26,747 New RSS Feeds Avaliable

"Taking to heart what Paolo said yesterday about aggregators not just reading news I sat down and wrote some PHP to turn all 26k+ artists on discogs (the most comprehensive electronic music database) into RSS feeds.

You can use this page to find an artist, I've provided auto-subscription links for both Radio and AmphetaDesk users.

So when a new release is added to discogs.com by an artist you are subscribed to it will show up in your aggregator. The next step is to tweak this a bit and allow you to subscribe to the 6,000+ record labels." [Adam Wendt's Agnostic Audiophile Smorgasborg]

Someone please point this out to the record labels as an example of something they should have done already! Way to go, Adam! A great service and a proof of concept for a future marketing model for the BigCos. Hot d-a-m-n but this has been a great day for RSS!

Translating RSS

"Jenny asks

my next question is how do we get on-the-fly translation into news aggregators, but I'm sure we're a ways off from that.

Not that far off at all! I wrote Jenny an RSS cleanser in PHP recently, and it took me about 20 minutes tonight to add translation to it. I've showed it to Jenny but won't post it here because (a) it really burdens the translation service and (b) for some reason accented characters in the description break the RSS feed, even if I use their html entity equivalents."

More grist for the language translation debate. The implications are staggering if we can get past the accented characters. Brent's on a roll, and I am continually impressed at how quickly he turns ideas into reality!

Addendum: Brent provides an update noting that the entities don't actually affect RSS.

"LM Orchard is doing some really slick stuff with AmphetaDesk. Can this be done with Radio Userland?  I would think so.  Anyone have any ideas or working on it, please let me know." [TechnoMagician's Weblog]

"Today, an application for Radio's outliner that will be new for many. We've brought a feature from Manila into Radio Community Server, making it possible for people to create Yahoo-like directories that appear in their Radio weblogs. These directories can include other directories. They're built on an open format, OPML; which can be created in any compatible outliner, including Radio's outliner. Viewed another way, directories are hiearchic blogrolls. When you start getting hundreds of links in your blogroll, and start categorizing them, it's time to look for something richer, and that's where directories come in." [Scripting News]

"Userland is seriously spooky. Ernie and I talked about this about a month ago, saying how nice it would be if we could each maintain directories of links that incorporated each others' links. The directory would update each time it was published - including updates from other directory owners.

It sounds as if this is exactly what Userland has done. Just for kicks, I created a 'Law Blogs' directory - not complete by a long shot, but it's a start. Go to:

http://www.rklau.com/tins/stories/2002/06/12/lawblogs.html

Two notes: (1) Those of us in the law blog world (you know who you are, and Denise, when are you crossing the chasm?!) should experiment a bit, then add this to the multi-author blog that's been quite quiet lately, and (2) I'll start a Prairie Blogs directory that Jenny, Prof. McGee, Eric, Mike, and others can include in their sites."

And that's just the first little mind-bomb. The directories concept is fantastic, one I definitely want to incorporate into the SLS portal (that currently resides only in my mind).  To see another example of this type of directory, check out Mark Pilgrim's demo. Then Rick takes it a natural, but brilliant step further:

A wish list for the Distributed Directory....

"The possibilities of what we can do with the Distributed Directories concept are incredible. One thing to add to my wishlist (probably not hard, but I'm on my way to a customer dinner and don't have time to play) is to make this work with Marc Barrot's Active Renderer so that the directory is expandable/collapsable without causing a new page view. The user experience would be much nicer."

The best part, of course, is that you can subscribe to that directory page and get changes in your aggregator!

Side notes: Rick, count me in! Bruce, look at that list of law blogs and then think about getting all of their updates on one web page, every hour on the hour! Then call me since your birthday is in two weeks. As for the directories, this is a natural for librarians.