Jim Flowers: whatsablog?

Sun, 29 May 2005 14:18:58 GMT

Feature request for RSS News Aggregators: I want to be able to "clean up" my feed subscription list. I want to remove any RSS feed that hasn't published in the past XX days (default to 30).

Or, someone could write me a service. I upload an OPML file and it checks to see if anything was published to each of the feeds included within in the past XX days. If not, it deletes the feed and lets me download the new, cleaned, OPML file.

While we're thinking about such things, how about this? I import an OPML file with a list of feeds, say 1000 feeds. Then it looks at my list of feeds and finds me the 100 most common links from those feeds. That probably would give me a list of new feeds I'd like to check out.

One other problem with RSS? If someone changes their URL of their feed, like Albert Tanutama just did, why can't our news aggregator notice that that feed hasn't updated, look at the last post and look for the words "move/moved" or "change/changed" or "updated" or "new feed" and offer to let you delete that feed and/or add a feed at the new URL?

Speaking of moving on, if I want to switch aggregators, OPML is definitely great. You export the OPML from one news aggregator and import it into your new news aggregator. One problem, your reading data doesn't move. For instance, in my aggregator sometimes I leave things as "unread" because I want to come back to them later. It'd be interesting to see if I could also export my readership details.

Do you have any ideas for how to make news aggregators better?

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Fri, 13 May 2005 10:59:05 GMT

ReadWriteWeb: "Is there a Web-based RSS aggregator out there that will be a Bloglines killer?" [Scripting News]

More RSS reading

Sun, 08 May 2005 10:48:53 GMT

Microsoft missing an RSS strategy, Houston Chronicle says.

Dwight Silverman, in the Houston Chronicle, writes: Microsoft MIA on RSS.

Ouch, but, yes, it's frustrating how long it takes to get new features added to our products.

That said, let's meetup again at the PDC in September and see if you still think we're missing in action.

But, there's another way to look at it. We've built a platform that lets developers add value. There are a TON of RSS news aggregators on Windows. Look at Onfolio 2.0, for instance. That works with Firefox and IE and is an awesome aggregator. Or, look at FeedDemon. That's a standalone application, developed in Borland's Delphi, that rocks too. RSS Bandit was developed, on .NET, by a Microsoft employee during his nights and weekends and it has a huge community around it (it's free too and now is being run as an open source project, so it's getting lots of new features added very quickly). Then you look at NewsGator (and their competitors IntraVnews and YouSoftware). Those plug into Outlook (I use NewsGator as my primary RSS News Aggregator).

So, Microsoft's platforms get credit for these innovative -- and quite different from each other -- approaches to RSS.

We need to remember that anything Microsoft does will affect the livelihoods of the developers who built these products (and took the business risk back when RSS didn't look important). They validated Microsoft's investment in development tools and platforms and for that I'm very grateful.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 10:40:15 GMT

The evolution of RSS aggregators will be more important than the blog tools we use, I predict.

Talking about RSS aggregators -- which one do you like the best?.

Onfolio recently released its Onfolio 2.0 Release Candidate. For new news aggregator users, this is my second recommendation after Bloglines. Bloglines is easier, but Onfolio is much more powerful and, because it stores everything on your hard drive, opens up new scenarios (like you can read and search your feeds even when on a plane unconnected from the Internet).

If you are still looking for an RSS News Aggregator, this is certainly one you should try.

Real quick refresher course:

There are three basic types of RSS News Aggregators:

1) Server-based aggregators. Some, like Newsgator cross the lines since Newsgator has a server-side service too. Other server-side aggregators are Feeds.scripting.com, MyYahoo, Bloglines, and MyMSN.

2) Standalone client-side aggregators. RSS Bandit. FeedDemon. SharpReader. Radio UserLand. Among these, my favorites are RSS Bandit and FeedDemon. You'll need to download and install these. They don't depend on any other application being loaded, and are browser-independent too (for the most part). On the Mac, NetNewsWire is the one most of my friends like.

3) Built in the browser. OnFolio 2.0 adds onto IE or Firefox. Optimal Access adds onto IE. The Mozilla team offers Sage for Firefox users. Pluck adds onto any browser. My favorite here is OnFolio. Pluck is pretty good too.

4) Dependent on Outlook. NewsGator is my favorite here (it's still the aggregator I use most), but there's also IntraVnews.

Do you have an aggregator you like more than any of those listed? Which aggregator do you like the best? Let me know.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 09:08:52 GMT

Diego wants off of my link blog.

