2005-11-30
Yahoo’s river of news
“They’re including a nice smallish RSS reader in their Mail app. I had seen it before, and it’s a River of News aggregator.”
Pointing us to TechCrunch:
“Yahoo has deeply integrated RSS into the Yahoo Mail beta experience. Directly below the email folders are “RSS foldersâ€?. Clicking on the top folder show all posts in a ‘river of news’ format, meaning all posts for all subscribed feeds are listed in the order they have appeared in feeds.”
This could act nicely as a backup to Rojo when I’m having problems over there, especially if they’re smart and at least account for OPML synchronization (and I mean synch, not import and export – now’s the time to build it in, fellows). Too bad it’s a closed beta…
I’m totally uninterested in Yahoo! mail – I don’t wnat or need another mail account or even another mail reader. But another good web-based RSS reader. That’d be cool. And if it could synch with an OPML that I maintained somewhere’s else, or allowed me to publish the OPML that I maintain there without jumpign through hoops, that’d be the Golden Fleece (or is that the Holy Grail?).
technorati tags: Yahoo mail, River of news
2005-11-29
OPML Editor as WordPress blogging tool: hack #1 (or is it #2?)
I’ve found (and/or created) a couple of hacks that make using the OPML Editor as a WordPress (and other blog platform) blogging tool a little nicer.
The first applies if you want to use OPML Editor to blog to multiple Metaweblog-based blogs. Right now to do so you have to set each one up in your preferences, and decide before creating a new post which blog you’re going to use (or at least that’s what it seems like).
If you’re up for a little OPML Editor hacking, you can make this a lot less of a hassle.
What you need to do is to create a right-click menu item by using the “Tools | Edit right-click menu” menu item. In the resulting outline enter a new node and name it whatever you want to call your new entry. Then double-click this node to open the script for this action.
In the script window, type the following:
This script causes OPML Editor to pop a dialog box when you right-click on a node and select your new menu item (mine’s called “Set Att”). It will ask you for the attribute you want to modify. If the attribute has a value it’ll put ha value in another dialog, if not you get a blank dialog. Type the new value you want and OPML Editor will either update the existing attribute or add a new one.
For the purposes of WordPress blogging using the OPML Editor, you can right-click the top-level node (the one with the title) of your newly added post and type “blogname” for the atribue you want to modify. Then type the blogname value for the blog you want to post to (from the list you’ve created in your prefs) and when you save the workspace you’ll post to whatever blog you’ve selected.
If any of this doesn’t make sense, please leave a comment and I’ll try to clarify it – I didn’t want to get too basic here, but in doing so might have left ou too much detail.
Next Up: hacking a little deeper into OPML Editor’s code to control post status (draft, published).
2005-11-28
Next backup aggregator trial
Omea Reader from JetBrains is next up to the chopping block for aggregator trials, and unfortunately I mean that literally.
Omea totally hosed importing my OPML file. The opml file is here, and it validates at Realy Simple Validation and at Dave’s OPML Validator, but Omea reader imports it by nesting each succeeding outline top-level nested within its predecessor, so the contents of my “daily” category (or channel, or, since this is a Rojo export, tag) are nestled cozily within almost 50 parent categories. Since I’m not willing to go to the lengths Robert Scoble did to massage my OPML file, this is unacceptable behavior. Not only that, but it also doesn’t make any sense. Even if the OPML spec is too vague to use to determine how to handle the feeds in this file (I’m not saying it is too vague, mind you, only that what I say is true even if it is), the basic structure of XML would indicate that these elements are not nested within one another.
Too bad, really, Omea had a fairly nice user interface and also retrieved comments on posts where it could, making the browsing experience that much more streamlined. The only things I didn’t like about the way it handled displaying my feeds were that I couldn’t look at a particular day’s posts by category (Omea allows for browsing by date of publication or by category) and that when I was viewing the contents of a category I only saw a full listing of the titles and I had to click on a title to see the contents – I’d much rather simply view the entire list of contents organized by date.
