Recommended Web Tools Archives

Changes at Feedlounge

Alex King recently announced he was leaving Feedlounge.

As a total outside observer, I was surprised.

Feedlounge was a two person partnership between Alex King and Scott Sanders. Alex was the interface designer behind Feedlounge. The ONLY reason I am willing to pay for Feedlounge is because of the interface. Simple. Easy. Fast. If you’ve read my blog recently, you know that I have also been advocating another one of Alex King’s endeavors: Tasks. The reasons are the same: the interface, the speed, the simplicity. It is easy to spot quality work and he has accomplished much with Feedlounge and Tasks. In the back of my mind, I was wondering what he would do next. Leaving Feedlounge was definitely not what I imagined.

I guess my surprise comes mainly as a user. Feedlounge has definitely become one of those “I use everyday kind of tools”. I simply desire to see the tools I use succeed. It is a selfish desire in some ways. But when 50% of the team leaves, it is surprising.

So from this lowly user to both Scott and Alex: I hope Feedlounge and Tasks flourish under your respective visions.

Feedlounge Integrates with del.icio.us

I wrote about my desire to have some integration/combination of social bookmarking, feed reading and task management.

Tooling around Feedlounge I rediscovered the fact that it allows the tags on blog posts to be integrated into one’s de.icio.us account. A process they call TagThru. I’ve had this turned on but totally forgot all about it.

Ok so now, all that needs to happen is some sort of integration between Feedlounge and Tasks…

[tags]feedlounge, tasks[/tags]

FRSBIM – Feed Reading Social Bookmarking Information Management

There is an abundance of social bookmarking sites. I have my favorites. But I don’t have the time to check all of them out. So, here is my request list. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

While it is nice to tag and share and all that, I want to be able to track my own actions with each bookmark. In particular I want to be able to mark the following:

1. Write/Blog about it
2. Mark it as read or action taken

When I bookmark something, I want to be able to go back and and check little radio buttons for each of the tasks above. I bookmark some stuff I want to write about. It is irritating to bookmark it AND add it to my to do list. OR create a empty draft post with the link to it (this becomes overwhelmingly cluttered).

There is some stuff I bookmark that I want to read LATER. I often forget. Would be nice to login and see what has been read and what hasn’t. Bookmarking services shouldn’t equate a bookmark with having read it. Bookmarks are of course, just placemarkers.

I am finding social bookmarks to be an inefficient means to create task lists off of.

Wouldn’t it be great if my Feed Reader, Task Manager and Social Bookmarks all worked together?

So here’s an idea for someone, anyone. Name the service PlaceMarker. Create a Feed Reader, Task Manager and Social Bookmarker that works together. Posts I read in my feed reader can not only be flagged or tagged but ALSO added to my Task Manager for some action to be done later (either read it or blog about it). Likewise, items I bookmark would work the same.

It is time to start integrating some of these apps – FRSBIM (freeze-bim).

[tags]social+bookmarking,feed+reader,task+manager, tasks, bookmarks, rss, feeds,to+do[/tags]

Is there a universal symbol for an Atom feed?

Several months ago, a symbol was introduced to represent all RSS feeds:

Does such a symbol exist for Atom feeds?

RSS Marketing Blog Review

The posts maybe few and far between, but each post on this blog packs a punch.

For those interested in getting the most out of their RSS feeds, this is the place to start.

Topics covered include:

• RSS Publishing
• RSS Marketing
• RSS and SEO

For the beginner, a site like this casts a vision for what is possible, a benchmark to work towards.

If one takes the time to look through the archives there is a wealth of information: What is RSS?, How to create a RSS Feed, Using RSS feeds, etc.

Even for advanced users, the RSS Marketing blog is a must read for keeping up with the world of RSS.

[tags]rss, marketing[/tags]

Einfo the new name for RSS…maybe

Copyblogger posted this morning about the difficulties the term RSS faces as it is introduced to the general public.

I have read similar posts across the web. There seems to be a growing discontent with the term. This site tries to be geared towards beginners. So thinking like a beginner this morning, I understood how RSS is indeed a clumsy term. It is not like email which people soon understood as electronic mail.

