Google Reader | Croncast - Life is Show Prep

Bundle of flowers or bale of hay?

Sat, 23 May 2009 10:05:19 -0400

I am trying to be cute here. After testing out the Google Reader Bundle feature yesterday I came to the quick conclusion that it is a step in the right direction but closer to a bale of hay than a bundle of flowers.

Do you know what goes into a bale of hay? I learned in my years of small town living . . . a 100 plus pounds of unorganized hay and two brown pieces of twine. They're heavy as hell to lift from the bailer, the machine that scrapes up the hay from the field, and only those with the patience to wear long sleeves, jeans and gloves in 90 degree heat are allowed the privilege of participating while they are fresh.

Google Reader's Bundle feature has more similarities to this analogy than I would care to admit. And, yes, when I demoed it I made sure to put on a flannel shirt, Lee jeans and some mittens - the closest thing I now own to leather workman's gloves.

So, here's what I've got for you - there's plenty of room for improvement.

People don't want whole feeds combined to make one massive feed filled with content from the highest level filter that exists, publishers. Well, maybe they do if that is all that you offer. Granular access to content isn't the Holy Grail or what is next . . . it is simply how it should be.

And besides, there have been utilities to combine feeds like this for years. Do you know any of these product names beyond Yahoo Pipes? Remembering Pipes is easy because the last time you used it you told yourself you would never do it again.

A Google Reader Bundle has a web page and a feed . . . an Atom feed, not an RSS feed. Enough said here, it needs a RSS feed. The Atom feed itself is missing critical meta data like title, description, pub date, source, feed item origin, publisher, etc.

As a publisher, my concerns about this initial release of the bundle feature are the missing RSS feed and the lack of associated meta data for the content that makes the bundle. Which begs the next question of what metric is available to know how much additional syndication my content is getting once it has entered the Google Reader Bundle ecosystem? Currently there isn't one that is publicly available and I would venture to say that not for a very long time, if ever, there will be one offered.

With some more work Google can bring new features and hopefully a full set of tools that users and publishers can both use. But in this current state it is still in an insular silo of Google user nerdom. Yes, it still is a walled garden of content, of sharing and privileged consumption. It is a bale of hay.

Tags: Google Reader Bundle RSS feeds bale of hay Atom feeds

Think differently about RSS and its uses

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:18:54 -0400

It's been quite a while since I wrote a blog post and it was time to get down with the reality that some things can't be said in 140 characters or less.

Over the weekend, as some of you may of you noticed, I live photo blogged my Saturday afternoon date with Betsy and our trip to Goodwill. For me it was a time to watch Betsy as she navigated her adopted habitat and to see her operate in a way that is far from the norm in our everyday lives.

I knew this was going to be an interesting experience. Why not share it in as many ways as possible (distribution to: Flickr, Twitter, blog and RSS) with as many people as possible? One input with multiple outputs across the various Croncast audiences.

Making it happen is a lot easier than you think with email and RSS.

First. it is the camera phone that takes decent photos. Second, is the phones ability to send email with photo attachments. Third, is a place to email the photos that has an RSS feed or other API connectivity to other applications. Tons of sites like Flickr, Seesmic and Tumblr offer these and can even do some of the distribution for you. Get these three things in place and sharing your experiences in near real-time has never been easier.

Currently, it does take a little more skill to distribute the photos to Twitter. However, if you get creative you can breathe life into photos that wouldn't normally have existed after it was consumed/viewed in a photo sharing site or through an RSS reader. It is worth the effort to figure this out, it's the next stage of content distribution online.

How do I know? Google Reader shared feeds are the perfect example. Typically once someone reads a post in their reader it has reached the end of the line. But if someone shares it with Google Reader it then gets added to the individual users shared RSS feed and resyndicated. A new life for that content. The same goes for photos that end up in Flickr or a Flickr RSS feed.

In my case, live photo blogging and my ability to cast a wider net wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Flickr RSS feed from my account. It is the magic API that feeds (pun intended) the river of resyndication that allows me to give that new life to our content.

