EveryJoe » opml

APML made easy by NewsGator

Juned — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:04:16 +0000

Attention Profiling Mark-up Language or APML is an XML-based format used for capturing the likes and dislikes of person. It is said to be a more accurate way of sharing one’s attention profile. And NewsGator is now making it easier to share one’s APML to other applications [Source]. This makes things less cumbersome.

The purpose of APML is to have a compressed compilation of all forms of Attention Data and keep into a portable file format, in other words it is a file of all your rated interests, so far. Compare to the Outline Processor Markup Language or OPML ,which is an xml format of outlines and what is used in exporting list of feeds between rss readers and aggregators.

Online RSS Reader Bloglines also support the APML format.

It seems that APML is a very effective way of easily getting information. Although it seems to be prone to abuse – we are dealing with personal information and preference, a set of very useful information. And that is why movements like DataPortability makes sure that personal data is exchanged between trusted applications and vendors. Personal data includes but is not limited to identity, photos, and videos.

NewsGator is also part of the APML Work Group, which is part of Dataportability.

Post from: EveryJoe

APML made easy by NewsGator

Scoop: Touchstone does APML

admin — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 11:42:22 +0000

Tomorrow the creators of Touchstone will announce a new initiative to implement a “Attention Profiling Mark-up Language” or APML. This new standard should allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers. The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests. You might think this is a bit similar to the AttentionTrust service, but APML does not propose to compete or even cover the same area. It is designed to take attention.xml and all other forms of storing one’s attention and create an outline of ranked interests.

The possible uses for APML are endless, and very cool! Just imagine being able to export your Attention Profile from Amazon and plugging it into Digg to get an instantly customized view of the top Digg stories most relevant to your interests! Oh yeah baby…

Chris Saad (TouchStone/Faraday Media) anticipates that an ecosystem of technologies can begin to write and consume the format and they are taking the lead with Touchstone’s U-AR and I-AM engines.

They are looking forward to working with everyone in the community to ensure the format delivers on this promise and empowers users to take control of their Attention. APML is 100% open and they hope to make it an official standard when the community decides it’s ready. Find out more about APML at apml.org.

Post from: EveryJoe

Scoop: Touchstone does APML

News Snacks: personal feedreader

admin — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 10:17:36 +0000

News Snacks (from SpotBack) organizes all your feeds in one place. We’ve seen more of these feedreaders/river of news stuff, but this one looks better. You can create your own page of favorite news, just add feeds manually, import them from OPML, or use sources from Spotback Personal News. You can choose from the pre-compiled Tasty Snacks: Web2.0, Breaking News, Gadgets, Tech News, Geek Talk.

You can also use multiple layouts, or grab other users’ setup for your homepage. Just try it out (via feedfiles.com).

Post from: EveryJoe

News Snacks: personal feedreader

Grazr is live

admin — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 19:11:25 +0000

Grazr, the mini OPML browser en soon-to-be publishing platform, just launched version 1.0. Last time I wrote about it it was in Beta but now they have a fresh designed website and the grazr itself has also been updated. And like Techcrunch puts it: Grazr isn’t a mini feed reader, it’s a tool for displaying dynamic information in outline form on any web page.

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Grazr is live

Wizag: the next attention-service

admin — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 21:07:54 +0000

The last months we’ve seen myFeedz, Touchstone and Attensa trying to solve Information Overload. The keyword with these services is Attention and next in line is Wizag. Wizag is an online feedreader that incorporates attention data and semantic analysis in regards to both your feeds and the larger community of Wizag users (Digg stylee). Like Techcrunch writes: “It recommends topics, visualized points of intersection between topics and new feeds based on your interaction with the subscriptions you already have. The implementation is a little slow and it’s nothing pretty to look at, but the technology is interesting… You can tag, comment and vote on any item in your feeds. It’s a shame that this metadata stays inside Wizag, but item ranking, or determining the order that items appear in your reader, is done through an algorithm that incorporates the click-throughs, votes, comments and subscriptions you and other users have gestured with.”

Although the layout is kinda outdated, you should really check Wizag out because the TopicClouds, the TrendGraph and the TopicMap are very interesting to look at!

Post from: EveryJoe

Wizag: the next attention-service

OPML Icon

admin — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 22:04:24 +0000

Next tot the standard RSS Icon we also needed a standard for OPML. Chris Pirillo has made an interesting suggestion for such a logo. Nice!

Post from: EveryJoe

OPML Icon

myFeedz beta

admin — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 19:22:36 +0000

Today I got an invitation to the private beta for myFeedz.com. myFeedz should be a social newspaper and find what’s important from the sea of information out there and shows you what you need to read. It learns from what you like and helps you keep up with your interests.

I signed up and had the choice to import an OPML file or give a comma separated list of keywords in which I’m interested. Because I couldn’t find a recent OPML file of my feeds I entered some keywords like: RSS, feeds, blogs, whisky and beer. And to my surprise the next page showed a relevant tagcloud of the terms I had just entered, including a list of recent posts about those terms! Shit, this seems to work! Next thing I tried was to further personalize my own homepage with suggested tags and my own feeds, that worked too!

Well, as you might guess my first impression of this service is really good! It just works! They could make some improvements in the layout of the personalized homepage, and the performace is sometimes kinda slow. But hey, this is a beta! I’m gonna try and use it some more and keep you updated!

FeedCollector

admin — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 22:53:14 +0000

Didn’t have the time to write something about FeedCollectors earlier, so this news is a bit late… FeedCollectors is a new web tool that collects and socializes feeds. No matter what type of feed (blogs, podcasts, video podcasts, or news feeds), you can add it to your own collection and start sharing. FeedCollectors is like a social network based on feeds (via OPML). You can tag feeds or add friends and see what they are reading. I like the tagging, reminds me of FeedAlley where I wrote about before. But the tagging still needs a critical mass before it gets really interesting (via TechCrunch).

Post from: EveryJoe

FeedCollector

Validate RSS feeds and OPML files

admin — Sun, 28 May 2006 21:35:28 +0000

Wanna validate your RSS or OPML but don’t know where? I got some links for you;) Try validator.opml.org for your OPML files. And if you want to validate RSS you could check out feedvalidator.org, w3.org or Dave’s validator at scripting.com. That’s all folks!

Post from: EveryJoe

Validate RSS feeds and OPML files

Reddit feedreader

admin — Sat, 27 May 2006 00:03:25 +0000

Just found another feedreader which may be interesting: feeds.reddit.com. Reddit is a social service for what’s new and popular on the web (as you might know). Now they are testing this new online feedreader that keeps track of what you’ve read and haven’t read. Just like on reddit, you can vote on items you like. This will create a list of the most popular items but it will also train a recommendations system to try to find other items and other feeds that you’ll probably like as well (attention).

The guy who has build the site is Aaron Swartz, he is the guy that co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification (at 14 years old) and he is also the author of rss2email and a lot of other services/apps.

I’m for sure gonna check it out, it’s got one-click import from Bloglines and imports OPML files from any other feed reader… So what you’re waiting for? Oh, and make sure you let Aaron know what you think about it.

Post from: EveryJoe

Reddit feedreader