I commented on the post above and threw out a few suggestions like “enews”, “efeature”, “estory”. However all these are clumsy as well. The term I like the best from my initial brainstorm is “einfo”.

Einfo – electronic info. Information that is yours now. Info could be a press release, a highway closing alert, a blog post, a news story, anything that RSS can be and could be used for. And instead of a Feed Reader they would become Info Readers: read the information you want in the way you want it.

We live in the information society. We need a way to process that information easily and efficiently as information consumers. Einfo (RSS) is the way we can organize and read the information that is important to us.

Use RSS? Fill out this RSS Marketing Survey

The folks over at marketingstudies.net are conducting a survey of RSS use. Whether you are a casual or serious user of RSS technologies, I suggest you mosey over and give them your feedback. Include your email address with your response and you will receive a copy of the results.

RSS Marketing Survey

[tags]rss, marketing[/tags]

Changes at Pingomatic

As I mentioned in the previous post, pingomatic had some overload issues at the beginning of this year. Performance was getting spotty. Well, as of one week ago, they have new hardware and should see more stable and consistent performance. I have switched back to pingomatic and see how things go.

WordPress users automatically use pingomatic as the default ping service.

Changes over at Pingoat

Some readers may be using Pingoat as their main ping service. Changes are afloat at Pingoat that you should be aware of. First, pingoat was sold. Second, the new owners plan some changes. According to their blog the changes will be the following:

1. We will have to stop all the free offsite API usage of the pingoat.com service.

2. We will keep the free onsite service of course. The pinging service will always be free at the website itself.

3. We will create a paid membership for the offline use of our service. This membership will have other services and bonuses. These will be announced later.

4. More than likely we will create an affiliate program where the members can actually make money.

I am not quite sure how to interpret #1. Does that mean if I automatically ping their RPC server from within my bloggin app that this won’t be allowed anymore unless I pay? I am interpreting it this way since the second sentence of point 2 states that “the pinging service will always be free AT THE WEBSITE ITSELF.” (emphasis mine)

Earlier this year I had switched to pingoat from pingomatic because the latter was suffering from hardware/overload issues. But alas, it looks like I will be switching back, not only because of the news above, but because of changes over at Pingomatic (which is the subject of my next post!)

Using Spacebar to Read News in Feedlounge

I have been using Feedlounge for the last month and while I knew it had keyboard shortcuts I had not, up until now, used them.

Hitting the spacebar does two things: marks an item as read and scrolls the page to the full view of the next item. Ok, I can forget about using my mouse to click!

How cool and simple is that. Especially in a web app!

[tags]feedlounge, rss reader[/tags]

Icons for RSS Feeds

FeedIcons has developed a zip file full of RSS feed icons. Since the Firefox logo for RSS has become the standard icon for feeds, Matt over at Feedicons did us all a favor by providing the logo in a variety of formats and sizes. He also provides grayscale versions that can be colorized to suit ones own web site. Below is an example of the icon:

[tags]rss, feed, icons[/tags]

Feedlounge RSS Reader Review

There are generally two species of RSS Readers. Web based readers (Bloglines, Pluck, Rojo, Newsgator) provide the ability to read RSS content via a web browser. Client readers (Abilon, FeedDemon) are RSS applications that are installed locally on a PC. The two main goals of RSS Readers has been 1) the ability to read content from any computer and maintain individualized settings and 2) provide a quality reading experience and user interface.

Web based readers made it easy for users to stay in tune with their subscribed content via any computer with an Internet connection. However, a large problem has been has been speed. Also, some of these interfaces were clunky at best.

Client readers excelled at providing a quality reading experience. They are fast and the interface is “pretty”. However, the downside is their inability to be used from computer to computer.

There have been several attempts to marry both goals. The Newsgator/FeedDemon partnership allowed users to get the best of both worlds. Users could use the speedier client, yet could still keep up on the their content (which was synched to their client reader) via the Newsgator website while away from their main computer. Pluck integrates a “client” within the actual browser while maintaining a web based reader. Blogbridge installs a lite java client on any machine accessing it and synchs them together via their web server.

