Library clips :: June

June 15, 2006

Dynamic OPML of latest blog posts

Filed under: blogs, rss, opml

I noticed that Collaboration Loop blog not only has an RSS feed, but also has an OPML of their latest posts…see it in Optimal.

I don’t get it, the outline type is “rss” yet the values are just HTML links, shouldn’t the outline type be “html”…see my post on OPML outlining.

I guess this is just an OPML of the latest posts…so the RSS version of the latest posts are being OPML’d on the fly (or something like that)…the OPML is not a title archive of every post in the blog, it’s just the latest posts on the homepage.

Now that would be something, a title index for every post in your blog packaged in OPML, even have one for each category…I think this is something OPMLUtils wants to offer.
eg. get an OPML Link List of one of your del.icio.us tags, not a list of the latest links, but a list of all the links in that tag.

It seems the Collaboration Loop OPML, is a Link List of the latest posts wrapped in OPML, what I want to see is a Link List of all the posts wrapped in OPML.

None-the-less, how do they do it, an OPML of my latest blog posts seems nifty, that is a HTML Link List of all the blog posts on my homepage in OPML…as posts drop/add to the blog homepage, so will be reflected in the OPML…just like it reflects in the RSS feed.

So the content of this OPML is similar to the content of the RSS feed…so what can you do with this OPML?
You can’t really graze it, you just get a list of links when displaying it in an OPML grazer, I guess you could add it as an “include” in your OPML directory, but I’d rather the Collaboration Loop RSS feed than their OPML as I can at least graze their feed.

How to make an OPML for the latest posts in my blog…basically a link list of the posts on my homepage wrapped in OPML…and updated as I add to my homepage.
Tony Hirst’s tool will strip all links from a given webpage and wrap it in OPML, but how will it just be selective to the post title links, and how will it automatically update as I publish new posts to my homepage.

OPML choices

Reading List (all items are RSS feeds)

Link List (all items are HTML links)

Text outline (all items are text)

OPML Directory (all items are OPML includes…although, all items could be any outline type listed below)

General (all items can be a mixture of text, HTML links, RSS feeds, and OPML includes)

ADDITIONAL

RSS Link List (all items are HTML links automatically generated by an RSS feed)
eg. the Collaboration Loop example in this blog post

Archive Link List (all items are HTML links automatically generated as the host adds to their site)

eg. if del.icio.us had an OPML for each tag, each time you bookmark a new link in that tag, it also appears in the OPML version…this OPML version is an archive of all the bookmarks in that del.icio.us tag.
eg. as you publish a blog post to your blog, it will be added to the OPML version of your blog (I wonder if it would contain the body of the post as well)

OPML for a Blog

I guess a blog could have two types of OPML’s.

1. OPML of the latest posts
- also by category

2. OPML of all the posts
- also by category

Where are you OPMLutils?
…it seems they will allow you to make the second type of OPML.

The only way that it will be “live” will be by mirroring (what ever that means)…what I mean is if I could make an OPML Archive Link List for one of my del.icio.us tags…when I bookmark a link in this del.icio.us tag, how long will it take to also appear in my OPMLutils of this del.icio.us tag.
If del.icio.us had the OPML built in, then it would be instantaneous, but when using a 3rd party there must be some delay.

[ADDED: this all started a while back when I wanted my whole del.icio.us account in a widget]

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What is news 2.0 to you?

Filed under: newsmaster

News 2.0 is a giant banner, sometimes including memediggers, memetrackers, personalised (reading behaviour), citizen journalism, microcontent aggregators…just check out what Backfence are doing, here is an example of the town Reston.
Basically it is a social/community news site (citizen journalism) in a box…learn more about it on, Guest Writer Liz George of Baristanet Reviews Backfence.com Seven Months After Launch, and
Grassroots journalism: Actual content vs. shining ideal (both these articles compare the in-a-box approach to the localised driven approach…the discussion in the comments of these posts are quite amazing).

