Science Library Pad

FeedBurner reporting Google readers

FeedBurner is now reporting the number of users reading your feed using Google Reader (and other Google RSS environments).  To my considerable surprise, this number is on par with my Bloglines readers.  Judging by the discussion, a lot of other people are also surprised at this large number of previously uncounted readers.

Slashdot bookmarks and tags

Slashdot has a bookmarking and tagging system, but it's a bit awkward.
Once logged in, you can bookmark manually at

http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl

They also have bookmarklets to do the same thing.
You can add tags, but onewordonly, no "multiple word" tags.
To edit a bookmark, the only way I could find was to go to Bookmarks->Recent and click on the "bookmark" link next to the one you want to change.

http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl/?op=showbookmarks&recent=1

You can view your tags at http://slashdot.org/my/tags but you can't actually do anything with them yet.
There is some cross-integration between bookmarks, your journal, and story submission.

You can even get yourself a little "Slashdot Me" badge.

   Slashdot It

There's a FeedFlare to SUBMIT a Slashdot article, but I couldn't find one to bookmark an article, so I just made one.

Download slashdot-bookmark.xml

FeedBurner feed geotag problems

FeedBurner lets you geotag your feed.  It's under Optimize... Geotag Your Feed.

Problems:

1. They don't provide you with any syntax examples, if you want to enter lat/long.
2. I am not sure the tags are being properly embedded.

The tags show up as just

<geo:lat>45.41</geo:lat><geo:long>-75.68</geo:long>

aren't they supposed to be wrapped with <geo:Point> </geo:Point> ?
That's what it seems to indicate in a LinuxJournal article I found - Geotagging Web Pages and RSS Feeds.

Of course, I'm not actually sure what tools I can use to manipulate / view a geotagged feed anyway.

Any suggestions?

Google Bookmarks FeedFlare Unit

I couldn't find a "Google Bookmark This" FeedFlare Unit, so I made one.

Download googlebookmark-this.xml

It's based on Furl This, by Emily Robbins, in the Flare Catalog.

(UPDATE: I also checked the 101 Flares list, but there wasn't a Google Bookmark one there either.)

Technorati tag: feedflareunit

Well, that's the theory anyway - currently the FeedFlare parser seems to reject it for some reason.

UPDATE: It appears that (not surprisingly) FeedFlare is caching files on input - this means if you edit the file and save it with the same name, it will continue to read the old, incorrect, cached file.  I had to change the filename in order to get it to work (that is, to get it to read the new fixed file).

Also note: you can debug Flares using the FeedFlare Scratchpad.

Connotea FeedFlare Unit

I couldn't find a "Connotea This" FeedFlare Unit, so I made one.

Here is connotea-this.xml

It's based on Furl This, by Emily Robbins, in the Flare Catalog.

Thanks go to Martin Flack for providing me with the necessary Connotea syntax.

Technorati tag: feedflareunit

meta: FeedFlare in blog

I'm experimenting with adding FeedFlare elements in my blog postings (they are already turned on for my feed).  You should see items for emailing, delicious, Furl and Digg.

I'd like to add one for Connotea too, but I couldn't find a "Flare Unit" for Connotea.
(UPDATE 2006-06-28: I made a Flare Unit for Connotea.)

For more info see Everything TypePad - Get some Flare for your blog.

Previously:
March 14, 2006  meta: about my RSS feed
December 14, 2005  FeedBurner launches FeedFlare enhancements

site administrivia: duplicate postings in RSS feed

Thanks to a pointer from Paul R. Pival I activated a new feature that gives me unified FeedBurner stats for my TypePad blog.  This means I get to see all my subscribers, rather than just the ones I was capturing in the FeedBurner feed.  This is what the result looks like in my stats:

In other words, I'm now tracking an additional 180 or so subscribers.  (UPDATE 2006-06-10: Just to make it clear, all this means is that 180 existing, untracked TypePad feed subscribers were added to my FeedBurner feed - the total number of subscribers didn't increase, it's just they weren't all counted inside of FeedBurner before.)  Anyway, right now it also means there are duplicate postings in my feed.  I am going to see if that sorts itself out.

