Some really interesting Reading Lists are generated by algorithm rather than by a person
Amyloo has an interesting post about reading lists. One thing bears expanding on:
"There's a tendency to think of reading lists as topic-oriented and fairly static -- refined and appended to, but keeping most of the same data over time. A slant on reading lists I've thought about are specialized lists that change their composition entirely on a periodic basis, a list in which none of the feeds you see today may be there next week." (from Churning urns of burning funk)
True. And actually there are a lot of very interesting sources for reading lists which are not human experts but still make very interesting reading.
For example, you can get Feedster's Top 100 Blogs as a Reading List. The result using this hyperlink as a Reading List is a dynamic set of feeds, the Feedster 100, which is automatically changed whenever Feedster resorts their Top100.
Almost more interesting, you can use Gada.be to compute a dynamic Reading List which is the result of a search query. So for example, interactively, here is Gada.be's search result for Chris Pirillo. And here is the same thing as a Reading List. The result of using this hyperlink as a Reading List is a set of feeds corresponding to the result of the search in a whole series of search engines.
Try both examples in BlogBridge to see. Makes your head spin doesn't it? (At least it does mine :)
Technorati Tags: OPML, readinglists
Comments
Pito, I am more excited about superdynamic lists like Amy describes than about the more static ones. I have thought about producing a reading list to go along with the bloggers I cover as a BlogHer contributing editor. Each week it would have ten or so new feeds. A subscriber could use it as a way to get exposed to new tech women bloggers without having to go through a big list all by themselves.
I have been trying out BlogBridge; very nice. Love the smart feeds--I'm preparing a post for BlogHer on iPods and I set up a smart feed on my list of 100+ women tech bloggers and found a couple good hits for my article.
Oh, you might want to check on Adam Green's mashup blog (mashup.darwinianweb.com) to see how he's working on a dynamic reading list using Memeorandum as the source. He mentions BlogBridge, so you might have already seen it.
Posted by: Anne Zelenka | February 5, 2006 06:57 PM
And I'm equally interested in the possibility of del.icio.us generating on-the-fly reading lists according to tag frequency (or weight). For instance the tag count for the BlogBridge blog on del.ici.us might be -
RSS 300, Aggregator 200, Reading List 50
Obviously I'm simplifying here and don't have a clue what the real tag count is. Anyway del.icio.us could determine that it therefore makes sense to enter the feed for the BlogBridge blog under an OPML hierarchy like follows -
RSS->Aggreagtors->Reading List
Del.icio.us could do likewise with the top 10 other feeds tagged with "Reading List", thereby dynamically generating a Reading List for monitoring the subject of Reading Lists (if that's not too confusing ;-)
BTW, this isn't my own idea but I can't remember where I read it first. It was one of the reasons I started thinking the mindset of feed 'subscriptions' could fade to lesser relevance to be replaced by the idea of Feed Grazing. Don't misunderstand me - Feed Subscriptions/Aggregation will always be important IMHO but while we'll subscribe to a critical core of RSS feeds we'll simply graze the majority.
Posted by: James Corbett | February 7, 2006 08:37 AM