2005-11-24
Stand-alone WordPress blog posting with OPML Editor fixed…
See elliptical for details. Please comment here or there with problems, concerns, or comments.
Dave Pentecost also wants to post to his WordPress.org blog…
He‘s getting the same message that I am, but doesn’t have xmlrpc logging turned on, so we can’t verify that he’s having the same precise problem that I am, so I still don’t know for sure that the problem I think I see in my log is caused by the interaction between OPML Editor and WP or whether it’s something on my server. Anyone who’s got xmlrpc logging tuned on (or can turn it on) willing to give it a whirl?
Next step is for me to make OPML Editor skip over some of the whitespace handling that it does to see if something in there is causing the munging.
Nutshell desktop aggregator
Nutshell‘s a .Net based aggregator. It has a ticker bar that appears at the top of the screen which is kind of nice, but doesn’t allow me to scroll down the full list of all posts within a certain channel (at least as far as I can see). No river of news, no use to me.
Uninstalled.
First desktop aggregator: RSS Feeder
- http://rssfeederdotnet.sourceforge.net/
- offers a blogpaper that looks as though it might do the trick.
- imports OPML OK, though it imports duplicates of feeds that are in more than one tag in Rojo – I suspect most aggregators will do this, though.
- chokes while getting perhaps the 70th feed (of 450+) – and doesn’t recover well,
- backing off this one for now – I’ll come back if nothing else seems to suit.
Sorry Dave…
I didn’t mean to flood your comments with a bunch of trackbacks. If I could delete them, I would. They were all autogenerated by my links to your post….
looking for a good desktop aggregator
My dear Rojo seems to be having problems lately, at least for me, and I’m tired of missing hours of bloggy goodness without decent recourse, so I’m looking for a desktop backup plan.
The sole and only absolute criterion for me is that I be able to read my feeds in the safe and effective “River of News” style – way back when (almost a year ago now – when my blog was still on Blogspot) that was what I was looking for when I discovered MyFeedster. Rojo took its place when I started to get better results from it, and I’m addicted to the ease of use that the river allows.
Other than that I’ll judge each on its merits, and I’ll be posting about each one I try here.
2005-11-23
No luck using OPML Editor to post to a WordPress.org blog….
See my conversation with Dave starting here.
When I step through the code I get what appears to be a valid xmlrpc method call over http, but my xmlrpc log file looks munged. If there’s anyone around who uses a WordPress 1.5+ blog and the OPML Editor and woud be willing to try a post, I’m interested to see if you have the same problems or if the issue is on my server.
Results of trying the OPML Editor WordPress posting on a standalone WP blog…
I tried Dave’s wordPress.root tool or the OPML Editor to create a new post at elliptical this evening, and it seems as though the inplementation of the MetaWeblog API in OPML Editor is different than that in Flock, because Flock’s blogging tool works just fine while the OPML Editor’s tool won’t authenticate me to xmlrpc.php.
Here’s what the log file records from Flock (actual post data removed for clarity):
2005-11-10 19:38:50 Input: <?xml version=”1.0″?>
<methodCall><methodName>metaWeblog.newPost</methodName><params>
<param><value><string><![CDATA[1]]></string></value></param>
<param><value><string><![CDATA[username]]></string></value></param>
<param><value><string><![CDATA[password]]></string></value></param>
<param><value><struct><member><name>title</name><value><string><![CDATA[post title]]></string></value></member>
<member><name>description</name><value><string><![CDATA[post text]]></string></value></member>
<member><name>mt_tb_ping_urls</name><value><array><data><value><string><![CDATA[ping urls]]></string></value></data></array></value></member></struct></value></param>
<param><value><boolean>0</boolean></value></param></params></methodCall>
and here’s what’s recorded from OPML Editor:
2005-11-24 00:28:55 Input: <?xml version=”1.0″?>^M
<methodCall>^M
<methodName>metaWeblog.newPost</methodName>^M
<params>^M
<param>^M
<value><i4>0</i4></value>^M
</param>^M
<param>^M
<value>username</value>^M
</param>^M
<param>^M
<value>password</value>^M
</param>^M
<param>^M
<value><struct>^M <member>^M <name>description</name>^M <value>^Mwhat’s the log say?</value>^M </member>^M <member>^M <name>title</name>^M <value>test for kinrowan.net</value>^M </member>^M </struct></value>^M
</param>^M
<param>^M
<value><boolean>1</boolean></value>^M
</param>^M
</params>^M
</methodCall>
Among the oddities are the presence of the “^M” strings at the end of each line.
