Hummingbird Mentality

Techcrunch has an article up on the state of online feed readers, which I think are as interesting for what they lacks as what they include. None of the feed readers reviewed seem to have feed grazer functionality. That is to say, while most will import and export OPML, none allow the direct surfing of publicly available OPML feeds (with inclusions). Each web based feed reader seems, to a greater or lesser extent, to be attempting to create a proprietary RSS walled garden.

Tech Crunch have a nice little graphic table, indicating the capacities of the existing web based services. Lets see if I can go one better, and look at the capabilities of future methods of RSS aggregation. There are several potential methods of aggregating RSS content, and I’ve tried to consider them all. Open up the screenshot below, apologies for the size, but it should just fit in a firefox tab at 1024*768. Take a gander then continue below.

Welcome back. Astute readers will notice that what I’ve described as a feed syndicator does not yet exist. It would contain elements of an online OPML editor a la OPML Manager, or OPML editor; elements of social bookmarking like Del.icio.us; media support like a podcatcher, and could optionally include social networking or even P2P elements (but that’s for another day).
The important part is, that as well as providing an additional social navigation paradigm, which could (depending on implimentation) make possible the navigation and summation of many more RSS feeds than is currently practical, remove the need for separate podcatcher applications (at least for those 80% of us who are not transfering content to portable devices), such a model would break down the walled gardens created by current RSS aggregation models.

In the feed syndicator model, the aggregation is two way, with user or service hosted, user modifiable OPML feeds providing the basis for both live aggregation and sydication. With countless potential methods of collecting and navigating feeds (check out Rowen Nairn’s OPod for the first steps toward one), there’s room for many such feed syndicators, whether at the browser, extention or web level, all interoperable via RSS and OPML.

Link: Previous Post on the future of the browser.

Couple of awesome little titbits before I hit the hay. Warren Ellis, to my mind one of the ten greatest writers to pen a comic, has lent his blessing to an unsolicited upload of one episode of his best loved series, ‘Transmetropolitan‘. If you’ve never tasted the goodness that is Spider Jerusalem’s laying open the guts of the world to sniff the entrails (to mix a metaphor to horrific effect), then I guarantee you are missing out. Check out the scans here.

I’ve integrated the flawed but brilliant Gabbley into dbspin.com. Gabbley is a client which allows you to add real time chat to any website, simple by surfing to http://gabbly.com/yoururl.com, using any supported browser (Opera and older versions of Firefox and IE are currently out). At the moment Gabbley suffers from a number of drawbacks, for example no user accounts, but remains a fun and easy way to quickly add a live element to any site. For aesthetic reasons I’ve integrated it into a page, and you can get there by following the Live Chat link on the right of this site. I’ll try to keep a tab open any time I’m online and free to chat. One warning though, there’s no way to be certain you’re talking to me, so use your head!

Update: I’ve removed Gabbley support from this site. Nothing against the service, I’ve just decided real time chat blog integration isn’t for me.

Simon McGarr of Digital Right Ireland fame, asked me to write a piece explaining the hideously compelling phenomena that is Bebo, for his webzine ‘Tuppenceworth.ie. You can find the article here.

Also DRI have finally gotten around to sticking up a video of the talk that Suw Charman of the UK ‘Open Rights Group‘ gave on digital rights in TCD several weeks ago. She’s a fascinating speaker, and was kind enough to come on Technolotics the following day. You can find the video of her TCD talk here.

CoComment, the new service which provides a unified place to collect a feed of your blog comments through a bookmarklet which ‘co-comments’ your conversations, have finally added retrospective commenting. This is perfect for users like me who don’t have a home terminal, and frequently can’t install bookmarklets. The feature allows users to go back and restrospectively tag comments they could catch at the time of posting, and will hopefully make it a lot easier, and more worthwhile, to comment on blog postings from now on.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could access an OPML of your del.icio.us tags? This would let you navigate del.icio.us feeds not as lists of links, but as tag defined outlines. Danny Ayers has already created a neat mashup, using a del.icio.us to OPML xsl, and the W3C XSLT parser to create del.icio.us reading lists. But this only hints at the flexibility which would come from OPML navigation of del.icio.us user tag clouds.

……………

Update: Dan at Yabfog has done this at a local level, which proves its practicability, all that remains is for del.icio.us or a third party to provide this functionality as a live service.

……………

More: EirePreneur points out another method, making a static del.icio.us dump through OPML Utils. Right now it just creates an flat li.st of links, but a new version due soon intends to outline by tag.

Recently I posted about layering (for the most part dynamically generated) OPML atop the existing web. Turns out people have been doing the opposite, creating sites built from the ground up using the outline structure of OPML to implicitly define and manage content hierarchically. Check out this article posted by OPML creator Dave Winer, written way back in 2002.

I think I just got it. For the past few weeks I’ve been puzzling over what the OPML, RSS, AJAX alphabet soup will ultimately end up tasting like.
I’ve intuited for a long time that the whole gestalt is far more significant than most programmers or technology commentators realise; and of far more ultimate utility than as a succinct method of information categorisation. I now realise, OPML (or an OPML like outliner standard in XML) underlies the future of both the browser and the web.

