put the feed of this blog (my Feedburner feed) in the xFruits RSS to web, I will make another HTML version of my blog.

3. If I take the feed I made in step 1 and put it in a new step 2, then I will have made a clone blog with a clone feed…crazy.

Feedback

What would be another useful expansion is if I could make 2 different RSS Aggregator (spliced feeds), then put both these spliced feeds in a RSS to web, then on the sidebar I can view content from just one of the spliced feeds, or all of the spliced feeds…Blogdigger Groups does this, they call it filtering your spliced feed view…Feed Collectors is also in this space and they allow you to search your river of news and lots more.

Actually Technorati Favourites is a searchable Public RSS Reader, with an OPML, and you can tag your feeds/subscriptions (similar to folders)…nice one.

More
…imagine your all your xFruits spliced feeds (Aggregator RSS) were packaged in an OPML Reading List, then the RSS to web (river of news) could subscribe to this OPML…see more.

At the moment FeedDigest is the king splicer and Feed Rinse is the king filterer…see more.

…Feedo Style is the king re-syndicator…see more.

…MySyndicaat SuprGlu, Technorati Favourites, and Blogdigger Groups are the king Public RSS readers (BozPages, and Feedpile close behind)

…pageflakes, 24eyes, and protopage are the king Public RSS startpages (etamp , mytoday and netvibes are close behind)

…TagCloud, ZoomCloud and Personal Bee are the king word burst clouds

…and FeedCollectors and Kinja are the king all-in-one (besides lacking a Public RSS startpage part, and a tag cloud)…actually Bozpages does simple splicing (not filtering), and displays content as a Public RSS reader, a Public RSS startpage, and as a tag cloud (I guess SuprGlu and MySyndicaat also have tag clouds).

RSS to mobile

Next create a webpage for mobile devices, at the moment I use winksite so people can browse my blog on a mobile phone (only draw back is subscribers have to register).

Here is my web 2.0 essentials spliced feed as a river of news for mobile devices.

This is impressive, it just lists titles, when you click on a title it shows the content (permalink), then you click “home” to get back.

Here’s one for my blog…now do I ditch winksite…I also made one for my comments.

NOTE: not sure I have this right…what is the box when you are making this email feed that says authorized email.

Post to RSS

Create an email address, and receive email content in your RSS Reader…this is handy, give people your xFruit email address and you can read emails they send you, in your RSS Reader.
I use the Bloglines email to subscribe to email lists, but this feed can only be read in Bloglines, so xFruits is freeing this up…but there are others.

eg. I am sending an email from my gmail to my xFruits email address, but I don’t have an xFruits mailbox, but I do have an xFruits feed, so I can read this in my RSS Reader.

This can be made public or private.

Here is my “post to RSS” landing page…this means you can read emails sent to me (hmmm)…I might make this private again…although when it’s private I can’t subscribe to it, maybe the RSS Reader needs to be able to authenticate it or something.

Wow, this could act as an email group address, give a bunch of people this feed, and whenever this email box gets mail, this bunch of people can read the content via the feed…shhh don’t tell anyone.

Or instead of your to: line in your email having all your friends emails, just send an email to the xFruits email feed, and as long as your friends have that feed they can read the broadcasted email.

Or what about, send email to this xFruits email feed, and re-syndicate this feed in a blog eg. an xFruits RSS to web, let’s try it.
So every time I send an email it becomes a blog post…this could act as a side blog (just re-syndicate it to your blog sidebar)…and every post would have a permalink.

xFruiters

Here is my user space…see my tag cloud, I smell a social feed user tagging service.

Check out all the xFruiters…browse the tag cloud or search.

You can also browse the tag cloud for some fruit (so to speak)

Coming soon

RSS to PDF…maybe something similar to RSS2PDF

RSS to MAIL…read the feed contents as email…see others…more…and the ones that do more than just email.

FILE to RSS…does this mean you could read a word document in an RSS Reader, imagine a heap of word documents in an OPML…does this make sense.

Actually this file to RSS may be something close to what I posted a while back.

Similar but different, since every document in Writely has a URL (it also has a feed), every time you edit this web-based wordprocessing document it will reflect in the feed…what if you re-syndicate this feed into a blog eg. xFruits RSS to web, or SuprGlu…does this mean you can blog via a web-based wordprocessing document.

COMPOSER…hmmm

Check out the xFruits blog, they are welcoming suggestions.

Data Mining points to the latest papers from the 3rd International Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem, one that has caught my interest so far is Browsing System for Weblog Articles based on Automated Folksonomy.

The premise is comparing a folksonomy to user only tagging, and how multiple points of view in a folksonomy can emerge a more precise tag (describe the aboutness) of an item…see my post What qualifies a folksonomy?
NOTE: a folksonomy allows people to tag the same item, allowing a vocabulary to emerge.

So, Technorati Tags is an author based tagging system, only the authors don’t log in, they don’t even submit the items…Technorati crawls the blogosphere and adds the items itself.
Then we can browse blog posts by author tags…so the issue lies that these blog posts have been tagged/described by one person (the author), whereas in a folksonomy lots of people can describe (tag) the same item, this inturn propogates a more precise tag for an item (kind of by consensus).

Instead of collecting author tags imagine if there was a system where the latest blog posts from a feed set streamed in, eg. FeedButler, and users could save/vote and tag these blog posts…this would be like Technorati Tags defined by users not authors…according to a folksonomy the tags for an item applied by a collective mind will be of higher accuracy…perhaps.
I suppose del.icio.us works this way accept the stream of items is not generated by a feedset, instead people submit these items, this may make del.icio.us more quality controlled (but not as exhaustive)…also del.icio.us content is not limited to just blog posts.

