Library clips

I just read over on mashable about the various ways to filter tweets; by keywords, by groups, by links, etc…

Under the keyword section they list filttr, but I got to tell you filttr does it all, not as sophisticated as peoplebrowsr, but it has the essential features. It’s oAuth enabled, post select updates to Facebook, Twitpic, file attachments, shortcuts, threaded replies, and has a mobile version. Below I have focused on the filtering features.

Features

• Filters tweets based on your past reading behaviour
• Manually black list and white list keywords
• Slider to curb noisy tweeps

eg. if a tweep is conference tweeting too much you can slide to receive less noise

• Link only tweets from your stream
• Create many keyword streams
• Create many group streams

But can’t share these as Sameer Patel would like, and which some others can do

• Create a combination of a keyword stream within a group, and also, that shows only tweets with links in them

eg. show me tweets with just links in them with the hashtag #e2conf within my group of people I follow called “enterprise”

• Automatically creates a group of tweeps that aren’t in a group

I’ve been using Filttr for most of this year, and I tell ya it helps me deal with my Twitter stream firehose, plus these guys are really responsive with implementing suggested features, either via Twitter, email or Uservoice.

If you have time you can read the regular stream, or perhaps just read link only tweets in the regular stream, but let’s face it I never, ever, ever have time to do this…

I don’t really create keyword search streams unless I’m researching or there is an event, and I haven’t used the sliders or black/white listing features yet.

But what I do use is the grouping feature (alias), and link-only tweets feature.

Just like an RSS Reader I have folder type streams.

These folders are groups that I organise my tweeps in…you can do a keyword search across a group if you like.

eg. I have a group called “enterprise2.0″
- this displays tweets from about 100 people I follow
- if I wanted I could overlay this with a keyword search eg “wiki”
- then later on I can take off the keyword search if I like

For every group, I have a link only group as well.

For example, if I don’t have time to read all tweets in my “enterprise2.0″ group, I’ll read the “enterprise2.0-linkonly” stream instead…this way I can just read tweets that have links in them.

The main groups I have are:

Regular stream-linkonly
Enterprise2.0
Enterprise2.0-linkonly
Enterprise2.0Essentials
Enterprise2.0Essentials-linkonly
Networks
Networks-linkonly
Communities
Communities-linkonly
Learning
Learning-linkonly
KM
KM-linkonly
Local
Local-linkonly
LocalEsssentials
LocalEssentials-linkonly
Vendor
Vendor-linkonly

Today I may only have 20 minutes to catch up on Twitter on my mobile on the train, so I may read:

Communities-linkonly
KM-linkonly
Networks-linkonly
Enterprise2.0Essentials-linkonly

I really like that I’m empowered to be able to do this. With the regular Twitter interface, my 20 minutes would not get me far, or satisfy me…

FeedVis - Still in private beta, with also an offer of the source code to run it on your server, FeedVis is a a tag cloud generator based on a bunch of feeds that you import via an OPML. The cloud is based on frequency and popularity. This should just be a feature of Google Reader, and probably is in Feedly (also see mini). I remember good old Feeds2.0 had a tag cluster. [via RWW]

embedit.in - embed doc and image files or URLs into your blog posts as flash boxes - doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, wpd, odt, ods, odp, png, jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, eps, ai, txt, rtf, csv, html. Limit is 20 meg. If you already have a web page with links to lots of documents, use embedit.in sitewide to convert them in one go. See their tips. I’d rather not embed it in this post, but here’s a URL to an example of embedding a URL. [via nw]

Webinmail - if all you have is an email connection, yet you want to surf the web, then email this service with the URL you want in the subject field, and they will email you back the page…you can even email a search query. [via DI]

Innercircle.cc - create an email distribution list. Also see posterous group blog/email lists

Smub.it - ever read a webpage on your phone and want to bookmark it in delicious, share it on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, email it, etc… I do all the time, but my phone doesn’t have bookmarklets (do phones have these). Anyway, what you can do now is prepend the URL you want to bookmark/share with “smub.it/”. It’s kind of like ShareThis, but done manually by altering the URL.

eg.
- if you came across this URL on your phone
http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/surf-the-web-via-email/5624/

- you go to the address bar, and prepend it with “smub.it/”
smub.it/http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/surf-the-web-via-email/5624/

- then it takes you to a page of icons for delicious, facebook, twitter, friendfeed, email, etc…click on one of these and your away.

Problem with my phone is I can’t choose an icon to click, darn….

Anyway, you can also manage your bookmarks at smub.it, and use a smub bookmarklet or toolbar

It’s also a URL shortener, where you can customise your URL’s
ie enter your ID and a keyword. For example the link in the example above could be
smub.it/johntropea/surfemail

[via BrightHub]

It’s sometimes such a drag being an early adopter because you are ready for features years ahead of when regular users will ask for them…you just have to be patient.

