The RSS Blog

FilteredRSS.com

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:45:59 GMT

FilterRSS is a bayesian filter for your RSS. I tried it, rated a couple things, but couldn't quite figure it out. If your interested in playing with it some more, then please blog about it and I'll link it up.

http://www.filteredrss.com/

100 Things with RSS

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:05:55 GMT

Accredited Degrees out did all comers with their list of 100 Cool Things You Can Do With RSS.

http://www.accrediteddldegrees.com/2008/100-cool-things-you-can-do-with-rss/

No Cost, No Login, No Install

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:02:54 GMT

Martin Winer put together a nice list of next generation Web applications. Just as the Web brought us no install, this next generation is all about no login either.

http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/web-20-trend-no-cost-no-login-no-install/

RSS Feeds have Value

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:21:54 GMT

RSS feeds can have tremendous value. As such, you should look at protecting your value. The best way to protect the value of your RSS feed, is to own it's URL by hosting it on your domain. If you don't own it, then you could lose it like this guy. He was hosting his podcast on mac.com and when he upgraded his blogging software, the RSS URL changed. This meant he lost his previous subscribers. There's very little he can do now. He can implement an XML-level redirect, but that's not widely supported. If you don't own it, then you are at the mercy of those that do. If you can't own your domain, then consider hosting your feed at FeedBurner.com. You're still at the mercy of Google, but they are less evil than most.

Simple2Chat

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:05:26 GMT

Simple2Chat is a very cool website. It's an AJAX-based web chat client. You don't need to install a client or setup an account.

http://www.simple2chat.com/

SportsML by Erik Berg

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:25:14 GMT

I love it when people do cool things with XML. Erik Berg has done one of the greatest by providing all the SportsML for MLB (baseball), NFL (football), NBA (basketball) and NCAA basketball for years worth of games in the current decade. Check out his work!

http://erikberg.com/xmlstats/

TODO w/ Google Chart API

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:13:22 GMT

College@Home compiled a great list of 50 Cool Things You Can Do with Google Chart API. I'm still making my way thru the teens. Fun for a day or two.

http://www.collegeathome.com/blog/2008/06/05/50-cool-things-you-can-do-with-google-charts-api/

Web 2.0 is Dead!

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:09:00 GMT

Today, I heard of two more Web 2.0 services that are on the chopping block. The boat is going down fast. Jump! Or sink.

Reblinks.com Live!

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:11:30 GMT

At this morning hour, I finally setup the DNS for reblinks.com. It took a lot longer than expected. I wanted to do this in January, but I had major problems with the registrar. After a couple months struggling with the registrar to setup the DNS, I decided to move all my domains to a new registrar. That process is finally ending this week.

http://www.reblinks.com/

Enclosures in MT4

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:56:39 GMT

Today, I searched the Internet for a method of exposing the RSS <enclosure> tag for images already attached as assets of an entry in MT4 (Movable Type). It was not easy. I searched for about an hour before I came up with the following. Here's hoping Google will make it easier for the next guy. GoogleBot index!

<mt:EntryAssets>
<enclosure url="<mt:AssetURL>" length="<mt:AssetProperty property="file_size" format="0">" type="<mt:AssetMimeType>" />
</mt:EntryAssets>

NewsAlloy on Deathbed

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:06:56 GMT

NewsAlloy, a semi-popular RSS news reader, may go offline in the next few days. I received an email this morning warning me to back-up my OPML as their hosting arrangement is nearing its end. They are looking for new hosting. This might be an interesting customer purchase for a larger RSS company.

http://www.newsalloy.com/

The Link in MT4

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:50:36 GMT

Today, I got my first look at Movable Type 4 as I needed to setup an RSS template that includes a <link> in every <item>. But, I can't find a solution. Where do I put the link? I swear I remember doing this in previous version of MT. Suggestions?