I mention all of this to say that I believe a more perfect marriage of those two goals has been met in Feedlounge.

I admit I was skeptical while waiting for the public release. When it was finally released last week, I wasn’t incredibly impressed. It looked pretty much like any other RSS Reader.

However, it took a day of playing around with it to truly begin to understand how different it was from the rest of the crowd. Feedlounge is a web based reader with a fast and pretty interface.

• Web based. It can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. Read some posts at work, and pick up at home with no problem.
• Nothing to download. There is absolutely nothing to download with Feedlounge. No browser integration, no lite client, no full client.
• Speed. Unlike other web based readers which have to refresh the browser with almost every single action, there is none of that with Feedlounge. It behaves like a full client. One forgets it is actually a web application.
• Speed. I mention this again because it is so important!!! It is quick. Actions are performed quickly. Content appears quickly.
• Automatically Updates. Feedlounge goes out and updates content on a regular basis. While leaving the browser open, users can do other tasks and return to Feedlounge to find new content ready to be read without having to refresh the browser.
• Post Title URL’s are the actual permalink. In a few RSS readers, especially web based ones, the Post Title URL is actually the readers own redirect to the permalink. It is not the permalink itself. In Feedlounge, the link IS the permalink. A simple right click and Copy Shortcut and the URL can be snagged. No need to actually visit the post page and then grab the correct URL.
• Three Ways to view the news. Two Column Split, Three Column, or River of News. Personally I like the River of News.
• Clarity of functionality. Buttons are labeled clearly. Nothing is hidden or buried.
• Organization is based on tags. Feeds themselves can be tagged to create the “directory” structure. Posts can be tagged in separate filing system.
• Posts can be flagged to be read later.
• Feeds are updated based on the average time between posts. Some feeds will update every 30 mins. Some will update every day. Some every few days.
• The interface is “pretty”: easy to use, nice to look at. I would possibly change the font.
• Inserted pictures are clear. There is little distortion of picture or text (its not perfect, but this is generally true).
• Speed (yes I mention it again). For the professional who has lots of feeds to keep on top of, the speed of Feedlounge will be the biggest asset.

The one downside is the cost. I questioned this in a previous post. The cost is $5/month. There will be a free version offered at some point. So for the beginner, it is best to hold off until the free version is released. For the advanced power user, sign up now, and give it a test run. While the $5/month will occur automatically, users can cancel anytime. Again, for the power user, it is worth the initial $5 to test it out.

Features I would like to see:

• Feed AutoDiscovery Simply enter a URL and Feedlounge can locate the feed. No need to have the exact feed URL. Along with this, remove the need to enter http:// at the beginning of a URL.
• Ability to change the font. Some fonts are easier to read than others. Readability is subjective however. Giving users the ability to change fonts allows them to choose a level of comfortable readability.
• Smart Feeds take a collection of feeds, filter the collection by keyword to produce a new feed. This is useful not only for sorting out content, but also has applications for feed republishing.

Feedlounge has had its share of bug reports in its first days. However, a huge amount of credit needs to go to the Feedlounge team for being prepared. There is a forum for bug reporting and general discussion about Feedlounge. There is a very helpful FAQ. I can tell that they have taken every effort to be prepared for the release. It shows. What shows as well is their dedication to fixing bugs that users have reported. I had written down a few bugs yesterday. Others, obviously, had already reported them, for by the end of the afternoon today, I noticed several were already fixed.

Look for added functionally over the coming year. In a crowded market, it can be hard to be excited about any new additions. I believe power users have something to be excited about in Feedlounge.

Findory Review

Findory is a computer generated news aggregator that offers personalization based on users reading habits.

Findory serves up headlines and descriptions in two broad categories: News and Blogs. Each of these is then broken down into typical sub-categories: politics, sports, tech, etc.

Each time a user clicks on a story to read, Findory remembers that and uses that to serve up similar type of information to the reader. Over time, Findory gets better and better at serving up content a user seems to like reading.

There are pros and cons to this approach. The big pro is being able to get more and more personalized. However I wonder if this approach would eventually limit exposure to slightly different, yet applicable content? Can I personalize myself out of being exposed to things new and different?