Here's how it goes down:

1. Upload photo from phone to Flickr with subject line used as image title
2. In the body under the photo begin with an asterisk (*) if I want the photo, title and description to be a blog post also
3. In the body under the photo begin with a carat (^) if I want the title and a link to be a tweet
4. Add both asterisk and carat (*^) for blog and twitter
5. A PHP script grabs the Flickr RSS feed and reads it for asterisks and carats every two minutes and sends the photo, title and description where it needs to go
6. If it goes to the blog the title and description will be run through a keyword generations script
7. If it goes to Twitter only the title is sent and a shortened url is created to link to the photo

What all of this does is allow me to create multiple channels of distribution that can reach the different audiences that follow us. There is a bit of overlap with multiple audience members subscribed to the same services but quite a few are not. We have the Twitter audience, the blog audience, the flickr audience and the RSS audience. We also have our podcast audience but they are not really a part of this type of delivery

Summary: Look for ways to utilize sites like Flickr as a content management portal, if even from your mobile phone, to cast a wider net across your network. Work to find that one point of contact that has the lowest threshold for allowing you to get your media and thoughts online with the ability to resyndicate your content without having to lift a finger. Well, too many fingers. And make sure that it has an RSS feed!

Tags: flickr live photo blogging RSS as API seesmic tumblr twitter

Google Reader shared feeds getting tweaked

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:00:32 -0500

This afternoon I noticed something funny happening with Google Reader shared feeds. It seems that feeds are now mixing namespaces for the main content of the posts.

Previously all content was delivered via the 'summary' namespace but when I did a check after getting some null data fields I took a look at the shared feed and sure enough there was a new namespace, 'content' for the main content. Makes sense. But it is a pain if you are expecting everything to be returned as 'summary'.

My guess is that they are saving time and money by not rewriting the original source feed main content namspace. However, it creates an XML namespace soup that is harder to navigate.

When stuff like this happens it makes me nervous, especially when I am building something on the back of it.

The last time this happened Twitter turned off pagination for getting recent tweets for your friends. Killing a really cool project that I spent more time than I care to recount. I'm hoping that Google will not do the same. Fingers crossed.

Tags: Google shared feeds namespace XML soup shared RSS

Think differently about RSS and its uses

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:39:03 -0500

Over the weekend, as some of you may of you noticed, I live photo blogged my Saturday afternoon date with Betsy and our trip to Goodwill. For me it was a time to watch Betsy as she navigated her adopted habitat and to see her operate in a way that is far from the norm in our everyday lives.

I knew this was going to be an interesting experience. Why not share it in as many ways as possible (distribution to: Flickr, Twitter, blog and RSS) with as many people as possible? One input with multiple outputs across the various Croncast audiences.

Making it happen is a lot easier than you think with email and RSS.

First. it is the camera phone that takes decent photos. Second, is the phones ability to send email with photo attachments. Third, is a place to email the photos that has an RSS feed or other API connectivity to other applications. Tons of sites like Flickr, Seesmic and Tumblr offer these and can even do some of the distribution for you. Get these three things in place and sharing your experiences in near real-time has never been easier.

Currently, it does take a little more skill to distribute the photos to Twitter. However, if you get creative you can breathe life into photos that wouldn't normally have existed after it was consumed/viewed in a photo sharing site or through an RSS reader. It is worth the effort to figure this out, it's the next stage of content distribution online.

How do I know? Google Reader shared feeds are the perfect example. Typically once someone reads a post in their reader it has reached the end of the line. But if someone shares it with Google Reader it then gets added to the individual users shared RSS feed and resyndicated. A new life for that content. The same goes for photos that end up in Flickr or a Flickr RSS feed.

In my case, live photo blogging and my ability to cast a wider net wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Flickr RSS feed from my account. It is the magic API that feeds (pun intended) the river of resyndication that allows me to give that new life to our content.