Firefox 3, or its equivalent, won’t function primarily as a traditional link / url -> page display browser, rather, users will navigate through outline directory trees to reach their ultimate content destination – which may be any of a whole variety of open document types, inclusive of audio, video, and traditional text / graphic / interaction models.
Nodes will be linked dynamically, and updated at numerous trusted hubs (the del.icio.us’s of tomorrow). Such links will create sub webs, navigable and discoverable through reputation systems, tagging and recommendations.
Further, users will not merely navigate such OPML trees laterally, but through any of a whole variety of interface paradigms.

Where today each link on a site sits in relative isolation, the browser of tomorrow will aggregate all links on a given page in real time, construct and meaningfully ‘geographically’ categorise link feeds, which will provide both an additional outliner navigation layer, and a new means of scanning the content laid out within a document. This will be the hardest element to get right, as it departs most radically from out the web works today. My guess is that the ultimate solution will be something like newsvine, dynamically constructed, parsed through link, feed, and generator templates (e.g.: blogging engine, CMS) from any given page site or outliner – both in real time by the browser, and by next generation sitemaps (in reality linkmaps). Think google news, for every site on the web (and its linked sub pages and sites).
Todays feed grazers could be the templates for tomorrows browsers. Such browsing paradigms may finally provide an advantage for three dimentional interfaces – though my guess is two dimensions will remain more comprehensible and intuitive.

A few more interface ideas before I lay down the crystal ball. Pre-cached feed branches displayed as graphical document previews in a mouse over ‘mind map’. A home feed bucket which rises from the browser bottom to catch feeds, pages and documents dragged and dropped (think OS X’s dock, with icons representing not programmes, but outlines in your home OPML). Or how about a dynamically generated zooming interface like Jeff Raskins Archy project.

The best part is, such novel methods of navigation could be implemented today in AJAX as proof of concept, sitting on top of the web as a hotkeyed interface, which is arguable what the Flock guys are positioning themselves to do; but ultimately such technologies are unlikely to be fast enough to produce a robust solution.

Inspired by Tom Raferty’s recent interview with EirePreneur’s James Corbett at the Irish Blog Awards, I’ve been messing around with OPML this evening. OPML is an ‘xml format for outlines‘, in laymans terms a sort of meta-feed, allowing the consolidation of URI’s and RSS Feeds.

As we all gradually transition from getting our news and information from a series of site visits, to subscribing to tailored feeds of postings, postcasts, vidcasts and media streams, methods of rapidly, accurately, and inclusively navigating the morass of information will become increasingly important.
Already I’m finding it difficult to track my feeds through a unified single window web service. There are lots of alternatives: Netvibes, and Page Flakes will allow you to keep a live front page of headlines - but pageflakes cant yet browse deeper into the feed, and netvibes takes up too much space displaying headlines to allow more than a dozen feeds to be easily tracked.
Bloglines allows you to create a publically accessible page listing all your feeds (check), and lets you easily keep track of numerous feeds (check) - but won’t display storys linked by enclosure clips within the ‘frame’ of its interface. No (online) service yet seems to be everything I’m looking for; essentially a less ugly version of Feed Show, which lets me offer a public front end, eats its feed live from my own ompl XML, and can display audio and video content (ideally with live conversion to flash) - why should I have to log in just to read my feeds, and shouldn’t I also be able to easily present a link to them on my website?

None the less, aggregating feeds has gotten easier. With a service like OPML Manager, you can (for the moment painstakingly) create an opml feed containing all your RSS and URL links, ready to be thrown into the feedgrazers which are almost ready for prime time.

Thanks to OPML Manager, and the insanely cool OPOD javascript OPML viewer widget, you can now view my opml feeds live on this site (see sidebar - below Digicasts) [Link via Eirepreneur!].

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about setting up a Trinity Digicast Society. This society would have a three pronged focus. One, facilitating the student production of blogs, podcasts and vidcasts. Two, providing learning opportunities for students interests in media production, citizen media, and digicasting in general. Three, Digial Rights Advocacy.

I’ve thrown some very initial ideas onto my wiki, contributions welcome!

Justin Hall is a fascinating character. One of the pioneers of blogging, and amongst the first to see the potential of the web as a truly interactive medium - a hyper enhancement of human communication, and an experiment in group consciousness. This view, long considered naive and vaguely communist, is once again returning to vogue - even John C. Dvorak, that arch cynic, wrote recently advocating the “do it yourself” nature of web2.0 communities and services. Hall, currently attending a graduate interactive media course at USC, has launched a research blog focusing on interaction, gaming and the web. For my money its as compelling and informative a read as Malcolm Gladwell’s blog.

This weeks technolotics is out. We appear to be having some irresolvable (or rather undiscoverable) problem with the audio RSS feed; if you’re having difficulties getting the show - please mail me, and download the show directly from Technolotics.com.