Goodbye, share.opml.org

posted 09:36AM Jan 24, 2008 with tags aggregation opml sharing by Lars Trieloff

Dave Winer announces the end of share.opml.org. share.opml.org was a service that allowed you to upload your reading list in OPML format (or point to an OPML file in the web) in order to find out what people with similar reading habits were recommending, to find out the most read feeds and the people who subscribe to the highest number of feeds (I never made it to the top 10 in this list).

I was using the service in two ways: one the one hand, Blogbridge allows me to export my reading list as a shared OPML file available in the web, so I just pointed share.opml.org to the OPML file generated by Blogbridge service in order to get an always-up-to-date reading list. On the other hand, I subscribed to the top-100 feeds reading list generated by share.opml.org, which is the aggregation of the most relevant blogs according to their number of readers.

Needless to say, I really regret the end of this service as it provided a vendor-neutral way of attention aggregation.

Fixing Planet Apache's OPML

posted 10:37PM May 06, 2007 with tags apache blogbridge opml planet by Lars Trieloff

Recently I changed my RSS reader setup to reflect the new features in Blogbridge 5: I no longer subscribe to the various planets I have been reading: Planet Apache, Planet GNOME, Planet Mindquarry, etc., but combine the ability of the Planet software to create an OPML file, containing a listing of all blogs aggregated, including their feed URL. Blogbridge in turn is able to subscribe to all feeds mentioned in such an OPML file, so I pointed Blogbridge to the OPML files of Planet Apache, Planet GNOME, Planet Mindquarry, etc, unsubscribed from all aggregated Planet feeds and are now subscribed to really many feeds ( I get this aggregated listing by publishing the OPML of all my subscribed feeds using the Blogbridge service, combined with Share Your OPML, a great service by Dave Winer).

There was only one problem: I suddenly lost all my Planet Apache subscriptions due to a mis-formed OPML file. Planet Apache's OPML file did not contain the feed URLs, so I investigated this issue and found a small bug in the OPML template that mixed up url and uri variables and is fixed by now. As a result, feed urls are in Planet Apache's OPML again and my feed list is again a little bit more interesting.

Power 150, an impressive OPML and RSS Mashup

posted 06:17PM Feb 05, 2007 with tags marketing mashup opml rss web20 by Lars Trieloff

Marjolein Hoekstra writes about Power 150, an impressive example for the power of mashups. This web application is a search engine that is based on the 150 most influential marketing weblogs and contains everything you need for blog-based marketing research with a small number of hand-picked sources.

In her weblog she describes how to orchestrate OPML, RSS and Grazr to accomplish this mashup.

How to get Your Roller 3.0 Blogroll in OPML format

posted 09:44AM Dec 07, 2006 with tags blogs opml roller tips by Lars Trieloff

Roller always had the feature to output your blogroll as OPML. This list of bookmarks was helpful for migrating from Roller to another weblog service or to feed a feedreader that support OPML Reading Lists like Blogbridge or Straw. With these Reading Lists, the feed reader will automatically subscribe to all feeds listed in your blogroll.

Unfortunately, this fetaure is gone in Roller 3.0

Personally, I don't think we need OPML feeds in the URL structure. If somebody wants an OPML feed, he/she can add a page and generate OPML using models/macros.

Fortunately creating these macros is quite easy: In your Roller backend, go to Preferences >Templates, add a new page, called OPML and copy and paste following template code. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="1.0">
<head>
    <title>Lars Trieloff's Bookmarks</title>
</head>
<body>
#set($rootFolder = $model.weblog.getBookmarkFolder("/"))
#foreach ($bookmark in $rootFolder.bookmarks)
   <outline 
     text="$bookmark.name" 
     type="rss" xmlUrl="$utils.escapeXML($bookmark.feedUrl)" 
    htmlUrl="$utils.escapeXML($bookmark.url)" />
#end
</body>
</opml>

After saving the template, the OPML file will be made available at the URL WeblogBaseURL/page/OPML.

Reading List Icon

posted 09:38AM Jul 07, 2006 with tags atom icon opml rss by Lars Trieloff

Chris Pirillo has created an icon for the OPML format for Reading Lists:

http://chris.pirillo.com/wp-filez/opml_rss_icon.gif

The icon closely resembles the Feed icon used for RSS and ATOM feeds and from now on you will find both icons at the right side of this weblog to make it even easier to subscribe to my Feed or my Reading List.

Share Your OPML Deja Vue

posted 10:06PM May 08, 2006 with tags opml rss sharing web20 by Lars Trieloff

Today I read about a new, excitying service that allows you to upload your OPML files (list of RSS subscriptions or reading lists) and compare your subscriptions to similar subscription lists by other people, allows to find out what are the feeds most people are subscribed to and who are the people that subscribe to the most feeds.

The service is Share Your OPML by Dave Winer, and it is exciting, but not new. It is just a relaunch of an at least two-years old, but nevertheless cool service. It will be interesting to see how this service evolves as OPML becomes increasingly popular and more feed readers like Blogbridge are starting to support it in an intelligent way.

What I am really missing is a recommendation feature like last.fm's recommendations that are generated from my musical neighborhood by analyzing the x people with the most similar subscription lists and recommending all feeds that I am not subscribed to.

Guide or Reading Lists? Reading Lists!

posted 12:35PM Apr 12, 2006 with tags opml usability by Lars Trieloff

Pito Salas asks whether the "Guides" in Blogbridge (my favorite RSS aggregator) should be renamed to "Reading Lists". From my point of view the concept of "Reading Lists" is much more focused than "Guides", because Reading Lists are either a list of recommended reading created by myself or other people (OPML bookmarks), but "Guides" only indicate that other and only other people guide me or tell me what to read.

By the way I would completely drop the mapping of one "Guide" to multiple OPML files (or Reading Lists). Just have one Reading List for every OPML file subscribed to.