Here's how it goes down:

1. Upload photo from phone to Flickr with subject line used as image title
2. In the body under the photo begin with an asterisk (*) if I want the photo, title and description to be a blog post also
3. In the body under the photo begin with a carat (^) if I want the title and a link to be a tweet
4. Add both asterisk and carat (*^) for blog and twitter
5. A PHP script grabs the Flickr RSS feed and reads it for asterisks and carats every two minutes and sends the photo, title and description where it needs to go
6. If it goes to the blog the title and description will be run through a keyword generations script
7. If it goes to Twitter only the title is sent and a shortened url is created to link to the photo

What all of this does is allow me to create multiple channels of distribution that can reach the different audiences that follow us. There is a bit of overlap with multiple audience members subscribed to the same services but quite a few are not. We have the Twitter audience, the blog audience, the flickr audience and the RSS audience. We also have our podcast audience but they are not really a part of this type of delivery

Summary: Look for ways to utilize sites like Flickr as a content management portal, if even from your mobile phone, to cast a wider net across your network. Work to find that one point of contact that has the lowest threshold for allowing you to get your media and thoughts online with the ability to resyndicate your content without having to lift a finger. Well, too many fingers. And make sure that it has an RSS feed!

Tags: live photo blogging RSS as API flickr twitter seesmic tumblr

Betsy and her husband Kris Sep 14, 2007

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:00:26 -0400

Croncast - 2007-09-14.mp3
Show: #410
Length: 34:42
Size: 23.8mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris Sep 14, 2007

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Early insert for TFF - Tell a Friend Friday
Go out and tell a friend about Croncast
We now have a way for you to even tell strangers
STICKERS! They'll be here on Tuesday
Here's what it will look like . . . inside the red area with rounded corners
To get your sticker send $2.00 support from the site or get 3 stickers for $5.00

Now to the show notes
Trescadecaphobes yesterday was the day
Today it is safe it is the 14th
It was a good 13th for me
You are on a nerd high Mr. B . . . I'm gonna let you roll
Yeah, I am stoked
I saw in Google Reader that TechCrunch 40 had 5 press/blogger passes available
Sent Jason Calacanis a message
Hour and a half later I was good to go
So thanks to Jason . . . I am really looking forward to the event
I'll crank out some podcasts
Thanks to Rick and Robin for putting me up next week
I'll get to see the solar panels
We should buy carbon credits from them
It's good to be all in Mr B
Like I said, you've got to strike while the iron is hot
Can I now tell my story, Kris
I had a creepy thing happen to me last night
I gotta thank people
I don't tell people thank you enough
You don't
I know baby
I had the best lesson taught to me by my uncle
He sent me a thank you note
Then on the back it said, "This is what a thank you not looks like."
He told you!
Betsy's problem is she buys them and writes them but just doesn't follow through
The only person that always gets them in neighbor . . . I can walk them over
So what happened on your dark night
Yeah, your creepy story . . . sorry that I asked
Get off the stage bitch
I don't have to work with anyone
I reallize that I left my purse in the bar
The drunk bouncer stops me and cuts me off
He's a drunk frat boy
Where them diet chocolate shakes at
He gets all up in my face
Sucking in my oxygen, that close
Listen, I am as old as dirt
We get into this battle of the wits
My she is fabulous . . . she is so witty
Do you know what he did?
Started crying
No, he kissed me
Silence
The most disgusting moment of my life
I know you stepped back into his personal space
So he kissed you . . . where?
My lips
I was shocked
I can't believe you are telling me now, not last night
You didn't seem to mention it
Yeah, I'm running away with the bouncer
Takes a certain type of dude to handle a lady like you
Don't take that personally
Your behavior can be interpreted different ways
I did not invade this man's space
Think of the sweet alley action he gets
I gotta tell you not a big fan of improv night or Bar Louie
I didn't expect to hear this
No, I don't find it alright to deal with
The most competent individual you can hire for $6
The score is 1 me, you 0
The reason that I have an issue with it is that I would have rumbled
I would have hit him
Really?
Notice how I said I would have hit him, not kicked his ass
Oh, Mr. B
Improv class might not be my thing
Betsy tells us all about improv
You are milking that imaginary cow all wrong
Oh, no, no . . . I was in FFA I know how to milk a cow city man

Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

Tags: Bar Louie TechCrunch 40 Jason Calacanis TFF croncast stickers

Google Reader gets the search

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:50:24 -0400

The first clue was when I opened Google Reader and my Stylish template was all jacked up. The second clue was the form button labeled 'search'. Woohoo! Thank you Google Reader team. We're not all the way there yet though.

