RSS this, syndication that — my new colleagues here at DTLT have a torrid love affair with web feeds, and rightfully so. Of the media I consume online, probably 60% of it comes from the 113 sites I follow via my preferred RSS reader, with the other 40% consisting mainly of activity on Twitter, Netflix, and Hulu. The only time I really ever visit a website by browsing directly to it anymore is 1) because the map view on the Craigslist mobile app is frustratingly unusable, 2) to check the latest posts on Ask MetaFilter when I’m really bored, or 3) because I’m shopping for an item and want to check reviews. When I do find a new channel of news, culture, entertainment, etc to follow, it’s usually because someone whose opinion I trust has linked to or otherwise recommended that source, not because I went searching for it or stumbled across it. In short, RSS is a filter for me; all wheat, no chaff. Problem is, by being such an active curator of the web and making sure … [Read more...]
Paris is Burning through Syndication
Have I ever mentioned how awesome #UMW‘s Study Abroad blog aggregator is? More than 200 posts since June. #4Life — Jim Groom (@jimgroom) July 20, 2013 When I tweeted out how awesome UMW’s Study Abroad aggregator blog is a few folks asked me how we’re doing the syndication. Aggregation is something I’ve written about so often on the bava blog that I’m afraid I take for granted. That said, I really don’t want to because I truly believe it is the best way to foster distributed communities, enable ownership of one’s own work, and keep a centralized archive all at once. Aggregation by way of RSS-enabled syndication is still the simplest way at this stuff, and I’m gonna try and prove that once again So with the aforementioned Study Abroad blog aggregator we have almost 90 feeds that have been added (self-service style) over the last two and half years that have syndicated more than 2300 posts. We do this using the plugin called … [Read more...]