Also strange is that OPML Editor is able to communicate just fine with WordPress.com blogs, and so is Flock.
Here’s the error message I get:
Hmmmm.
Nevertheless the wordPress.root tool is really cool – being able to use the OPML Editor to post here is boon enough!
First right-out-of-the-box OPML Editor WordPress.com post
having figured out the vagaries and quirks of the UI (don’t all UIs have them?) I think I’m able to post without issue.
We’ll see how this one goes.
2005-11-21
Tag who?
Haven’t used it much yet – just a little, but it looks to be pretty cool.
See also the Tagyu For Movable Type interface, the Neato » Ultimate Tag Warrior for WordPress, and the REST web services interface. Ill definitely be playing with the WP and RESTful interfaces.
My only concern is that automating tags, if it becomes widespread, would potentially homogenize the tag-scope of an item (or of the world). As Tagyu selects from already tagged values and more people use those values, the overall breadth of tags about a specific subject would become narrower. You’d have to get a pretty large base of user for that, though, and all of them using the tags in the same tag-space.
via Scott Johnson
Later: Tagyu’d this post – the resultant TTags come from it’s best guess.
2005-11-17
Google Analytics down?
Looks like Google Analytics is down (for now). I can successfully log into my Google account, but am redirected to http://www.google.com when I’ve done so.From what little I’ve seen, this is quite an impressive tool, even if you don’t serve AdSense on your site. Much of what I get from my hosting service’s stats package can be ofund here, as well as some deeper information (like bounce rates – quite high for my blog; I’ve got it turned on at http://kinrowan.net for now) can be found.
technorati tags: google analytics, site stats
2005-11-16
Seth Godin pushes the RSS train…
RSS is not just for nerds. Not anymore.
Seth’s Blog: RSS Three months later
Amen, brother.
technorati tags: Seth Godin
(couldn’t resist)
After trying out the red button (via Maryam via Scoble) … here’s another red button.
Thanks, Gary…
…for listening.
As far as the Under the Radar post is concerned (or it’s twin on this here blog); I hardly expected or hoped that Dave would pick it up, though in retrospect it’s the kind of thing he might be interested in.
By the way, um, I’m a “he”.
2005-11-15
Scott’s looking for advice on Project 2003 (and whether to upgrade)
Hey Scott;
Don’t know much about Project 2003 – I stopped being a project manager a little before it came out. I do know, though, that it’s not part of the standard office offerings.
You might take a look at the Project page, but my personal take is that Project is mostly overkill for what most projects require.
OPML Validator case-unfriendliness
Dave, I have a question: The spec says nothing about OPML being case-unfriendly, and the OPML Editor doesn’t treat attributes as case-sensitive 1, but the validator fails a file when the attributes “xmlurl” and “htmlurl” are used, but not the same file when “xmlUrl” and “htmlUrl” are used. Is this an oversight?
1 I say this because I have a right-click menu item that looks like this:
if dialog.ask (“What attribute do you want to modify?”, @myatt)
op.attributes.getOne (myatt, @myval)
if dialog.ask (“Enter the ” + myatt + ” for this headline:”, @myval)
op.attributes.setOne (myatt, myval)
When I use it to check “xmlurl” and “xmlUrl” they both return the same value, which indicates to me that it’s treating both strings as equivalent.