Diego doesn't want me to republish his blog posts. So far he's the third person to ask me to stop doing that on my linkblog. What do I do? Simply unsubscribe so that I don't see their posts anymore and am not tempted to link to them.

I used to do just headlines but, personally, that format is useless.

Why do I do my linkblog? For several reasons:

1) New readers need a way to find new blogs. I don't quote every post from someone's blog, just the most interesting ones to me. Out of 3,500 posts I usually put 100 on my link blog.

2) As a store for me to do my own searches later on. If I only had headlines in my RSS feed this would be useless. Instead, now, I have a way for me to find things that I found interesting months later.

3) As a way to get traffic and search engine juice to the people I find interesting. One link from this blog is worth quite a bit of Page Rank. Why? Because a lot of people link to it. Because of my publishing tool (Kunal Das wrote the tool, named OutlookMT).

4) It's pretty clear after reading my linkblog for a while that everything there came from someplace else and every item links back to its original owner.

5) I'm doing this for people who are overloaded with information and want to keep up to date on what the tech blogosphere is doing. It's a lot easier to read 100 items a day than 3,500.

How do I do this blog? I read all my feeds and anything I find interesting I drag over to a folder named "Blog This." That item is automatically placed on my link blog.

I also greatly appreciate Matt Mullenweg. He's donating the hosting and the back-end technology (it's running on WordPress).

I do find it interesting that Diego finds my linkblog interesting to read. It's interesting BECAUSE it has full-text reprints. If you want pure headline link blogs you can check those out on del.icio.us or bloglines. They simply aren't as useful.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Another To Do Add

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 11:02:26 GMT

Onfolio 2.0 (RSS aggregator) just gets more impressive with each release.

I'm still a NewsGator guy (I love the Outlook integration) but more and more I'm impressed with Onfolio 2.0. They are announcing it at Demo (I'll be at Demo, by the way, there's a TON of blogging/RSS stuff coming).

If you're looking for a great RSS aggregator, Onfolio is hard to beat. Plugs into IE or Firefox.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Finally, an Atlanta RSS feed!

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 12:03:17 GMT

Bizjournals, which publishers the Atlanta Business Chronicle, now offers RSS feeds.

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 20:50:34 GMT

A very interesting RSS aggregator released: KlipFolio 2.6.

Yesterday Fred Dixon, Vice President at Serence showed me their latest KlipFolio 2.6 which has a news aggregator that plugs into Hotmail (among a whole lot of other things). Wow. The UI is nice. This makes Hotmail a lot more interesting.

Anyone using this? What do you think?

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 09:19:47 GMT

Jäger, not a drink, but a new RSS aggregator.

Everytime I talk with David Janes about his news aggregator named "Jäger" I think of Jager Meister (the alcoholic drink).

I don't know why, but the new version that David just released has lots of new stuff. Here's the official blurb: "Jäger is a "one-panel" syndication reader that uses the user's browser to display weblog content. Version 1.4 features offline content reading (including aggregating many weblogs together on a single page), full-text searching, a simplified user interface and a price tag of $0."

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 10:15:12 GMT

Ideas, conversations and thievery.

The more I think about this, the more concerned I become that we are developing a selfish culture with know appreciation of the values of conversation, shared ideas and communities, but that's another essay for another day.

From Scoble:

My aggregator blog called "theft".

Inluminent calls quoteblogs (like my experimental aggregator blog) theft.

Scoble is posting other's thoughts, ideas - with full attribution. So what's the harm?

If you take Inluminent's position, then the entire model of non-fiction writing, reporting and research will be subject to cadres of lawyers and even worse, copyright clerks, creating a backlog on decent thoughts.

Ideas aren't meant to be owned, they are meant to be shared. By sharing ideas, actions take place. Actions create opportunities for growth (economically, academically, spiritually).

For example, listen to what Scoble says here:

I've gotten a lot of feedback that my aggregator blog is actually driving a lot of traffic back to blogs. Why? Because people want to subscribe to the blogs that are interesting and my aggregator blog is a good way to get a sense of what the author is like. It's like advertising for blogs. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

You see, Scoble's decision to include a blog piece brings value to the piece and the blogger. Those that respect Scoble's opinion take action and link to the original blog. If that blogger has more than one interesting thought, notion, or is just plain entertaining, then the blogger gains a reader.

If you don't share your thought, your idea - how can you have a conversation?

