Print a blog post via a 3rd party
I’m trying to come up with a way to allow people to print my blog posts.
My first idea was RSS2PDF, but this is no go as each of my posts don’t have an RSS feed (who does anyway).
My second idea was HTML2PDF, but I can’t get this to work for my blog (some java error)…but the problem is the service put a big banner across the PDF which makes some of the post unreadable.
The other problem is that it prints the HTML of the blog post, not the feed, therefore you get the sidebar and all the frills…if I have a 2 line post, and you print it out, it will print out pages and pages because of the sidebar content.
Then I noticed Feedshow (a public version of a web-based RSS Reader)…you can view all posts from one feed, here’s my blog.
If you notice next to each post there is a printer icon, clicking this will show just the body content for that post, nice and clean, exactly what I want…here’s a sample of a print version of a post.
Now how do I use Feedshow as a 3rd party service to get this functionality on my blog?
On each blog post I want the printer icon, clicking on this will launch to the print version of the blog post (via Feedshow).
Whether it’s Feedshow or another service I think there is value in this feature…there are lots of blogs out there, and it is terrible to print out blog posts.
The service could provide code for blog platforms to put in their post templates, then for every blog post you have a printable version.
I guess like every other web 2.0 service the money is in the ads
eg. imagine if Feedshow gave everyone the ability to print their blog posts via Feedshow, every time you click on the print version on one of my blog posts, it goes to a landing page served up by Feedshow (with tempting ads).
Now I have a lot of posts in my blog…now there are lots of blogs in the blogosphere with lots of posts…if all blogs were Feedshow enabled to print blog posts, then any one who prints out a blog post will see an advertisement, there’s money in that.
This is just another landing page idea…Feedburner and Feedpass do it for feeds, why not for printing.
All these ideas and no techie know-how.
[ADDED 29/12/06: MySyndicaat and xFruits have a print a post]
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Your print feature is online ! This one is brand new so tell me if it doesn’t work like it should…
Check:
http://blog.feedshow.com/2006/06/21/new-print-feature/
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Thierry / FeedShow.com
Comment by Thierry — June 21, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
Thierry,
Thanks…that was quick.
As you say it is only available for the last 100 posts…
I’m just wondering if I put this in my post template to automate it for every post, what will happen when someone clicks on the 101th post onwards…
Maybe an option is to save/cache every feedshow print version of my posts in a social bookmark manager or online storage manager…but how would this work?
Why only the last 100 posts, is this how RSS works or is this limit set by Feedshow…is an RSS archive required…I recall something called FeedCatch.
The print mission continues…
Comment by Johnt — June 22, 2006 @ 3:08 am
John, it was quick because I just added a few lines of code to FeedShow to get this work as described.
The “100 limitation” comes from FeedShow limitation (I wish I could store all the posts from all around the world !). RSS feeds usually hold about 10 to 20 posts.
On post number 101 you’ll get something like (to be cleaned!):
http://www.feedshow.com/print
As you say, “…an RSS (or something similar) archive (is) required…”…
If you know something like this, tell me. May be I can manage to plug FeedShow to this service !
Comment by Thierry — June 22, 2006 @ 11:07 am