Now that this feature is active, I am also probably going to switch back to TypePad Basic from Pro, since the only reason to go Pro was to direct more people to the FeedBurner feed.  You shouldn't notice any difference to the site appearance or the feed.

There's more info at

• Everything Typepad - Connect your TypePad feed to FeedBurner
• Burning Questions - Your FeedBurner Feed is in My TypePad Blog!

UPDATE: Here's what I sent in response to Joe Kottke's comment

If I look at the raw feed itself it looks fine

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScienceLibraryPad

but if I preview in Bloglines (where the vast majority of my readers are) there are duplicates - maybe because the timestamps don't match on postings?

http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=899708

UPDATE 2006-06-10: FeedBurner has discovered another 41 subscribers

Technorati Favorites: RSS and OPML

Technorati is now providing both RSS and OPML feeds of user favorites, here are mine.

http://feeds.technorati.com/faves/scilib?format=rss

http://feeds.technorati.com/faves/scilib?format=opml

The OPML feed enables the idea of user Reading Lists.

Previously:
Feburary 27, 2006  OPML Reading Lists
February 22, 2006  Technorati Favorites

uBioRSS - biology-aware RSS feeds

This is a beautiful piece of work:

uBioRSS application catalogs RSS feeds. Feeds can be categorized within multiple classes, for example the JCR subject categories. Each feed will also be assigned an update schedule based on the source update frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, etc.) In the first step the nameCrawler follows each RSS link back to its source HTML/XML output.

2. findiT algorithms examine both feed and link text and identify all scientific names. Names are reconciled with NameBank identifiers and lexical and nomenclatural concepts to aid in integration with authority sources.

3. classificationSearch SOAP calls superimpose the names index with classification hierarchies to provide a navigational framework to the RSS articles.

4. LinkiT provides dynamic contextual links to authoritative data sources by maintaining name/key indicies to these sources.

5. RSS output is organized using taxonomic inteligence to provide contextual browsing by taxon. Output can be via RSS, email, or web page.

6. Users can create custom profiles to specify what sources they wish to review and can add feeds not currently provided. Regional or specialized taxa lists (endangered species, etc) can be uploaded for more specific monitoring.

7. LinkiT can dynamically embed hyperlinks to authoritativedate sources within the RSS, email, or HTML output, effectively 'advertising' the location of expert data related to taxa annotating the RSS output.

via Ingenta blog All My Eye - ALPSP Technology Update: Web 2.0 Hip or Hype?

meta: about my RSS feed

I've added more FeedFlare things to my FeedBurner RSS feed

* Email this * Add to del.icio.us * Furl This * Digg this * Technorati: links to this item * Recent tags on del.icio.us

Does anyone actually use these?  Do they slow down the feed?

Also, I've left the original TypePad "Subscribe to this feed" pointing to the un-FeedBurnered feed, is that useful, or should I move everything over to FeedBurner?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScienceLibraryPad

UPDATE 2006-06-16:  I decided to do as much as I think is possible in TypePad, which is to replace the Subscribe link with a link to FeedBurner, and to make the autodiscovery point to FeedBurner as well.  Changing your TypePad page in order to modify the autodiscovery is quite a deep alteration job though.  First you have to have a Pro account (U$150/year).  Then you have to make an "advanced" template, so you can edit the raw HTML.  There are no half-measures - either you get all the nice TypePad layout features (theme, layout, content, order) or you have to edit the raw code.  For example, in an advanced template I can't just click a content selection to remove or add something in my sidebar - I have to go in and edit the HTML.

trying to track too much information

OPML Reading Lists

As best as my addled morning mind can parse, OPML Reading Lists is simply the idea of subscribing to someone else's (RSS) subscriptions (their "Reading List").  It's just subscribing to the OPML list itself, rather than to individual feeds.  As their set of subscriptions changes, your view is also updated.  Anyway, that's the nugget of knowledge I excavated out of the jargony paragraph

