Library clips

There are lots of services that allow you to re-syndicate the contents of an RSS feed, I have a list here, Feedo Style being the most comprehensive.
On my blog I am currently using a service called RapidFeeds, this allows visitors to grab a box to put on their blog which will re-syndicate the headlines of my blog. You can also use it to display your latest posts, but I use FeedZilla for this as I like the small scrolling window, I’d prefer Feedo Style, but they aren’t a free service.

What’s happening at the moment is that widgets are taking over, you can now re-syndicate an RSS feed into a widget…CleverClogs points to mashable’s post about RSS widgets using MuseStorm.

Why are widgets better?

- you can put a widget on your blog sidebar of your latest posts, then a visitor can, with one click, copy that widget and put it on their blog, or startpage, or anywhere a widget is welcome…you can also put a widget on your real desktop.
- your widget also lives in a gallery, at the service you create it in eg. MuseStorm
- you can track metrics/statistics for your widget (similar to what Feedburner does for your feed)

In saying this RapidFeeds does most of these things: re-syndicate posts, button to add the re-syndication panel to your own site, and track statistics…but it doesn’t live in a gallery, it can’t be put on your desktop and it doesn’t have the flare, versatilty, customisation and hipness of widgets.

As I mentioned I use RapidFeeds for people to copy my headlines and take elsewhere, and FeedZilla as a ticker that re-syndicates my latest posts in a scrolling fashion. Well it seems I can now use a widget instead to do both these things: show latest headlines, and allow people to take these headlines to put on their own site, with the bonus of promoting it in a gallery, and getting metrics.

Also note that Feedburner has overhauled their Headline Animator, basically a widget that re-syndicates your posts. You can make all different sorts, some are real small suitable for inclusion in an email signature, and others even allow you to listen or watch posts.

So an idea is not only to have a widget on your blog sidebar that re-syndicates your posts, but also to have the Feedburner ticker type widget at the end of all your blog posts…or use a widget service to do this.

Only thing is that when you click on a post in the Headline Animator it only goes to the feed homepage, in contrast with FeedZilla or widgets it goes to that post. I’m told using Buzzboost that posts will point to the post page and not just the feed home page, I’m also told that you can perhaps alter the code in the Headline Animator to do the same thing.

Let me know, if anyone out there can modify the code so that when you click on a post in the Headline Animator it will go to the actual permalink of that blog post instead of the feed homepage (landing page).

Cleverclogs also points to Flaremaker as an alternative to using the Headline Animator, it seems clicking on a headline will take you to the actual blog post.

Feedburner also has another widget offering by teaming up with SpringWidgets. I guess the difference here is that you can read posts in the widget, and visitor can copy the widget…I still see this as very similar to the Headline Animator, maybe these could be merged somehow into the one feature. Feedburner also offer Buzzboost as another re-syndication feature, RSS to HTML, I really think these 3 features could come under the one module, as they are all variations of the same idea.

Anyway similar to MuseStorm, visitors can take it and put it onto a webpage or on their actual desktop…more.

Mashable mentions other widget services tracking statistics besides Springbox (I take it Feedburner will introduce metrics in the future) and MuseStorm, such as Widgetbox and ClearSpring.

[ADDED 2/02/07: Widgetbox now has Blidgets - make a widget of your blog, and get stats.]

[ADDED 1/03/07: Beon-RSS Factory RSS widgets for your desktop so far]

[ADDED 20/03/07: yourminis blogwidgets]