Science Library Pad

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

ways to generate a linkblog display

I blog to a bookmarking service (Furl) and then as you can see if you're reading this as a web page, I display some of those bookmarks in my sidebar on the right.  There are a few ways to do this:

* Linkroll has built-in features for making JavaScript to display links.  Click the JS button on your links page.
* Furl has built-in features for making JavaScript as well, they call it Add Furl to My Site.
* Delicious provides an HTML service, which you are supposed to cache if you want to display it on your page.  UPDATE 2005-Nov-17 Delicious also provides JavaScript linkrolls.  JS link via blogdriverswaltz.
* The main other option is to take an RSS feed and use a service to turn it into JavaScript.

The main RSS-to-JavaScript service I use is Feedsplitter.  It provides some styles that you can define on your site.

A new one is FeedBurner's BuzzBoost.  First take the RSS and create a FeedBurner feed from it.  Then select "Publicize your feed", and configure BuzzBoost.

UPDATE 2006-02-26: Note that Typepad can display RSS feeds directly in the sidebar.  To embed RSS feeds in your sidebar, go to Weblogs - Design - Change Content Selections and go to the lower right, you should see a Feeds section where you can add RSS feeds.

fun with RSS tools

LibraryClips has a very detailed report on RSS tools online in Subscribe to a blog via the RSS engines?

You can see Findory's view of my blog neighbors.

If you use the same username on many different sites, you can use the BlogDigger author:(name) syntax to aggregate all the different postings.

The example from LibraryClips is author:(johnt)

adding your content to My MSN

It took me a while to find this, so I thought you might find it helpful.

MSN Syndicated Content: Guidelines for Publishers

They want you to copy the button to your site, rather than linking to an image on their site.

It appears that MSN has to have already indexed the feed in order for you to add it; when I click the button currently it takes me to My MSN but it doesn't do anything as far as I can tell.

UPDATE 2005-06-23: The button should work now.

more fun with site stats

PubSub site stats for SLP.  Pretty graphs.  Seems to think I made 32 posts on June 9, when I actually made 5.  I did post and then extend the posting with updated info and repost multiple times though.

FeedBurner reports my "circulation" is just over 50.  Biggest group is Bloglines, with 31, followed by My Yahoo with 6.  Not surprisingly, SLA 2005 items dominate the clickthroughs.

Bloglines shows 18 subscribers to Atom feed, 25 to RSS feed, and as expected, 31 to FeedBurner feed.

Technorati beta tag interface

I found that Technorati has a new (to me anyway) beta.technorati.com,
which includes a new tag interface you can check out, e.g.

http://beta.technorati.com/tag/sla2005

SLA2005 - New Web Tools - Wednesday 11:30

... waiting for them to sort out the technology ...

Web Tools 2005

Gary Price (ResourceShelf and many others) and Genie Tyburski (Web Manager, The Virtual Chase)

Gary Price's part at
http://www.freepint.com/gary/2005/2005cooltools.html

(battery switch time)

Capturing the Web

Onfolio
- capture, RSS, etc.

Gary talking about 3 types of RSS feeds
- headline only
- snippet - title and first 20-40 words
- full-text

So if you have search engines using RSS, they may not be able to search the full text.

... switch to Gary

DocuTicker
- new high-quality full-text reports they have found

... switch back to Genie

NetSnippets
- capture screen shots
- assign keywords and bibliographic info
- create bibliography, index, report
- highlight info in a report
- create professional reports with your own logo

... switch to Gary

List of all specialized databases?
- Virtual Chase Directory
- SearchSystems.net (public records)

... switch to Genie

Scanning the News with RSS

Bloglines

... switch to Gary

Gary mentions the coming wave of RSS advertising.

Speakwire - listen to your RSS feeds

... switch to Genie

Live Bookmarks in Firefox

check out news.yahoo.com for news via RSS

... switch to Gary

a good web page editor
Nvu

... switch to Genie

RSS Search Engines

Daypop
Feedster
Fagan Finder Blogs and RSS Search Engines

... switch to Gary

RedLightGreen
- 120 million bibliographic records with a lot of added features
- was created for undergrads, but has many great features that are useful for anyone doing bibliographic searching

... switch to Genie

JiWire Hotspot Locator
- search for wireless access around the world
- variety of search criteria
- can show map with nearby hotspots

... switch to Gary

Who2 biography database

Gary discusses issues with Wikipedia, he added some fake info to his own Wikipedia entry and it hasn't been removed.