2005-11-14
Under the radar stays there
I was pretty interested when I saw Robert Scoble’s post about the companies presenting at this year’s Under The Radar. I though even if the companies themselves were of little interest to me at least listening in on their experiences at Under the Radar and the results they saw after UtR would make interesting reading. I decided it would be worth my time to slap together an OPML file – a reading list of the Under the Radar companies for 2005. Little did I know…well, see for yourselves.
Companies presenting at Under the Radar:
- ABREVITY – no rss
- Akimbi – newsletter, white paper, no rss
- Black Duck Software – webcasts, white papers, mailing lists. no rss
- BRIDGESTREAM – white papers, presentations. no rss
- Central Desktop – and they have a blog!
- ClairMail – datasheets. no rss
- Clearwell – no nothin’. definitely no rss.
- Coverity – mailing lists. no rss
- Enigmatec Corporation – no rss. not even their web design firm has rss.
- Starts Here” href=”http://www.fortifysoftware.com/”>Fortify Software _Security – no rss
- funambol – need I say it? no rss
- GroveSite – ahh, web collaboration. white papers, demos, newsletter. no rss.
- Identity Engines – they have a resource library. but no rss.
- IDV Solutions – nope, no rss.
- Intelligenxia.com – this is getting boring; no rss.
- Leostream – ho hum.
- metallect – whatever that means. no rss
- Oakley Networks – nope.
- Oversight Systems – yes! they have a blog
- Pandora Networks – nothing doin’
- Reconnex – nope.
- Reva Systems – uh uh.
- RF Code – no.
- SoonR – they reference some blog posts on their home page, but no rss.
- SWsoft
- Sxip Identity – touting themselves as an Identity 2.0 company, of course they have a blog. Not really all that under the radar either (or at least not under mine).
- T3Ci
- Tablus
- Tekever – site is IE only. oops.
- TrueDemand Software
- Trusted Network Tech
- Zimbra™ – a blog and rss-enabled forums!
Now, I know I’ve been drinking the kool-aid, and I really didn’t expect all of these companies to have blogs, but I thought more than 1 in 10 of participants in “a one-day showcase of early-stage innovation” would be able to see the value of providing their news, white papers, and other timely information in RSS. Most of these companies were under my radar before Scoble’s post, and I expect most of them will remain there.
For what it’s worth, and OPML file of the 4 companies that do want to communicate with interested parties can be found here.
technorati tags: opml, UnderTheRadar, Robert Scoble
2005-11-10
Attention(low)Tech
After reading Steve Gillmor’s Don’t Mention It, I had to google “AttentionTech” and see what it was. I was unsurprised to find something at the other end of that reference, but was deeply surprised to find what I did find; a fairly sloppy web page claiming to be
“a Web service that is intended to serve as an online complement to the AttentionTech podcast”
and indicating that
“As a service to readers, the site is designed to quickly highlight the most compelling authoritative blogs and podcasts on the Web in an age where people are being inundated by posts and feeds from across the technology spectrum.”
Not only that, but as a “Web service”, shouldn’t it at least have a feed?
I’m sure Steve and Mike Vizard are just starting to work all of this out, and with a little more time it’ll be a lot more polished, but still…
technorati tags: steve gillmor, mike visard
AttentionRecorder extension available for Flock
 UPDATE: My analysis that the Flock extension was recording the Flock clickstream seems to be incorrect. In fact it seem not to be recording the clickstream at all – I had conflated results from the two browsers.
The newest version of the AttentionTrust Extension (actually, it might be the first version as well) is ready to use in Flock out of the box. I’ve installed the extension from the AttentionTrust website in both Firefox and Flock without difficulty, and synched up with the new Root Vault service from both browsers; both click-streams seem to be recording fine.
2005-11-09
Tagalag!
Not really new, I don’t think, but worth a look, is Tagalag!, a people-tagging service.
Lots of tools and APIs to go along with it – pretty cool stuff! See me there.
Via TechCrunch:People Tagging with Tagalag
(parenthetical) 