Ready-to-go New 2.0 services like Backfence, seem really similar to a topic service like Zimbio (only the Zimbio startpage for a topic doesn’t have a sidebar)…actually PageFlakes and Protopage are similar to a degree, but all they are is a startpage, whereas Zimbio has a startpage view, but you can click on each module (box) to see it on its own page.
The only thing is that Zimbio isn’t a multi-blogging system, there is only one blog per topic, but you can re-syndicate stuff…anyway these concepts are midly related.

Something more related to Backfence would be Gather or Newsvine (both of these are multi-blogging platforms with tagging)…the idea is that it is a space for citizen journalism…basically a generic blogging system where all the blogs are hosted in the one spot. One main difference is that Newvine also re-syndicates traditional news services. Topix is also similar but it concentrates on re-syndicating news first and citizen contributions second.

Now that there are many citizen journalism news 2.0 type sites are they too general to sustain themselves in this competitive environment, is it a better business model to concentrate on a topic…sure they have tags or categories to see topic-based citizen generated news, but is it more wise for a site to be focused on a topic…see FuckedJournalism.com.

This goes the same for local new 2.0 sites, to me they already seemed focused on a topic, that topic being the local community…but there are so many issues, industries, etc… in a local community who may already use their own website, if they are to be absorbed into a general local news 2.0 site (eg. Backfence) will their section be lost…is this point even more prevalent with a in-a-box solution.
I think the key is re-syndication, if a local site is happy with their own website and happy with the citizen input facilities then maybe they can be re-syndicated.

So the idea is to have different sections of the local community inhouse, but if they are happy where they already are, RSSify their sites and re-syndicate them to your local news 2.0 site with the added bonus of citizen feedback which may not be available at their own site.
This seems to be the idea of Topix, they re-syndicate blog posts and you can comment and discuss them, you can also have your own blog type space.
Then there are services like Pluck Insite that will add a citizen blog module to your website…I really think the idea of a site mixing the traditional and citizen journalism approach is a surer bet (but this isn’t always the choice), and Pluck Insite allows this to happen…see more (scroll to end).
Then there is PegasusNews which I quite haven’t worked out yet…they seem to be similar to the concept of Backfence, both in a way are like CitySearch, but CitySearch is focused, whereas PegasusNews and the like are a trying to do everything. Although, PegasusNews and others are focused in the way that they are purposed for, a local community, whereas CitySearch is city based.

Here are some links to news 2.0 sites and some comparisons:
The Emergence of News 2.0
2.0 News or not 2.0 News (the difference between news aggregators, social news, and citizen journalism)
Is Ad Revenue Sharing the Future of Publishing?…graph.

Lastly check out, Feature lists for News 2.0

Here’s is my brief comparison:

MEMETRACKERS
TailRank
- personalise to your OPML
- recommendation
Megite
- personalise to your OPML
- recommendation
tech.meme
- recommendation
Chuquet
- recommendation

MEMEDIGGERS
digg
- user submitted
- rating
reddit
- user submitted
- rating
Rojo Today (also an RSS Reader)
- user submitted
- rating
Feedbutler
- rating

PERSONALISED
Spotback
- recommendation
Findory
- recommendation

BLOG COLLECTIVES
9rules, etc…

COMMUNAL
Threadwatch, etc…

SOCIAL BOOKMARKS
del.icio.us (and the aggregators)
CommonTimes
- add text
- comments
- rating
Clip Exchange
- add text
- comments
Gabbr
- add text
- comments

NEWS AGGEGATORS
24eyes
Topix
- comments
- citizen journalism
- forums
Google News
- recommendation
- similar items
Inform
Technorati Explore BlogFinder

GROUP BLOG
World Changing
Slashdot
- also user suggestions
Boing Boing
- also user suggestions
etc…

NEWSMASTERING (microcontent aggregators)
Corante Web Hub, etc…
zimbio
suprglu
peoplefeeds
ziki
Protopage
Pageflakes, etc…
MySyndicaat
Blogdigger Groups
Feedpile
FeedCollectors, etc…