The key thing I enjoy about Findory is being exposed to new sites and authors. However, the number of news sources that are available is a concern. Having only used it a few days I see content consistently coming from the same sources. While I have discovered a few new goodies to put into my RSS Reader, I am wondering whether over time new providers will continually be added.

Why use Findory?

1) It is easy. One doesn’t even need to open an account as long as the cookie isn’t deleted.

2) Exposure to new authors and new sources of content.

3) Format is easy to read.

4) No pressure to ‘vote’ or bookmark or do anything. Just click and read.

In the grand scheme of news reading, a computer generated news aggregator should be part of the mix. Findory qualifies as one that users should consider adopting.

Information Aggregation Overload Recovery

Tired of information?

It gets to be too much sometimes. How is it ever possible to keep on top of it all?

It is impossible to keep on top of it all. Adding hundreds of feeds to an RSS Reader or creating user accounts for each new burgeoning social bookmarking/news aggregation website soon makes life more complicated than it need be.

Don’t even try to keep on top of it all. Rather, simply read that which meets certain self-defined criteria.

Here are a few thoughts on sorting through the morass.

Computer Generated Information Aggretation

Google News is a prime example of computer generated information aggregation. Just sit back and let it display news of interest. Of course, this content can be massaged to a user’s liking. By personalizing Google News, users can enter keywords that Google News will search for and then return stories of interest for that topic. There are other similar sites, like Topix, Findory or even the new Memeorandum. Though the latter is not personalizable. The key to personalization is keeping the focus narrow. Widening the focus will open the floodgates of information again.

Community Generated Information Aggregation

Social bookmarking is a form of community generated information aggregation. It is a great way to see what people find interesting and a great way to learn about new things. However, there are now way too many social bookmarking sites available. Choose one and stick with it.

Sites like Digg are another form of community aggregation. Users can submit sites (sorta like social bookmarks, but not really) and other users ‘vote’ on each site bumping it up in the Digg listings.

Individual Generated Information Aggregation

RSS Readers allow individual readers to add numerous RSS feeds of interest. The problem however is when the number grows too large. The key to effective use of an RSS reader is two fold. One is self-editing. Play the role of newspaper editor and begin deleting feeds that are no longer of interest or newsworthy. It ok, you have my permission to hit the delete button. Second, and not all readers have this feature, is a ‘smart feed’ feature. While it is nice to have 100 feeds, it is would be nicer to set up keyword searches on those feeds. A separate feed is generated for that keyword search. Another way for RSS Readers to tackle this is having a better set of filters.

In order to put some sane controls on news intake, I recommend the following recipe for news/infomration gathering:

1 computer generated aggregation site – Keep it sane. Choose only up to 5 topics of interest.

1 community generated aggregation site – in particular, just one social bookmarking site.

1 RSS Reader with a self imposed limit on the number of feeds entered. It may be 25, 50 or 100. Set a number. Once that number is met, no feeds can be added until another one is deleted.

Improved WordPress RSS Feeds

The Better Feed WordPress plugin has been just the thing I have been looking for to improve the value of my RSS feed and to provide higher user interaction between my feed and my website.

RSS feed readers and web surfers are truly two different audiences. I have been looking for ways to help feed readers interact more with the main website. With this plugin I am able to add the following three lines to the bottom of my feed:

• The first line contains a copyright notice, a link to the permalink, and a link to any comments.
• Each feed reader is different. While all link back to the original post, the link is often encoded with their own linking structure. Including a straight, pure permalink allows users to easily copy the link without any included garbage.
• The comments link indicates how many comments have been placed on the post. Before, if a reader was curious whether anyone has left a comment, they needed to actually go out to the original post and look. Now, they can easily see if any are there. If they are interested in reading the comments, they can easily click to them.
• The second line includes links to bookmark the post via del.icio.us or Spurl. This not only serves the reader by providing them a means to easily bookmark a post, but can also lead to extra traffic. Every time a page of mine gets bookmarked on delicious or spurl I see a tiny bump in traffic. Tiny bumps mean extra exposure. Extra exposure means potentially more readers. Etc.!
• The third line includes the following statement “Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under (link to category).” The category is filled in with whatever category I have placed the post. If the reader wants to know about about a topic, it is easy for them to do so.

