Justplain

O’reilly published a Short Cut pdf document on opml: “Getting Acquainted with OPML” by Amy Bellinger

I just bought and downloaded a copy, and took a look at it. I think it serves it purpose: it is a short cut and will save you a lot of time if you are new to OPML and want to get acquainted fast. Thats what it is, a starting point for learning more about opml, if you want to go in deeper you can start from there.

One thing, in my copy the links (or what i think are links, bold, grey) do not work. Am i doing something wrong? Or are those not links??? If those are not links then all the time one has saved is lost on searching all things mentioned in the document in google.

Other then that, i think it is great that someone has collected all things opml into one document. It would have be nicer if the document was published for free (i understand that is not o’reilly’s trade, but since Amy is sort of an OPML-evangelist) , specially if you want to share the opml experience with the rest of the world… I think this info should be on wikipedia or opml.org

Jason Kolb recently wrote 2 articles about how he would like to be able to access his personal data the ipod-way:

“The iPod makes the music part of my life easy. The most important thing it does is make the vast amounts of music that I have accessible and useful. And this got me to thinking. A lot of what I really want to accomplish with technology runs along the same lines. I look at all the data in my life from the perspective of a business-intelligence executive, and I see giant piles of data, none of them talk to each other, and the only systems I currently have to navigate the piles are in the stone age. I want to make those data silos that make up my digital life easy to use for once.”

When reading his articles (Browsing personal data iPod-style and Flattening the Internet with a Personal Data Browser Control), the first thing that popped in my mind was ‘that’s an opml job’. The ipod way of structuring data is just plain simple outlining. I think opml could work perfect to act as a container for this personal info. It can handle links to rss, html and other xml-formats.

Which pieces could we loosely join to create such a personal data browser?

I’ve set up a brand new blog for opmlmanager that i’ll be using for news on opmlmanager!

In case you’ve missed it, the opml auto-discovery bookmarklet i posted about a few days ago, has an improved succesor: a OPML Auto-discovery Extension for Firefox (download).

Read all about in cleverclogs.

John Tropea has some wishes on the opml-front:

• A search tool for searching a specific opm-file: I like the idea, but there is a risk when such a tool also searches in the opml-files that it finds within the opml (inclusion). Searching full-text across a massive directory sounds great but it is like asking a search-engine to search on a specific page and also search on all the pages it finds links of on the first page, and so on… What if opml-file #1 links to opml-file #2 and #2 links to #1. How do we get out of the loop?
• Subscribe to an OPML or get services to subscribe to your OPML: I agree, if you are developing a service that can handle opml, make it handle it dynamically and not just import the feeds!
• OPML archive or latest posts for your blog: In my opinion oplm is not such a great format for storing posts. From a developers perspective storing html in an attribute instead of between tags where you can escape the html with [CDATA[]], is a bad idea. Al the angled brackets have to be replaced by < and > and some more. And why would we do this anyway when we have a fantastic format that was designed for storing posts: RSS. Grazr and bitty will handle this very well!

Marjolein Hoekstra and James Corbett hacked together something quite interesting!

I’ve not dived into it to deeply but this is how it basically works: You can add a link-tag to the header of your page with the url of an opml-file (<link rel=”alternate” type=”text/xml+opml” text=”Opmlmanager userlist” xhref=”http://www.opmlmanager.com/userlist/userlist.opml” mce_href=”http://www.opmlmanager.com/userlist/userlist.opml” / >). A visitor which uses a tool for autodiscovering, which for now is a bookmarked page that wil make a little div popup at the page your watching that will you show a link that will take you to a grazr-page that will display the opml, will directly detect the opml-file. Just like autodetecting rss.

Now all we need is a add-on for firefox, so you don’t have to go the bookmarket to discover opml-feeds, but that will show an opml-icon (is there a final design yet?) on every page containing an opml-link in the header. And of course you should be able to configure what should happen once you click that opml-icon.

What would one do without the Dutch and the Irish

Feed it with freshly generated opml.

Source: Alex Barnett

“An OPML file which has been thoughtfully and carefully built over time by an individual has real value. It is an asset of intellectual property. As such, I would like a tool which lets me continually build value in that asset by discovering, adding, editing, and deleting feeds.”

 Timothy from flyingposts needs help organizing his opml file.

Please share your thoughts with me on how i can improve opmlmanager to make it a better and more valuable tool!