Reading lists are OPML documents that point to RSS feeds, like most of the OPML documents you find, but instead of subscribing to each feed in the document, the reader or aggregator subscribes to the OPML document itself. When the author of the OPML document adds a feed, the aggregator automatically checks that feed in its next scan, and (key point) when a feed is removed, the aggregator no longer checks that feed. THe editor of the OPML file can update all the subscribers by updating the OPML file.

from Next steps in RSS, Reading Lists - October 13, 2005
There is a howto of sorts at http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/howtoReadingLists

You're supposed to keep your reading list small, e.g. 15 items or less, apparently mostly for technical reasons.  But I don't see why we can't fix that with a layer of technology.  I've already got all my 100+ feeds in tidy categories containing most-15-or-less items within Bloglines, why can't it just suck up that, then let the subscriber select which categories they want within the big file?

Now Technorati Favorites would seem ideally created for this, but inexplicably they have not provided OPML export.  You can leave feedback in Sifry's posting New Technorati Features: Favorites. And Reading Lists/OPML for Blog Finder (February 21, 2006).

UPDATE 2006-05-01: Technorati now provides OPML, see Technorati Favorites: RSS and OPML

ENDUPDATE

Thanks to Steven Cohen for pointing out reading lists and for putting me on his.

My Bloglines list is at http://www.bloglines.com/public/rakerman

And my TechnoFaves (currently quite incomplete) are at http://www.technorati.com/faves/scilib

Technorati Favorites

Technorati has added Favorites, which is a combination of searchable blogroll and RSS reader functionality.  Technorati blog says

There's also a bookmarklet you can take with you, so you can add to your favorites wherever you browse (get it on the Favorites Help page). And if you use another subscription tool or service, you can export your subscriptions and import them using the Favorites Importer!

Once you've got some favorites, you'll see the most recent posts from them, newest to oldest, as they happen. If you prefer RSS, don't worry, it's available.

Got your own blog? Wanna make it easy for Technorati members to mark is as a favorite? Just use one of these handy buttons! You can even display recent posts from your Favorites on your own blog with the Favorites Widget.

But the best part is that now you can search just your favorite blogs. The second tab on every keyword search result is now "Your Favorites" - click it to search just your favorite blogs.

Finally, Technorati Favorites are for sharing! Note that everyone has a public favorites page. You can share yours with your friends with the link at the top of your Favorites page.

Of course, what's in this for Technorati is human-selected sites, as part of the ongoing challenge of ranking blogs and reducing spam.  There is a limit of 50 faves.  I can't be bothered creating Yet Another blogroll so I just added Lorcan's blog as a demo, but anyway, here's http://www.technorati.com/faves/scilib

As mentioned, you can get an "add to TechnoFaves" button for your site, here's one for Science Library Pad:

FeedBurner launches FeedFlare enhancements

FeedFlare is initially launching today with seven simple options [for enhancing your RSS feed], including:

• most popular tags for this item via del.icio.us
• tag this item at del.icio.us
• Technorati cosmos: number of links to this post
• Creative Commons license for this specific item. This works even if you are splicing, say, a Flickr photo feed into a blog feed and the two parent feeds have different licenses associated with them.
• number of comments on this post (currently only for feeds created by Wordpress)
• email this item
• email the author of this item (particularly helpful if the item ends up spliced into another feed or repurposed on a site) [only works if your email address is in the feed?]
  

Shortly after this launch, we'll also integrate a "more like this" option from Sphere which will link to a list of related posts at Sphere.

Burning Questions - No Feed is an Island: Introducing FeedFlare

In other good news, it appears that MyYahoo is finally sending reader stats to FeedBurner again.

followup: Google services and add to Google Reader

I found there is a Wikipedia list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_services_and_tools

I also found (indirectly via techmocr@tie.org) a better "add to Google Reader" button than Google provides:

You can get one from Skatter Tech

or use

(Note: If you want to use these, please copy them and save them to your own site, don't just link to the images on my site.  Thanks.)

Previously:
November 26, 2005  Get services in the Googleverse: list of Google Services

social networking at the BBC

Or the Beeb, as Canadian anglophiles might insist.