I am also toying with the idea of adding a “featured article” line. I would link to a monthly featured article on my site. I think having three extra lines per post is enough. So before I add a fourth line, I will wait and see how well the current lines perform.

If you want to see this plugin in action, add my feed to your RSS reader! (wink wink!)

Anxiously Awaiting Feedlounge

I think I have forgotten why I have been looking forward to Feedlounge‘s beta release. I guess it is because I am still looking for the bigger and better online RSS feed reader and aggregator. After a long wait, there is finally a beta release date: January 16th, 2006. The bummer, though, is that the first version out of the box will be the paid version. The free version will come along later. I need some marketing guru’s to chime in on this, does this make marketing sense?

Web 2.0 Tools and Applications

Want to know about emerging Web 2.0 applications? Check out eHub. eHub is a growing list of Web 2.0 applications. There is some cool stuff on there. A cursory glance over the list and I realize I have not heard of the majority of the tools. Well, at least not yet.

Pingoat Review

Pingoat is a service that pings/notifies other blog services sites. Do we need another one of these?

The two major advantages that Pingoat “may” hold over others are the number of services it pings (just around 50) and the international scope of those services.

Since I am a WordPress user, I use Ping-o-matic to provide my pinging services. I have reviewed Ping-o-matic elsewhere. For the sake of this review, I will be comparing Pingoat to Ping-o-matic.

Currently Pingoat pings 54 services, while Ping-o-matic pings 20. The higher number does not necessarily mean it is better. All twenty services that Ping-o-matic pings are pinged by Pingoat. That is good for Pingoat. Since, my WordPress is set up to ping Ping-o-matic automatically with every post, I used the Pingoat web interface to ping the 34 other services that are not pinged by Ping-o-matic (I didn’t want to double ping). All but two pinged successfully. Two (2) failing out of thirt-four (34) is not bad. There could be any number of reasons they failed. In about an hour, I had posted again on my blog and used Pingoat again to ping those 34 other services. “Oopsie! You cant ping so often. Give pingoat some rest!” was the error I received. For those who post often, this is a problem. Even if only two posts are made a day but they are made close together, the second one would not be able to ping the services.

The 34 other services pinged by Pingoat are more international in flavor. There are several Spanish, Japanese, and German sites. These sites exist in their native languages. Will pinging a post on my English based site be of value on a site that not only is written entirely in Japanese but probably used by users whose primary language is that as well? My gut tells me that it would not be of much value.

Take Feeds4all as a counter example. It is a Dutch site that is written in English. International, but still relevant for my English based website. I can use Feeds4all to reach English speaking Dutch.

It may work to the Pingoats advantage if the services were divided according to language. In the end, that may serve Pingoat’s users better. Plus, adding English-based International websites like Feeds4all would be a great way to add additional value.

While I think in the end Pingoat doesn’t offer much more than Ping-o-matic for the average English based website, I am impressed that the site was developed by an 18 yr old. Check out his other work here.

Before I leave this review, I must address the issue of the name and tagline. Pingoat is short for Ping Goat, and a goat adorns the website as its logo. “Its not the usual mehehe” is the tagline. Since I am not from Southern India, the joke or reference or nuance of both the logo and the tagline is lost on me.

Blog Flux Review

Blog Flux is a new blog directory that offers five kinds of services:

Blog Directory
Button Maker
PageRank Checker
Pinger
Subscription Service

Overall, there are several things I like about this site. First off, the design is very clean and simple. A lot of blog directories look cluttered and often have HTML wrapping problems. I have not found such problems with Blog Flux. Second, everything is easy. Sign up is easy, finding blogs in the directory is easy, etc. This two items alone could set Blog Flux apart.

With that said, I would recommend that they do something to spruce up their home page. It is TOO clean. The home page consists of five links to the services listed above. Thats it. It would behoove them to make their homepage a place that explains their services. It can still be clean and simple. As it stands now, users are essentially faced with a bare page. Not good.