The Evils of Flickr

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:02:49 GMT

Of late, I've come across two very evil symptons of Flickr, which I think Yahoo must address.

The first is that people who paid (or received free accounts) on Flickr can no longer download their own pictures unless they agree to pay Yahoo! $25/yr forever. Although not a lot of money, this is clear extortion by Yahoo!
The second is that I'm receiving more and more emails from Flickr users who are blatantly uploading their pics to my forums only to try to extort licensing revenues from me. Does anybody actually fall for this ploy?

This is getting out of hand. Yahoo! has to get a couple lawyers to step in here.

Facebook Podcasting

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:38:43 GMT

Alec Saunders's Iotum has come up with a free conference calling Facebook app. This isn't new, but until this week, I didn't see the value. They have four video walk-thrus that demonstrate some high end broadcasting capabilities. I'm gonna play with it in the next week and report back.

http://apps.facebook.com/freeconference/landing
http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=17733760018

Meme13

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:12:34 GMT

Rogers Cadenhead just released a new Web application called Meme13 that highlights the last 13 sites that made their TechMeme debut.

http://www.meme13.com/

XSD Validator

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:47:16 GMT

Ya, I'm really bored these days. Today, I wrote a generic XML Schema validator. Eventually, I want to expand this to validate common forms of XML like Google's sitemap. But, I noticed that each version of sitemap XML has it's own namespace. What a nightmare!

http://reblinks.therssweblog.com/xsd.validator.aspx

Update: I've also completed a Sitemap Validator, which re-uses the code from my XSD Validator.

http://reblinks.therssweblog.com/sitemap.validator.aspx

RSS Autodiscovery Check

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:40:13 GMT

Today, I put together a smll RSS autodiscovery checker to compliment the other tools on Reblinks. Supply the RSS 2.0 feed address and it checks if the <channel/link> element points to a page which has auto-discovery that reflects back to the original RSS feed address.

http://reblinks.therssweblog.com/tools.aspx#disco

XML Well Formedness Checker

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:14:45 GMT

Everytime I need an XML well-formedness checker, I can't find one. So, I wrote one. Untested 67 lines of code.

http://reblinks.therssweblog.com/tools.aspx

Countdown Widget

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:24:24 GMT

I was looking for a countdown widget and most all of them I stumbled on didn't work very well and many didn't work at all. I finally decided on the yourminis.com countdown widget. Not great, but at least it works.

http://www.yourminis.com/minis/yourminis/yourminis/mini:countdown

Facebook Sharer.php

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:24:05 GMT

One of the least taken advantage of features in Facebook that doesn't require much work is the Facebook Share Partners. This is a link that when clicked shares the current page on the users Facebook profile.

http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php

The Web 2.0 APIs

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:03:35 GMT

Scott Hanselman has a great enumeration of the best Web 2.0 APIs (ya I know, Web 2.0 is so yesterday); Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Windows Live, YouTube, GData, MetaWeblogAPI, Twitter. He also points to a bunch of wrappers for the APIs. Link via Peter Dawson.

SpringWidgets does Podcast

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:46:54 GMT

I just realized that SpringWidgets also does podcast. I simply injected my sports talkcast into their RSS widget and all the magic happened. Here's a sample.

Get this widget!

NewsGator Widgets

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:02:32 GMT

Jeff Nolan reminded me that NewsGator has their own widget framework. You have to sign-up and agree to terms of service, which might be too much to expect from Joe Randy, but NewsGator's has a great reputation in the RSS enterprise market and this might be the solution for a larger company (like NBC).

http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com/

SpringWidgets RSS

randy@kbcafe.com (Randy Charles Morin) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:19:45 GMT

I've been testing a few RSS widgets. The vast majority of which are completely broken. I eventually landed on SpringWidgets, which is a division of Fox and associated with MySpace (I think!). This widget seemed very customizable and worked like a charm. SpringWidgets also has a bunch of other widgets that seem pretty cool and actually work.

Get this widget!