Euan Semple from the BBC keynoted the track on social networking. The BBC has created a gateway allowing its employees to use a number of social networking tools. The first is a forum with 11 different discussion groups, including Editorial, Production, What’s Going On, etc. Over 11,000 people use the forum to ask questions and get answers. One result of this platform is that trivial questions can turn into interesting issues; misinformation gets corrected, and lurkers (people who read but do not participate in the discussion) get the benefit of the discussion. Euan stressed that these types of systems must be sociable places where people will want to go to get their information, and it can be a challenge to get conversations started. Once the conversations begin, the statistics show that thousands of people may read posts, but only a few contribute comments or replies.

Other social networking tools that have been added to the BBC’s gateway are:
• Connect.gateway—used to identify and find other people in the organization. A search tool allows employees to find others with specific expertise (foreign language speakers, etc.)
• An internal blog has had a large impact on journalism processes. Over 250 people within the BBC are blogging, even senior managers. Blogs have started to replace “all hands” broadcast e-mail announcements from upper management.
• Wikis are used by over 1,500 people and have become a rich resource for all kinds of information. With their freely available editing capabilities, wikis are very different from traditional documents. For example, when new policies are proposed, employees are encouraged to comment and change the initial documents, and then they are considered for incorporation into the final policy.
• RSS software that runs and syndicates content for those interested.

as reported in InfoToday Blog - Social Networking at the BBC.
There is also an audio interview (WAV) with him.

He spoke on Day 3 of Online Information 2005.  The presentation doesn't seem to be available, err, online.

I've never seen a blog report that a link came from someone's bookmarks, so anyway... via Darlene Fichter's Furl bookmarks.

IL05 - Internet Librarian 2005 - blogging and such

I am not at Internet Librarian 2005.
However, there is a hefty list of IL05 Bloggers you can follow.
They have also proclaimed an official tag, which as you have probably already guessed is IL05.
(Last year I unofficially used IL2004, because as a computer science guy I worry about what will happen when the tags collide at Internet Librarian 2105.)

Using that tag you can check for activity on Technorati - IL05 or for photos in Flickr - IL05.

I find that an aggregation has already been set up by Andrea Mercado for IL2005 bloggers in Blogdigger Groups: Internet Librarian 2005 Group.

If for some reason you're interested in other systems I set up last year, there's
IL2004 wiki
Kinja aggregation of IL2004 bloggers

I was going to give a spiel about making a Blogdigger Group but you can't get a jump on the Internet Librarians these days; it has already been done (see above).

There were Blogdigger Groups created by others  for Computers in Libraries 2005: CIL2005, CIL2005-NC.

I also made one myself for Special Libraries Association 2005: SLA2005.

Google Reader

Yet another Google tool for planetary domination: Google Reader.

Spend your time reading what you care about most
Reader automatically gets the latest news and updates for your favorite sites. You can sort your reading list by relevance, which will guess what's most relevant to you based on how you use Google Reader (such as which items you decide to actually read).

via Darren Barefoot

man, I'm so out of the techno-loop
no time to read the hundreds of accumulating bloglines entries

The wording from Google is interesting.
It's clear from this and other Google tools that the new mantra is "Google is about relevance".

subscribe via email

I'm not a big fan of email mailing lists myself, but some people like them, so I have enabled a new FeedBurner feature - you can now receive my new posts via email ("RSS over email").  Just subscribe in the "Receive via Email" section in the sidebar on the right.

It uses the FeedBlitz service, in partnership with FeedBurner.

Yahoo RSS search

Although they have not provided a dedicated RSS search interface yet, you can search within RSS feeds using Yahoo by selecting Advanced Search and then File Format RSS/XML (.xml)

Info via Search Engine Watch: RSS Search Engines.

NRC Research Press offers RSS feeds

Research Press is pleased to offer article updates and synopses through a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed.

NRC Research Press RSS Feed [background information]

You can see the feed icons on the left-hand side of journal tables of contents, e.g. Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

want to socialize your site? get plucked

Pluck has announced hosted offerings for blogging and RSS reading ("my news") that publishers can incorporate into their sites.  They call it Pluck InSite.

via Outsell Now - Pluck: Helping Newspapers Embrace Social Publishing

In Outsell’s opinion, embracing rather than fighting citizen journalism and the “decontainerization” of content is one of the routes to survival for traditional publishers. It takes a bit of courage on the part of a publisher to acknowledge that it is no longer the only source of news information for its readers. The local newspaper’s mindshare is eroded on the one hand by very compelling local coverage being provided by bloggers, and on the other hand by certain types of content, such as national and international news, that is better provided by other publishers.