The Blog Directory contains just under 1500 blogs. Yes, this directory is still in its infancy. Users can find blogs via category, tags, search, language or country. Like mentioned above, viewing every page is a pleasant experience, even the Blog Information page. Everything is very tidy. The information page includes a short description of the blog, categories the blog can be found in within the directory, tags attached to the blog, links to syndicate the blog in your favorite aggregator (very handy), the five latest posts (very helpful), and a place that users can place comments about the blog.

The one problem with the directory is that a lot of blogs submitted themselves to EVERY category. Major problem. This lessens the usefulness of the directory. It would be better if blog owners were limited to submitting their blog to just 3 or 4 categories. The future of any directory depends on its usefulness. If I click on the Genealogy category and find nothing that truly relates to genealogy, what good is that? Having a neat and clean interface can not overcome this issue.

Blog Flux includes its own blog subscription service. Subscribing to blogs within the directory will add them to your own personal repository. Blog Flux will email any new items found on those blogs. I guess this depends on the user. Some prefer an RSS Reader, others may prefer seeing news items in their email. I prefer the former.

Blug Flux also includes a Ping service. However, it does not serve as many sites as Ping-o-matic does.

The Button Maker and Page Rank Checker are both worth checking out but I will cover those in seperate reviews.

Is submitting to Blog Flux worth it? I am for as many possible sources of traffic as possible. However, there are some concerns about the usefulness of the directory which may make its current usefulness shortlived. Submit now, and hopefully they will correct some of the issues I mentioned above.

Use MyYahoo Tip with Google and MSN

Do you know the tip about getting a website crawled by Yahoo? In brief, by adding a website’s RSS feed to MyYahoo, Yahoo will crawl the parent site. It is how this site got quickly crawled by Yahoo.

Now that Google and MSN have their own News/Feed Aggregators, maybe the same will hold true for them. It is easy enough to test out.

Google calls their aggregator Personalized Home. A Google account is required to access. Once signed up, click the “Add Content” link in the upper left corner. Click “Create a Section”. Add the URL to the feed in the text box. Click Go. The feed will now be added. Whether you continue to use Google as your News Aggregator is up to you.

MSN’s News Aggregator is called Start. No account is needed to sign up. Clicking the Start logo drops down a list of options. Click My Feeds. Click Add Feed. Enter the URL to the feed in the Add Feed By Url text box. Click Add.

Sidenote: Start is cookie based. Once a browser cache is cleared the “personalization” and all entered feeds are lost to the user. This calls into question whether it should be used for what it is intended.

I would be interested in hearing if new sites that are not currently crawled by Google or MSN get crawled more quickly once their feed is added.

via Robin Good

Feeds4All Review

Yes, another blog directory. However, judging by my own server logs, this directory is actively used.

Feeds4All offers all the basics a directory should. Blogs and feeds are categorized. Users may search by category or by searching for keywords. A keyword search finds relevant articles within the feeds, not feeds that are about that topic.

The search results return a brief description of the article with several links. There is a link to the original source, a link to that sources RSS feed, and a link to the Feeds4all’s Feed Information Page. The Feed Information Page displays details about the feed: title, last date updated (very handy), etc. The page also includes the last twenty posts from the feed. This is very helpful. It helps users determine whether a feed should be subscribed too or whether just an interesting article should be bookmarked. This saves users from having to go out and visit the site itself.

Feeds4all allows users to create a feed based on search criteria. This feed is generated in RSS and in Javascript. Feeds4all allows users to post these feeds on their own website. I would add that the Terms of Service offered by Feeds4All is weak. Republishing feeds on websites is an area where very little has been written. Republish Feeds4All feeds according to their disclaimer, but note that the terms may change.

Feeds4all is based in the Netherlands and does seem to cater more to the European crowd judging by the feeds that get submitted. However, I am seeing a fair amount of traffic from them and would definitely put Feeds4all on the “must submit my feed to” list.