Now we need feeds for those searches and feeds from tags.

Somebody I know has got that fired up already . . .I wonder who? Maybe Mr. Croncast.

Tags: Google Reader RSS feeds search feeds keyword rss feeds

Feedage - Google Reader shared feed update

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:25:52 -0400

I got an ego update from Google this morning that my name had shown up in a post at a site called Feedage.

Showing up in a splog or other site that pulls content into it via RSS feed isn't that out of the norm these days. What got my attention though was that it wasn't just an item from a post it was the entire feed. And not just any feed but one of my Google Reader keyword shared feeds. It's pretty cool to see them propagating after only about a week after coming into existence.

After a cursory review of the Feedage site it turns out to be a RSS feed directory. They send out their Feed Forager spider, grab a feed and index it (maybe, I haven't figured this out yet - see number 2 below). Turns out that the Feed Forager grabbed a feed from my shared items page was for everything that I have read about memory.

The funny part is that I haven't read any content specifically about memory. I've read articles that include the word memory but nothing about brain science, how to improve you memory or loss thereof. Turns out my memory feed at this stage is pretty useless. Maybe I need to step it up and get some science feeds in my reader!

Interesting points:

1. Shared item keyword feeds have only been active on my site for one week
2. Feedage doesn't appear to be caching feeds but if they are they're pinging the feed on refresh and re-indexing it
3. Feedage allows you to rate the feed's content with a 5 star system
4. Rating in the star system creates a grade system A-D with an appropriate icon next to the feed
5. Not all my Google Reader shared keyword feeds are as contextually relevant as one about "itunes".

Tags: Feed Forager RSS feed directory Feedage Google Reader shared rss feeds

Making use of my Google Reader shared feed

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:37:04 -0400

The 'kris is reading' section of the site is now fully functional. Go and check it out. I'll be here when you get back.

Glad to have you back.

So what the hell was that, right?

I have finished up, for now (some touching up to do), what I think is a pretty cool way to use a shared Google Reader feed. I think I stumbled upon an interesting concept that enhances sharing information online and makes it more personable.

The history of how I got to this point is at the end of this post. I'm going to try to describe what you just saw the best way I can. Here goes nothing:

1. I parse my Google Reader shared feed and cache it in a database. This is done with a script that runs on a cron every two minutes to get new items - post title, description and timestamp
2. I stamp the item with the current time that I most likely read the item
3. This is cool - I run a script to generate keywords (subjects) from the shared item. The script needs to mature a bit but it is pretty effective.
4. I then pull the cached posts up in to the 'kris is reading' section of the site and order them by the time that I read them. Really the only way to organize them coherently since the post timestamps vary based on the author's time zone
5. I display the keywords below each post. Each keyword is a link that will search all of my other shared items for related posts. Each keyword has a link to technorati. Each keyword is an entry into RSS feed for that keyword subject.
6. I have added a 'Search my read items' function so that you can search my shared items for whatever you like. If you want to find items that I have read about about ceratin topic like, Facebook, you can.

What's happening is that I am giving you, the reader of my shared feed the ability to use me as a content filter. And the best part is that you didn't have to ask me to read up on a given topic that you are interested in. I didn't have to add it to a to-do list, I was already doing it. And now I'm able to give you access to it in a few ways:

1. Here's everything that I have read and shared from Google Reader
2. Here's everything that I have read - now search it by subject
3. Here's everything that I have read - now subscribe via RSS to a subject (keyword) and get updates every time I read an item about your subject without ever having to come back to my site

The other really cool part is that the source publishers benefit from my sharing adding the drill down with search, keywords and keyword feeds.

In this scenario I have become a 'social filter', so to speak. Then my readers get to step up to the plate and filter even further. A 'hyper-social filter', so to speak. I am able to share an item from a publisher that my current readers might have never found. Possibly (and possibly in the same sense that someone might find your content in search engine or directory) my readers will visit the publisher's site and subscribe to the source feed.