The blogs mentioned in the Outsell story and Pluck news release are located at http://www.austin360blogs.com/

Google "sidebar" - yet another desktop platform

The new Google Desktop Search is, in fact, the thin edge of the wedge for Google to take over your desktop.  This is in the form of the Google Sidebar (not to be confused with the Firefox Sidebar).  The sidebar has sections called panels.  Currently the preloaded panels are:

E-Mail: This option allows you to see and read new Gmail without having to go to the Gmail site.

News: News headlines from a variety of sources. If you allow Google to know what stories you're clicking on your news headlines headlines will be personalized over time based on what articles you've looked at in the past.

Web Clips: Web Clips is the Google name for RSS feeds. In other words, the sidebar can also function as an RSS or ATOM aggregator.

Scratch Pad: Type and save quick notes.

Photos: Images from whatever folder(s) you store images in are accessible.  [As well, you can display photos from an RSS feed, e.g. from Flickr.]

Quick View: Provides access to frequently used web pages and files. The sidebar also offers a new feature called QuickFind that allows you the chance to open any program by just typing a few keystrokes into the search box.

What's Hot: A combination of different sources to let you know what people are talking about. How something makes the "hot" box is unknown but Google did tell us that presently material comes from blog/RSS engines Technorati and DayPop.

Stocks: Current stock prices, customizable

Weather: Current temperatures and a one day forecast for places you set.

Search: At the very bottom of the default sidebar is a search box.

So clearly we have the start of Battle of the Desktop Gadgets.  Konfabulator (Yahoo Widgets) vs. Apple Dashboard Widgets vs. Google Sidebar vs. ???

There is a Google Sidebar API, so you can code your own panels.  They are calling them Sidebar Plug-ins.

Info via Search Engine Watch Google Desktop Search Offers New Sidebar Widgets, Outlook Integration, and More.  This is what they have to say about the Desktop Gadget issue:

Google is also opening up the sidebar to developers with an API. I'm sure developers will have a field day developing new panels. The sidebar and the panels available today and those likely be available soon, remind me of what Yahoo now offers with their acquisition Konfabulator and Apple offers with their application.

Search Engine Watch link via ResourceShelf Introduction of Google Sidebar.

UPDATE 2005-08-23: Even without "advanced features" turned on, Google will watch the web pages you visit (yes, even if you are using Firefox) and automatically add related feeds to Web Clips.  Depending on your temperament, you may find this cool, useful, or creepy.

Google Portal and rank

So if you set up your own Google Homepage portal thing, you can now Create a Section.
This will let you search for content to add, or explicitly specify an RSS feed.
There is no interface I can see to make an "Add this to Google Homepage" button like you can do for e.g. Bloglines.

Now, what's interesting is if I search "Create a Section" on library, I get: librarystuff.net, overduemedia.com, tametheweb.com, catalogablog.blogspot.com, scanblog.blogspot.com.  Those are all good, relevant matches.  But it is completely unclear as to how those 5 were selected.  What algorithm is Google using?

I will discuss more about ranking in my next post.

Info about Google RSS reading via Micro Persuasion.

New TypePad features

You can now insert an RSS feed directly into your sidebar, without having to turn it into JavaScript or anything.

In Weblogs -> Design -> Edit -> Content Selections there is now an option "Feeds".

You can read the overview of the new features, which came from an intensive one-day hacking session.
Unfortunately the list of new features is not linked to info about each one.
They have also added support for publishing your podcasts.

I just noticed, they have also added my requested feature: you can now send trackbacks to any addresses you want, directly from within the "New Post" interface (no more sending a single trackback from TypePad QuickPost).

Previously:
2005-July-17  ways to generate a linkblog display
2005-March-31  sending trackbacks from TypePad basic