BlogBridge, Feeds43, CleverClogs and more

The details are fuzzy now, but something I wrote moved Marjolein Hoekstra to contact me. She is based in the Netherlands, speaks perfect English, is very smart - an expert on RSS among other things - and calls her blog CleverClogs. We have exchanged a lot of words on IM and email.

She encouraged me to take a look at BlogBridge. It's good. It's an aggregator where the software sits in your machine (Mac, Windows, Linux). It is still run as a service but you can synchronise and work offline. This means that you can run the program on your desktop and laptop and never miss a beat. After years of using NewsGator, I found myself very quickly turning to BlogBridge as my first port of call.

It has lots of goodies built into it, including the ability to build and share reading lists. I'm still experimenting but I've started sharing. Take a look at the Writing topic in the What I do Grazr sidebar of this blog. You'll find an OPML include there (blue icon). I admit it's messy but I have gathered together all my columns, blogs and more recent features for Information World Review in one place.

And this is despite 33 of them not having their own RSS feed. For that I want to welcome back Feed43. They were off-air when I looked at the weekend and I was worried that they'd died before I'd made proper use of the service. Feed43 will scrape a web page according to your instructions and turn it into a named RSS feed. [I'm going to have to find another scraper. Today I'm not able to see these feeds from  Feed43 [Grovel time: Feed43 was fine, it was my understanding of BlogBridge that wasn't] Then you can graze it, along with all the other things that interest you.

As I say, mine is messy. The blog feeds are fine - they work automatically, courtesy of VNU's use of TypePad. BlogBridge's SmartFeed enabled me to filter out the columns I wrote from the IWR main site's RSS feed. [Darn it: Marjolein has just reminded me that the SmartFeeds are an internal thing only - I'm going to have to find another way to get published columns into the outside world.] The older columns involved a bit more hard work. I pasted them all together into a long web page and gave Feeds43 the rules for isolating each column within the feed.

The point is that, even at this embryonic stage in my learning, I was able to put together a bunch of disparate information sources - explicit feeds, filtered feeds and home-made feeds in a few hours. And, yes, it was egocentric of me, but I thought I'd start with material I could readily lay my hands on and learn with.

The next step is to create a number of feed groups (they're called Guides in BlogBridge) and get subscriptions to key sources of information in subject areas that interest me. I'm sure Marjolein will be following with interest and intervening when she sees me veering off course.

Once I have the groups together, I'll be able to share them with anyone else who's interested. And that's why I mention it here. It's all part of collaboration and cooperation. And this post is about communicating what's involved.

(It's also an excuse for me to wear my propellor hat for a few hours.)

It's also an excuse to say a public "Thank You" to Marjolein. Thank you for your help and support. Hugely appreciated.

Comments

[Al Tepper]

agreed...a web based version would be the perfect answer...anyone from BlogBridge care to comment?

[David Tebbutt]

Al and I found that if you download blogbridgeweekly.exe and stick it in the same folder as blogbridge.exe, then make it your default executable, all is fine.

Except, of course, that we've both wondered why there's not a browser-based implementation so that we can work with our BlogBridge material regardless of whose machine we're using or on which operating system. If this is possible (not beyond the wit of Java programmers) then BlogBridge becomes multi-platform automatically and there's no need for multiple development streams.

[Marjolein Hoekstra]

Hi David and Al,

Thank you for inviting me into this conversation.

The Firefox integration feature was added fairly recently to BlogBridge, much to my excitement. To use it you need to install a small executable file that is available for download from the BlogBridge website. The whys and the hows are explained in detail here: http://www.blogbridge.com/2006/12/02/blogbridge-41-weekly-development-release/

Note that you need to run the so-called Weekly Release of BlogBridge in order to benefit from this. The most recent version is available here: http://www.blogbridge.com/install/weekly/blogbridge.jnlp

I have been using the Firefox integration since it was launched and it works as I expected: BlogBridge is added to the drop-down list of feed handlers and you can decide to designate BlogBridge as your default feed handler. Feeds are added to the currently opened Guide in BlogBridge.

Does this fully address your question?

[David Tebbutt]

I'll ask Marjolein if she knows. Like you, I can't lay my hands on an answer.

Thinking out loud... I wondered whether tagging with del.icio.us would be an answer (eg blogbridgealtepper) and then let the smartfeed pick up using that tag?

Hmmm. Probably a lousy idea because you're going to have to tag every page of interest.

What about a Feedster standing search?

In any event, a copy/paste of an RSS feed isn't the end of the world, but I understand (and agree with) your need for something snappier.

[Al Tepper]

How much power you weild Mr T...I checked out blogbridge and I have to admit I am hooked. One question though:

Is there a firefox extension to easily add new feeds or does one have to do so manually via the app? Cannot find anything on the web...wondered if you knew...

Cheers

Al