But the day has come, Google Reader has turned into a simple newsmastering service.

Over two years ago I was whining (point 5 in this post) that Google Reader lacked an OPML file for each tag/folder, which it still does, but it has gone one better anyway, well kind of…

I was also whining and still will that the OPML of my subscriptions is a file and not a dynamic URL. Use case is if I import my OPML into a Google CSE, and then add/delete a feed from Google Reader, my Google CSE will not know about it, which is a pity because it means I can’t use Google Reader as a master control for people to use a public search engine across my current Google Reader subscriptions.

OK, the new feature…a while back during the American elections you may remember that Google Reader was showcasing shared item lists based on a curated selection of feeds.

Well now we can do the same with the new bundles feature. That is, grab a selection of feeds and stream the latest posts on a page.

It’s just like our Shared Items page, but now we can select the feeds, and you can make as many of these newsmastering pages as you like, basically an auto-blog based on some source feeds.

Yeah! and each has an OPML file.

Here’s my auto-blog page on mobile culture, access the OPML file of the source feeds, or subscribe to the feed.

If you click the “subscribe” button you will batch subscribe to multiple feeds right into Google Reader, and they will be auto filed in the folder/tag with the name of the bundle page.

If you decide you don’t want the bundle anymore, unfortunately Google Reader doesn’t allow you to unsubscribe all feeds in a folder, so you have to manually unsubscribe from each feed…yikes!

What about subscribing to an OPML?

Now what would truly make this awesome and catch up with what Blogbridge did, in my own words is:

“When you import an OPML file into BlogBridge can you choose it to be a static list or a dynamic list…”

“Basically a reading list means you can subscribe to the URL of an OPML file, but instead of importing all the feeds in one batch, they kind of virtually exist in your RSS reader…if a feed is added or deleted to the OPML file, then this will reflect in your RSS reader…dynamic!”

What I’m saying here, is that in addition to batch subscribing to multiple feeds one go, I would also like the option to not subscribe to the feeds at all, but instead subscribe to the OPML URL.

Just say you subscribe to the actual OPML URL of my bundle above (you virtually/remote subscribe), and then I remove a few feeds and add some new ones. Then this will reflect in your remote subscription of my OPML bundle. I hold the master, and whatever I do in it, will reflect in whoever has subscribed to it.

As I said this would be good as an option, to import a static or dynamic OPML…here’s a post I made on this over 3 years ago, Dynamic newsmastering with OPML.

I guess if this was the case, then in your “manage subscriptions” page you could have a section for OPML’s you are remotely subscribed to.

So what’s next?

It needs:

• an OPML exchange - a place to swap bundles
• a newsmaster exchange - same as above, a place to find Shared Item blogs
• a search box
• tag cloud
• curating, like mysyndicaat

This last one is especially interesting, as it’s not only a topic auto-blog, but you could have the option to remove posts before they appear in your bundle (kind of like moderating), and also adding in posts that come from other sources (kind of like what we do with our public tag/folder shared pages).

And even do this by setting up keywords to filter in and out, the latest tool is MoreOver, and the most common is Dapper and Feed Informer…and of course MySyndicaat.

You know what’s coming next, and that’s to add a group feature where members could:

• comment on items
• write their own posts

Is this sounding like a Friendfeed Room!

Related features from Google Reader:

Google Reader is your new watercooler
Meeting friends of friends

[ADDED 24/05/09: Of course now I can put a bundle OPML into Google CSE, and when I update that OPML (add/remove feeds), my Google CSE will magically be updated]

Buzzable - a neat interactive newsmastering tool, perhaps similar to a Friendfeed Room.
Create a topic page and invite people to your group (public or private). These people have 140 characters when posting content. If group members use the “@” symbol they can reference posts to one another (ie. conversational chatting). Again this is what I like about microblogging, in the very same stream I am posting a blog-like post, but then a minute later I’m chatting with someone in the same stream…then a second later I’m reading some links someone has posted (read, chat, post, share links within the same stream and network)

Also posts you make in Buzzable can be auto-tweeted to a communal Twitter account. If you need some help populating your stream, you don’t have to rely on your group, you can import feeds to re-syndicate content, and filter those feeds by keyword.

An idea would be to associate a hashtag with a buzzable group. When I use that hashtag in Twitter, it will re-post it to the buzzable group, and it will only do this if I’m a member of that group. If someone replies to that tweet from Buzzable it currently re-posts to a communal Twitter account, which is OK because I will still see that tweet in my reply stream.
I guess this would be like member-based hashtag pages.

Use Google Reader from within Outlook - replace the Outlook RSS feeds folder with Google Reader. This comment suggests you can do the same thing in Outlook 2003.