In a later post, Scoble concurs with this sentiment:

You can reuse my blog's content

By the way, if other people want to reuse (or "reblog") my content, I give full permission as long as there's a link back to my blog, and clear credit given that I wrote the content.

Why? I appreciate when someone aggregates my blog, pulls out what's useful, posts it with other people's stuff, and/or does something else useful with it.

That adds value to my work here. Not everything I write is good.

I think it's part of being in the blogosphere. An attitude of sharing

[Scoble]

He also decided to stop the experimental blog. Oh, bother!

Sat, 24 Apr 2004 15:31:37 GMT

Hmm... Another script for RSS for ASP

RSS tutorial for ASP.Net developers. [Scripting News]

Sat, 24 Apr 2004 11:53:35 GMT

pulpfiction and css. Freshly Squeezed Software is working on a new RSS reader for OSX. PulpFiction (er, the name may be a problem) has several awesome features that I think are what the next generation of news readers will need. It has many features that are standard in most email packages, like rules and colors. Most interesting will be the addition of CSS. One of the downsides to reading articles in a newspaper is that you can't customize how it looks. It's printed, after all! Computers offer us a lot more possibilities, and PulpFiction exploits those possibilities through its use of customized cascading stylesheets (CSS). With CSS, you can customize the fonts, colors, alignment, spacing, margins, and overall appearance of all of your articles! The more adventurous can even customize the HTML markup used to generate and display each article, further expanding the realms of possibilities. Want to recline in your chair and do some reading? Choose a stylesheet with big big fonts. Prefer white text on black backgrounds? Go for it! The choice is yours, and PulpFiction allows you to view the content you want to see, the way you want to seee it. I hope that the persistent storage and scriptable features of the app will allow for auto downloading of enclosures. The beta should be here in a few weeks and I for one am pumped about it! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 22:15:36 GMT

More on RSS - specifically Higher Ed applications

New Chronicle of Higher Education article on RSS. [Scripting News]

Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:17:36 GMT

"floating atoll: RSS with CSS" [Daypop Top 40]

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 12:21:48 GMT

"CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners & Borders: A List Apart" [Daypop Top 40]

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 19:55:42 GMT

Significance of RSS

Doc Searls provides a post talking about the significance of RSS as the "Next New Thing." Throw out the hyperbole if you wish, but, RSS will definitely be part of the "Next New Thing."

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:52:18 GMT

Good step by step discussion on CSS.

"Selectutorial: CSS selectors" [Daypop Top 40]

Mon, 01 Dec 2003 08:22:24 GMT

Creating and RSS Aggregator

Via Lockergnome, a decent walk thru on creation of an aggregator using mysql and PHP. Mind you , at this stage of my education, this piece gives me a good look under the hood -- shows where the parts are. I can't build one ... yet.

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 01:22:38 GMT

Hmm... do they smell money?

Publishers seek cash in social networks. Knight Ridder and the Washington Post Company are banking on social networking to be the future of online classifieds, having invested $6.3 million in a "six degrees" Web venture. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

Tue, 04 Nov 2003 10:02:57 GMT

Atlanta Metro.com

Well, if New York Metro.com can talk about their bloggers, shall we?... Am looking forward to Saturday nights brew meeting...

Mon, 03 Nov 2003 20:15:49 GMT

Introduction to blogs

Another summary/introduction to blogs page -- this one for educators.

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 21:15:15 GMT

A decent introduction

To what weblogs are -- wonder if this can be modified to fit a context.

"d2r: an introduction to weblogs" [Daypop Top 40]

Sat, 01 Nov 2003 00:34:39 GMT

RSS and E-Learning lessons

This is an interesting presentation of using RSS to connect Learning Objects.

"Connecting Learning Objects with RSS, Trackback, and Weblogs" [Daypop Top 40]

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 00:11:08 GMT

Interview: SixApart's degree of Weblog integration. Weblogs are often portrayed as little more than online diaries. But according to SixApart's Vice President of Business Development Anil Dash, there are enterprise opportunities ahead. In an interview with Executive News Editor Mark Jones, Dash outlined his vision for online publishing and his take on Weblog business models.

VERTABASE PRO - Project Mangement Made Easy - Top-rated, web-based project management application. Easy to use and robust. Visit the site for a Tour!

[InfoWorld: Top News]

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 21:07:05 GMT

More RSS

This primer is a step-by-step description of RSS. Not for the feint of heart, but not overly geeky either.

"Primer on RSS" [Daypop Top 40]