... switch to Genie

[US] Criminal Activity Research

pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov
Legal Dockets Online

... switch to Gary

Yahoo Local Download to Excel

... switch to Genie

more US legal stuff

... switch to Gary

Look at what Yahoo is doing.
http://next.yahoo.com/
- Yahoo MindSet
modify results using a slider

Yahoo Shopping SmartSort
sort results using sliders

Yahoo Industry Center
industry-specific pages

... switch to Genie

johnny.ihackstuff.com
- hacking Google

(there's more, but I'm taking a lunch break)

SLA2005 aggregated news

I thought I would mention again that I have made a Blogdigger Group SLA2005-moderated.
It combines:

Information  Today, Inc. Blog

NewsliBlog

SLA 2005 Conference Blog

SLA PAM Division Blog

If you're not familiar with RSS aggregators, this will give you a little taste of reading combined headlines in one place.  Of course be aware of the bane of conference blogging: sometimes the aggregators are slow and inconsistent in the updates they pull from different sites.

I have asked BlogDigger to make more sophisticated, search- and filter-based groups, that way one could pick out specific postings rather than just adding entire blogs.

If you want to be added to this BlogDigger Group, or if you want the password to moderate the group, I would be happy to add you/email you.

building blogdigger groups?

Does anyone know how to build blogdigger groups that include searches?

I made a group SLA2005-moderated to try to capture blogs beyond just the main SLA conference blog.
I wanted to try to filter or incorporate tagged postings, but there are two problems:
1) BlogDigger only sees true, RSS-level categories.  So if it's e.g. a Blogger blog using Technorati pseudotagging, you can't do a subject search.
2) You can't build BlogDigger groups from other BD searches (at least, it wouldn't work for me)

I tried to add the RSS feed
http://www.blogdigger.com/rss.jsp?q=subject%3Asla2005&sortby=date

but BD just ignored the addition.

If anyone wants the moderator password, just email me.  I just passworded to protect against random additions.  You're welcome to create an SLA2005-unmoderated as well.

So far I just added the two division blogs: PAM and News Division.

The more I try searching or grouping based on tags, the more I find things that don't work,
or search engines that are indexing way too slow and way too little.

XTech 2005 conference coverage using Planet aggregator

The XTech 2005 conference in Amsterdam has aggregated RSS feeds of conference reports and photos:

http://planetxtech.org/

I would guess they may be using the Planet software, but of course there are other ways one could do this (just because it says "Planet" doesn't necessarily mean that particular software is being used).  Here's an article by IBM about putting together a similar system using other software:

XML Watch: Planet Blog

Incidentally, there is also a wiki for XTech 2005.

RSS info from LibraryClips

LibraryClips just did a bunch of very detailed and informative postings about various RSS tool topics.

http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/category/rss/

The most recent posting is RSS: Filter and re-mix.

RSS feeds for science librarians

this project came out of my Bloglines reorganization: a second collection focusing just on webfeeds [RSS feeds] relevant to science librarians, either for their own reading or of potential interest to their patrons. ...

I'm also experimenting with a social bookmarking option which would allow this tracking

from SD Librarian

May is my blogiversary month

Here's what blogger reports on my personal blog

On Blogger Since: May 2001
Recent Posts: 146
Avg Posts Per Week: 32
Posts Written: 5,874
Words Written: 360,638
Outbound Links: 7,363

The major changes that I have seen are the introduction of categories/tagging, blog search engines, and the idea of separating more analytical blogging from "linkblogging".  I'm interested in your opinions on the last topic.  In Science Library Pad lately I've been making fewer, longer, more analytical/summary postings, with all the daily link flow going into my linkblog on Furl.  Is this a better system for you?

Incidentally, if you don't know it already, Furl will provide filtered RSS feeds by category.  You can either do a search (select "Filter by topic" and the category, then click search) and then grab the RSS feed that shows up on the search page, or just do it manually, e.g.

http://www.furl.net/members/rakerman/rss.xml?topic=Wiki

There doesn't seem to be any way to get a feed for a combination of categories, to do that, you'd have to use Blogdigger.

NEASIST Events

The NEASIS&T Program Committee debated how we might implement wiki's, blogs, PodCasts, IM/chat, and social bookmarks to support and promote Syndicate '05.

We considered:
-Infrastructure (hosting, applications, hardware)
-Sustainability (how long can we keep it going? how quickly will it be out of date)
-Learning curve (can we learn it quickly enough? do we have experience?)
-User community needs
-Interoperability (will these tools play nicely together? and with established tools? like the NEASIS&T web site)

These considerations are only the tip of the iceberg.  Megan Fox, Jenny Levine, and Michael Stephens will explore these issues in greater depth during our program.  For now, we offer you this blog. 

Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive updates about the program, PodCasts of the event, as well as a webliography, flickr images, and del.icio.us links.

via Tame the Web

Mefeedia videoblog aggregator

"Mefeedia.com is  an aggregator   for videobloggers. It lets you subscribe to videobloggers and tag videos."

audio and video RSS aggregator for MacOS X

ANT is an RSS video aggregator and media player currently available for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

With ANT, you can subscribe to any RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures. ANT will automatically download fresh audio and video content for you to watch and listen to. It can playback any media format, and syncs audio files with iTunes so you can easily add them to your portable MP3 player.

www.AntIsNotTV.net

via Macintouch

more blog searching

BlogPulse has been updated.
It has a new Conversation Tracker feature.  Enter a starting URL, and it will build a list of all postings that linked to it.

There is also a blog search in IceRocket.  An RSS feed of your search is automatically created.

IceRocket also has an RSS Builder thing that to be honest, I don't quite understand.
As far as I can tell, it's a way to manually construct RSS feeds, by typing in "news items" that will be put in the feed.

using Blogdigger to create custom category RSS feeds

I don't have the capability within Typepad to generate separate RSS feeds for each category.
I was hoping to find a tool smart enough to take apart the feed and re-assemble it (since the feed contains the category info for each post).  I found today that Blogdigger does this.

I am blogdigger blog #133666 so this search will get you just my wiki postings

blogID:133666 AND subject:(Wiki)

You can of course then get an RSS feed of that search.
Hey presto, a category-specific feed from my blog.
Here's a search that will pull out Web Services or SOA postings

blogID:133666 AND subject:("Web Services" OR Service-Oriented)

and the associated feed

Blogdigger, you have got some powerful juju.

UPDATE 2005-04-12: Blogdigger doesn't appear to have any actual, you know, help.
I can't remember how I found my blogID.

Anyway, here's more info:
1) Blogdigger is VERY PICKY about case.  blogID: will work.  blogid: will not work.
Similarly, subject: will work, but Subject: will not work.
2) I think you can just use site: with the base address WITHOUT HTTP instead of blogID:
so

site:scilib.typepad.com AND subject:(Wiki)

If you do want to find the blogID, one way is to do a site: search and then you can find the blogID listed in all the Focus links.

Note as mentioned it will only work with the base address.  So

site:scilib.typepad.com will work, but
site:scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/ returns nothing and
site:http://scilib.typepad.com/ returns, well I'm not sure, maybe every single feed in Blogdigger, anyway certainly not results specific to my site

podcast jukebox

Podcast Jukebox @ Search 4 RSS

tracking podcasts with Bloglines

Once you subscribe to a podcast feed in Bloglines, it will be added to your personal My Feeds list. When a new podcast is available, you�ll see the alert next to that feed. Each podcast update has a text note accompanied by an �enclosure� icon that links to the audio podcast file. Simply click on that enclosure link to start the podcast. That will launch your desktop media player or specialized podcasting software ..., and the podcast of your choice will play right from Bloglines.

from Open Stacks: Bloglines gets hip to podcasting

This is handy for me since most of the new podcasting software doesn't run on my older version of MacOS X.

moving data around with RSS

Any time you have a standard, you can enable unexpected things using it.
Amazon's A9 does that with RSS and search.
Jon Udell talks about it:

A9 doesn't subscribe to my search-results feed in the way Bloglines or FeedDemon or NetNewsWire would. It doesn't poll for changes. Instead it sends a request to my site when an A9 user with an active InfoWorld column performs a search. The response packet I send back just happens to be formatted as RSS 2.0, but from A9's perspective, it could be any XML format.

Why RSS 2.0, then? Because it creates network effects that go way beyond the point-to-point relationships between A9 and its search partners. The work I did to export RSS 2.0 search results served double duty. It accomplished the integration with A9, but it also dramatically expanded InfoWorld's RSS surface area. Now, for the first time, you can subscribe to any InfoWorld search in a feed reader. Want to be notified when the next review of a VoIP product shows up at InfoWorld.com? Run the query, and subscribe to its results.

Most people nowadays use RSS for person-to-person communication. You know the pattern: When a publisher posts a blog item, subscribers are alerted. A growing number of folks are also using RSS for process-to-person communication. Subscribing to searches is the best example of this pattern.

A9's use of RSS for process-to-process communication represents a third pattern. We'll be seeing a lot more of it. Not because RSS enables process integration in special ways -- it doesn't -- but rather because RSS helps us blur the boundaries between human network and process networks.

Also noted by Panlibus: Udell wooed by OpenSearch.

Previously:
2005-03-16 Etech 2005