In a strange way it gives an individual like myself the chance to create a low threshold directory with the ability to be distributed simply by marking items that I like. It takes Google Reader to a new place beyond a feed reader and makes it a platform for syndication. Google Reader becomes a powerful tool to create new channels of distribution for content that usually meets its end on a subscribers computer. Now it has legs.

How can I see other people using this? Tons of ways.

1. The same way that I am using it to create a history of my own reading with the ability to share right down to the topic level.
2. By individuals respected as gate keepers like librarians. Example - whether the source feeds were running on their library content or the internet they could mark items from those feeds and then give the feed based on a topic to a patron, i.e. happy computer savvy student who doesn't need to come back and ask for help again.
3. Could be used to share information behind a firewall from corporate blogs. Great way to fatten up a corporate knowledge base by picking and choosing from your qualified authors.
4. You could create micro-repositories based on topics
5. A million other ways that I haven't thought of yet. Not even quite sure I could come up with a million.

How I got here:

A few months ago, before Rick split to California, the full Naperville nerd posse was together one last time. I was busting out a story about how I was parsing out my Google Reader shared feed and displaying it for site visitors on my 'kris is reading' page. I was way stoked about it. But like many times in the past, it came to light that Rick and beaten me to this with the 'links' section of his blog. He was taking his shared feed, burning it and displaying it on its own page and in his blog navigation. Brilliant!

My consolation, instead of being first (important in nerd circles), was that I had learned how to do this with my own code . . . a valuable prize I am finding out.

So about a month ago I changed up the code to cache my shared feed items. Which was good for two reasons:

1. I could display more than the 25 items in the feed
2. I would have a historical record of what I was reading in my own blog.

And, again, I was not first again. Damn it! This step was inspired by the Tumblr link blog of Josh Bancroft. Seeing the posts cached and the ability to navigate them 20 or so items at a time was brilliant. I could see a ton of stuff that Josh was reading but also see what was motivating him enough to write posts from.

Should I know better than to try be first in doing something? Yes, but my nerd side does get the best of me sometimes.

I doubt that I am first in working over a shared feed this way but it was fun to build and I am sure it will be useful in making something else. Hell, maybe it will inspire someone else to do something cool.

Tags: Google Reader shared feed kris is reading Josh Bancroft link blogs

Maybe it isn't just Bloglines

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:14:38 -0400

I just got a heads up message from Rick, thanks Rick, that some more of you besides the Bloglines people might be having constant post update issues for posts that you have already read. Things like they show up as new entries.

If you experiencing this problem (which has probably been for the last two months, yikes) with your reader let me know. Send me a message with the reader name and the URL of the feed(s) you are subscribed to and I will look into it.

I did test these dynamic ads with Google Reader, NewsGator, FeedDemon, Rojo, IE 7, Thunderbird and tons of podcast aggregators. Obviously, not enough testing.

I am still of the mindset that reader makers need to fix the problem of multiple updates being displayed as new items. I can understand marking the item unread if it is read or notating the item has been updated, but am lost at adding it as a new unread entry every time they ping the feed.

Tags: dynamic rss ads Bloglines constant updates Bloglines/3.1 rss time stamp

What am I reading?

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:24:10 -0400

New time killer for you as you can see what and who I am reading in Google Reader during the day.

The link "kris is reading" in the navigation will take you to the little nirvana that displays just what the hell I read during the day.

This new page is brought to you by my new best friends, simplexml_load_file and a feeling that I am falling behind.

Tags: simplexml_load_file Google Reader shared feed kris is reading Kris Smith

Sunday codings

Sun, 20 May 2007 15:53:53 -0400

Finally got around to adding the iTunes duration tag to the feeds around here for podcasts. Which may cause some of you to get a flurry of old feed items as new. Seems Google reader is doing it.

I wrote a more elaborate post about this but lost it a couple times already due to some of that 'sunday code'. I gotta remember to debug before I use in production.

Tags: iTunes iTunes duration tags iTunes XML podcast length