Google Reader offline - RSS Bandit and Scoop. If you are after an alternative web version, check out Feedly.

Storytlr - We all know Friendfeed has won the lifestream battle, but I thought I’d mention this one as it’s a your very own lifestream page without having to be part of a network, ala the old skool Suprglu. Storytlr has a bonus feature of grabbing items by date range and creating a story. They offer a widget to integrate into your blog, but if you want to go even further try a service called iBegin which is a plugin to create a lifestream page on your blog, check out Elsua’s. [via lifestream blog]

Tablefy - Lots of people may use Google Docs to display comparsion tables, well now there is a service that is made specifically for this use. Robin Good has an example, you can track this table, or even embed it in your blog post. Now we can make our own comparison sites like wiki-matrix, well not quite, this goes one further by allowing you to choose only the products you want to compare.

If like me you are absorbed with the web, as a result of participating, you would have built up a great deal of sources that are your filter on many topics.

I have lots of tags in my Google Reader filled with blogs of people I understand and trust. These people save me from information overload, I cannot possibly read everything on a topic; not everything is worth reading and I don’t have time anyway, but the stuff that is good is written and also pointed to by these bloggers.

Another thing is that overtime I have come to know these bloggers and we share context, ie. we have read each other for ages, interested in the same things, interacted with links and comments, and the person (style/personality) comes through in the blog post, which doesn’t often happen in codified documents.
All this helps in understanding the message or signal (knowledge transfer), as I think the more you understand a person, the more you understand the message (similar to the medium is the message, perhaps the messenger is the message.)

Me and my tangents, sorry about that…newbies to the blogosphere sometimes haven’t go time to immerse themselves and build a subscription of blogs they trust, this takes time, but it’s well worth it for personal experience. This also happens to me, I haven’t got time to find and build a list of sources for topics I’m slightly interested in, as I’m too busy on the topics I am interested in.

Communities and Networks Connection

Anyway, for newbies and others, there has been a movement where this stage of finding and reading blogs on a topic has been made a whole lot easier. The blogosphere has matured and blogs on a topic have proved their worthiness (blogosphere self regulates reputation) and coalesced into one convenient space.

Nancy White and Tony Karrer have teamed up to create a brilliant blog aggregation site called, Communities and Networks Connection.

This is not a community (it’s not a group space where we have an agenda)…and it’s not a network as the sources or readers don’t connect with others or have their own view of the network. Rather, it’s a simple aggregation of blogs on the topics of communities and networks.

Basically, it’s a convenient one stop shop daily read on what a bunch of bloggers are saying about Communities and Networks.

I’m excited that I was asked to have my blog listed, and I already read many of the other listed blogs, such as Mike Gotta, Matt Moore, the Anecdote team, Luis Suarez, of course Nancy White and many others.

How does it work?

Visit the website and in the middle is a stream of the latest posts from all sources. If you like reading content from the comfort of your own home then you can grab the feed.

On the right sidebar is a list of sources, clicking a source will display content from just that source.
Clicking on Library clips will show my latest posts (click for more), and if you scroll down it will show my “best” posts (click for more) based on social signals (kind of like PostRank I guess)

On the left sidebar we have a way to filter posts from all blogs by concept, tools, type, and year (a bigger picture is available on a page)

For those who want to just see posts about a tool like Twitter, or a concept like Collaboration, can filter to just these pages, or grab the feed.

And then you can filter some more, this page here is filtering to see all posts on Twitter, then filter again to see posts on Twitter and Communities of Practice, and you can keep filtering.

Now I’m not sure how these keywords/categorising work, but it’s a handy way to filter the content.

A really cool thing is that I can see all these keywords based around one source, so here’s a keyword page for just my blog.

Create your own widgets

Now you might see that not many of my posts appear here, I think that’s because it needs to keep indexing my site which apparently helps if I add the keyword widget to my blog. Not sure if I have room at the moment on my sidebars.

There are other widgets you can add, like the search and badge.

Oh yeah, I forgot, you can search the site, and even search one source.

Other blog aggregators

Tony’s has a similar site, elearninglearning, then there are the sites in which I’m often re-syndicated, Social Media Today, and Content Management Connection.
NOTE: these last to are built on Wordframe (they are more than aggregation as publishers can network with each other in this space, and Social Media Today could be defined as a loose community as some key members of that team host events, publish a newsletter, etc…)

A blog aggregator that I really find outstanding is ScienceBlogs.

Make your own blog aggregator

If you want to create your own Newsmastering site try services like Individurls, MySyndicaat, FeedRaider, Bozpage, Feedbite, Planetaki, and startpages that have public pages such as Protopage, Netvibes, PageFlakes…see my Newsmaster category for more