Why all these reviews of RSS sites? I plan to develop an article about the top 25 RSS resources for beginners. It is taking some time, because there are a lot of sites out there. I only write a written review of those worth mentioning. I have had to weed through a lot of chaff. I will post when I have found and completed my top 25 round up.

Turn Google News into RSS Feed with Grouper

Below are examples of using Grouper to turn Google News into an RSS Feed.

The first example simple uses Grouper in default mode. Grouper uses Google News by default.

<?php
require_once ‘/home/recommen/grouper/grouper.php’;
GrouperShow(‘”search terms”‘);
?>

The search terms have double quotes around them to perform an exact phrase search.
See my post on the simple default use of Grouper for more information on accessing the generated feed.

This second example explicitly calls the Google News function. This is available in the free version of Grouper.

<?php
require_once ‘/home/recommen/grouper/grouper.php’;
GrouperConf(‘source’,'google’);
GrouperShow(‘”search terms”‘);
?>

The third example calls the Google News function as a plugin. This is available only in the paid Grouper Evolution version.

<?php
require_once ‘/home/recommen/grouper/grouper.php’;
GrouperLoadPlugin(‘google.php’);
GrouperShow(‘”chicago crime”‘);
?>

See my other posts about Grouper for further help.

Using the GrouperShow function within Grouper

GrouperShow is used to fetch and display a news feed. This should not be used to make pretty displays of the news feed. It will simply generate the xml sturcture and display it as such (some browsers will even display it without line breaks)

The GrouperShow command requires at least a search term string. There are three optional settings for GrouperShow.

GrouperShow (searchterms [,cachefile, [,showit[,fromcache]]]);

searchterms

terms need to be placed in either single ticks or double ticks ie both ‘fishing’ and “fishing” will work. Searching for phrases is also possible. “chicago crime” or ‘chicago crime’ are valid. Note that this will complete an “all of the word” search. To execute an exact phrase search, the phrase needs to be put in double quotes, then this is surrounded by single quotes.’”chicago crime”‘

GrouperShow(‘chicago crime’); — all of the words search
GrouperShow(‘”chicago crime”‘); — exact phrase search

cachefile: The name of the cache file of the RSS newsfeed. It is highly suggested that this be left blank until all decisions have been made about the use/format of the feed. In the end, setting up the cache file will speed up the display. However, it wil cause a few grey hairs if development is still proceeding. If a cache file is named, the cache file is displayed when the feed is called. This can cause frustration when changes are made and they do not show up immediately. The reason? The cache is displayed.

The name of a cache file can be anything. Do no use spaces. Just use a name, no path is necessary. By default Grouper saves the cache in the rsscache folder. examples: mycache, my_cache, fishing, fishing_europe, etc.
The name should be unique from other feeds that have been created.

Why Cache?

Speed.

showit: Not setting this option/leaving it blank will display the updated cache file AND display results. Setting the option to 0 (zero) will make Grouper update the cache file but it will NOT display the results. Why use this setting? Set the arugument to 0(zero) if using CaRP or another means to display the Grouper feed on a website.

fromcache: used in conjunction with GrouperCache. GrouperCache saves results in a cache file. this option will display the results from that cache. Specify the name of the cache created while using GrouperCache.

Examples:

GrouperShow(“fishing”);

GrouperShow(“fishing”,”myfishingfeed”);

GrouperShow(“fishing”,”myfishingfeed”,0);
this would be the equivalent of GrouperCache(“fishing”,”myfishingfeed”);

GrouperShow(“fishing”,”myfishingfeed”,0,”thatotherfishingfeed”);

GrouperShow(“”,”myfishingfeed”,0,”thatotherfishingfeed”);

My Spurls

On my Web Resources Page I have added a list of my fifteen most recently Spurled (bookmarked) webpages. I will be spurling webpages that I feel might be helpful to RWT readers. There is a link as well to my Spurl feed. Add the feed to your RSS Reader to easily keep track of what I have been spurling.

Bloggernity Review

Bloggernity is another Blog Directory/Blog Search Engine.

Other than the directory and search capabilities there is no feature that truly distinguishes it from other blog directories. However, I have received a little bit of traffic from the site. That, in itself, is worth the time to submit your site.