OPML tastes that much sweeter when you experience it with friends. Y’all are gonna love Dave and Dan’s new site.
Share Your OPML
So you can now use Share Your OPML to, well, share your OPML. People like Steve Rubel and Mike Arrington are talking about it, as is Alex Barnett.
Dave has stated that there will be per-feed privacy options.
Don’t wait for it. I’ve already written a script that will do it for you.
I’ve just updated the script to make it more reliable (having had my opml.root wiped out by my own incompetence!).
Once you’ve got an OPML Editor install set up, load this up and follow the instructions.
Another OPML Hack
Here’s an annoying little bug that happens for me with NewsRiver and Firefox. I like to tab through the checkboxes of the stories in NewsRiver, hitting space when I see a story I want to delete.
This works fine in Safari, but not in Firefox on the Mac or on other platforms. This rather spoilt it all for me.
Today I fixed that too. It’s simply a matter of adding a tabindex on the checkboxes.
You can see the code here. Load it up in the Editor in the usual manner.
Matt Mullenwegg on SYO: “I still think moving OPML around is too hard, it would be nice to have some sort of OPML normalization service that could log into different accounts at places like WordPress, Bloglines, and Google reader, grab your file, auto-discover any feeds for entries that don’t have a xmlUrl, and merge everything together using the updated attribute.” Keep your eyes peeled, kids.
This method really helps with the whole “open in new tabs” thing that we’re all doing now.
Are you using Adblock on Firefox? Want to improve your Internet experience a lot? Add the following to your Adblock filter: “http://lads.myspace.com/music/*”.
Chris Cactus: “Colbert has the ability to be funnier, but the brilliance was in his bravado. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Colbert must wear some great big pants to hold his giant balls.”
Neville Hobson: “But if using OPML files as a means of sharing is to take off more broadly, it all must be a lot easier.” We’re building the pieces, yes, you and me.
Can anybody translate? I mean, when faced with a language that I can’t comprehend, I usually just go “ooh, this is interesting”. When I see Welsh I just go “eek! People speak this?!”
Let’s Kill MySpace Pt. 1: Music
One of the few good things about MySpace is the promotion that it can give musicians. Independent artists and bands promote themselves via MySpace. It’s time we produce an open source version. And OPML is here to do it.
On the right hand side, I’ve got a Grazr box, which links through to the websites of a handful of (mostly) independent artists.
This could quite easily replicate the functionality that MySpace is providing for artists.
It requires Grazr to simply tweak the rendering process for OPML.
We need a method by which if one links to an MP3 in an outline, it’ll bring up a flash player, as it does for podcasts.
That way, artists can produce a static set of songs in an OPML feed, with other material (including links to buy songs, links to RSS feeds for gigs and to their website).
This is a far less obnoxious way of implementing what MySpace has for bands. An OPML band for each musician with MP3s built in! Come on, we need this in Grazr!
Then we could use technology similar to Share Your OPML to aggregate music tastes. Perhaps share.opml.org/music…
The Internet is here to free us from the horrible taste of record executives. Let’s not waste that freedom on the horrible design of MySpace.
Congratulations, Dave. A toast to OPML is in order. Hip hip hooray!
Brian Flemming: “Remember how confused you were when you heard about the iTunes Music Store? Wait, you thought, the company that created that store is Apple Computer. Does that mean that Apple Corps Ltd., the British company that owns the rights to music by the Beatles, is the company that created iTunes? What exactly is going on here? You were probably paralyzed by this marketplace confusion for days. Maybe you still are.”