Actually TailRank have a stream of items, these items are based on a feed set which is a massive colelction of peoples OPML’s, or just people submitting feeds to the feedset.
Then as these items stream, users can tag them…hmmm, sounds close to what I’m talking about.

Anyway, the paper in question goes a step further and generates an automated folksonomy…this is different than AutoTag, tagyu, TagSuggest, tagthe.net, etc…as these scan the contents and decide on a machine generated tag (ZoomClouds, TagCloud, and Personal Bee also do this in a different context).

What the paper suggests is that instead of a machine deciding the tag names, it instead collects all the author tags, then scans the contents of a blog post and decides which author tag/s suit best for each item…so the machine does not decide the tag names it just applies them to items.

So humans decides the vocabulary, but the machine does the indexing for each item…imagine a machine scanning a book and then applying a LOC or DDC term.

[ADDED 02/06/06: Tagyu does not do content analysis, it searches for similar chuncks of text to the bookmark in question, and then offers the tags used from these similar chunks of text for your bookmark]

[ADDED 22/12/06: Turbo Tagger - tag generator for blog posts]

I found this paper I’m yet to read, the webpage that it is on has a word version and a brief version in raw XML.

I know RSS feeds and OPML are XML based, but is there away to read a raw XML document in a more friendly view.
I wonder if I could save this raw XML webpage in notepad or OPML Workstation and give it an .opml extension, this way I could read it as an outline…does word or powerpoint accept and render xml files in a friendly outline form.

I do like the idea of raw xml that just plugs into any proprietary system and can be read…just raw content ready to be rendered by anyone.

Check out FeedReader, it’s a desktop RSS Reader for your mobile device…I know some of the web-based RSS Readers have a mobile version, but this is different as you download the RSS Reader onto your mobile.

All you have to do is connect your mobile to the net, update the feeds, then read offline…this is handy as mobile internet is expensive.
I wonder if you can hook up your mobile to your PC’s internet connection to update your feeds, this way your mobile doesn’t have to connect to the web directly…is this possible.

Or could you synch a PC desktop version to your mobile desktop version…this way your mobile doesn’t need to connect to the net.

By the way, this doesn’t just read feeds, it reads and plays enclosures (podcasts) and also videocasts…powerful tool in your pocket.

Another idea was the notion of textcasting, this way you don’t need an RSS Reader, all you need is some type of mobile reader (iPod has one by default)…but then every feed you subscribe to would need to have a textcast version of their feed…simple…lots of people use Feedburner…if they support it, then we’re happy.

Yet another idea…not sure what the text reader looks like on the iPod, but maybe this mobile reader could be similar to the way RSS2PDF (or OPML2PDF) works, as an RSS Reader on-the-fly.

Just save this from your PC to your mobile to read offline…this means your mobile would need to have a PDF reader installed.

More on FeederReader.

TechCrunch has a great post explaining the new re-vamped Bloglines search engine…there is also some great insight on relevancy ranking.

The relevancy is based on subscriber numbers (so anything you write may be relevant to the search term by default, as you have lots of subscribers)…Technorati bases it on incoming links (again what about the long tail, and also this is just popularity)…whereas Sphere bases it on a number of things (incoming links, subscribers, content analysis, comments, etc…), I think these results will be more relevant and also reveal posts from blogs you don’t ususally see.

Here are some of my posts about relevancy measures:
Blog search: context relevancy
Blog Ranking: Incoming links??
Blog Clouds

Back to Bloglines

Search for:
- posts
- feeds
- citations (who links to a post)
- web

Limits:
- my feeds (you have to be Bloglines user)
- exclude my feeds

Advanced Search:
- boolean (AND, OR, NOT)
- phrase searching
- you can even add more search boxes
- more limits…search within a bloglines user, language, date ranges, sorting date/relevancy, even include/exclude news in your results.

Here is a search for webride.

It defaults to date sorting, but you can filter this by news inclusion/exclusion, and also turn off the popularity (based on subscriber numbers).

Notice you can filter the results by relevancy (hmmm, must be freshness and content analysis), date, or popularity…you can even filter popularity further by date ranges, news inclusion.

RSS feeds for every search…at last ego feeds (up until now I was trying hacks using TalkDigger, or PonyFish).

The only problem is, my own posts are coming up in the citation search, maybe it’s because quite often I link to my own posts…TalkDigger tries to get around this, also FeedDigest can discard same titles, or same URL’s…MySyndicaat also has this feature.

Technorati link searches are the cleanest I might add.

Another Bloglines feature is matching feeds, and matching news (what is matching news, most of these are in my results anyway)

Results:
- click to see tha native post
- click to see the blog (source)
- click on”+” to see excerpt
- more info tells you number of subscribers and citations for the blog/news of that post
- email a post
- preview post (instead of clicking, try just hovering over it)
- subscribe to feed from where the post came from
- refine/re-do your search query via the edit query (top of results)
- number of results displayed 10, 20, 50, 100

Feedback

When I do a citation search I’d like to see matching feeds (I do see matching news).
It does work if I do a feed search, here is one for my blog (hmmm, does anyone subscribe to my feedburner feed with Bloglines), anyway as you can see I have 206 subscribers with this feed, if I click on this, it will launch to a page (must be logged in) listing all my subscribers, if I click on related feeds I get to my destination.

[ADDED: I forget to mention you can search Bloglines at Ask, see Read/Write Web for more.]