"The MetaWeblog API (MWA) is a programming interface that allows external programs to get and set the text and attributes of weblog posts. It builds on the popular XML-RPC communication protocol, with implementations available in many popular programming environments."http://www.xmlrpc.com/metaWeblogApi
Showing posts with label syndication - blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label syndication - blogs. Show all posts
8.16.2010
Note to self: Meta Weblog API
8.13.2010
Syndication Notebook entry - Superfeedr.com
Superfeedr.com has been in existence for about a year or so, going by the date of its domain name registration, and I just found out about it today. At first glance, Superfeedr looks like an answer to my prayer, but it is a bit more technical than most of the services I've looked at recently. It will take me some time to get with the program, I'm sure, due to the level of technical detail that seems to be involved. I'm not the swiftest learner on the block, either.
PubSubHubbub stands for PUBlisher-SUBscriber HUB, or PubSubHub. The 'Hubbub' is cute, though.
Part of the specification documentation is hosted on Google Code - here. The reference hub is located on the Google Apps Engine.
This will take me some time to figure out. Best of all, it involves a whole new thing, XMPP, of which I know nothing except XMPP is commonly called 'Jabber."
XMPP.org software libraries
PubSubHubbub stands for PUBlisher-SUBscriber HUB, or PubSubHub. The 'Hubbub' is cute, though.
Part of the specification documentation is hosted on Google Code - here. The reference hub is located on the Google Apps Engine.
This will take me some time to figure out. Best of all, it involves a whole new thing, XMPP, of which I know nothing except XMPP is commonly called 'Jabber."
XMPP.org software libraries
8.07.2010
How well does Ping.fm parse Wordpress blog feeds?
How well does Ping.fm parse Wordpress blog feeds? It depends on how you look at it, and how long you look at it. With a statistically insignificant number of samples . . . a grand total of two . . . I'll give the optimistic view of Ping.fm's performance, and give it the benefit of the doubt by saying it got exactly half right. The other half, not so good.
Background:
The first and most encouraging sample was Ping.fm-feed version of this Wordpress post: Another Ping.fm test
Ping.fm correctly came up with this as its shortened link: http://ping.fm/8m1Jo
The second less than inspiring example is Ping.fm's rendition of #smartmarket test
For this one, Ping.fm came up with a shortened link, http://ping.fm/6D8ie, that incorrectly re-directed to the blog post's comment feed:
feed://tomwfox.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/smartmarket-test/feed/
Ping.fm has a serious problem parsing Feedburner blog feeds and Wordpress blog feeds. Is it fair of me to think that Ping.fm may have problems with blog feeds in general?
Background:
"The WordPress->Feedburner->Ping.fm did not work any better than the Blogger->Feedburner->Ping.fm did. Maybe the problem is with Feedburner. I just switched to the native WordPress feed of this blog to Ping.fm, just to see what happens next."- The Learning Curve - RSS to Ping.fm - Again
The first and most encouraging sample was Ping.fm-feed version of this Wordpress post: Another Ping.fm test
Ping.fm correctly came up with this as its shortened link: http://ping.fm/8m1Jo
The second less than inspiring example is Ping.fm's rendition of #smartmarket test
For this one, Ping.fm came up with a shortened link, http://ping.fm/6D8ie, that incorrectly re-directed to the blog post's comment feed:
feed://tomwfox.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/smartmarket-test/feed/
Ping.fm has a serious problem parsing Feedburner blog feeds and Wordpress blog feeds. Is it fair of me to think that Ping.fm may have problems with blog feeds in general?
8.06.2010
RSS to Ping.fm works fine except . . .
RSS to Ping.fm works fine except with Google Feedburner RSS. With them Ping.fm gets the links wrong.
8.05.2010
Ping.fm renders RSS input feed links like crap
Note: When I wrote this item, I was confused by Ping.fm's domain. (Dot)FM is the top level domain for the Federated States of Micronesia, and it didn't register in my head. So I erroneously typed it Ping.com throughout. The syndication service I'm talking about is Ping.fm, and not Ping.com. Sorry.
It's a new feature for Ping.fm, this business about taking a RSS feed directly and Twitterizing it for output to various social media platforms. It's a new and experimental undertaking for Ping.com to do this. Right now it limits user's direct input to a single RSS feed only. For experimenting with it.
It's a good thing Ping.com is undertaking, and I have been a Guinna pig for their testing, these past few days. So far, Ping.fm renders RSS input feed links like shit.
Back to the drawing board.
August 6 update: In all fairness, the trouble might not be with Ping.fm. It may be that Google-Blogger-Feedburner feeds are especially difficult to parse. I'll try an entirely different feed source with Ping.fm to see if makes a difference.
It's a new feature for Ping.fm, this business about taking a RSS feed directly and Twitterizing it for output to various social media platforms. It's a new and experimental undertaking for Ping.com to do this. Right now it limits user's direct input to a single RSS feed only. For experimenting with it.
It's a good thing Ping.com is undertaking, and I have been a Guinna pig for their testing, these past few days. So far, Ping.fm renders RSS input feed links like shit.
Back to the drawing board.
August 6 update: In all fairness, the trouble might not be with Ping.fm. It may be that Google-Blogger-Feedburner feeds are especially difficult to parse. I'll try an entirely different feed source with Ping.fm to see if makes a difference.
Syndication: RSS to Twitter - accessibility or the new spam?
Technology amplifies the good and the bad with equal ease and troublesome indifference. A thousand busy posters can generate a considerable volume of twittering, but consider the potential for an exploding number of tweets flying back and forth when every ambitious internet marketing concern embraces the brute force power of fully automating the process. Just as automated email pushed spam into your email in-box, RSS-to-Twitter technology may well result in pushing a tide of smarmy promotions into social media.
The essential differences between email and social media will make the inevitable issue of automated social media spam by way of RSS feeds much easier to deal with Unlike email that can be sent anonymously and from anywhere, automated feeds to social media outlets come from identifiable sources through a connections that must be negotiated. More importantly, the target is not a captive audience as with email. People encounter social media channels only by choice, so far. RSS spam can be more easily regulated or ignored.
How RSS to Twitter works
I have to assume you know what a RSS feed is, for the easy reason that I have no simple explanation that would satisfy one who doesn't know. RSS feeds are everywhere, and you've seen the distinctive icon frequently, scattered about the web. With a blog, for example, an RSS feed might contain every single post in a structured data format in a single file that can be read by anyone.
A human can share a blog post on Twitter by posting a link to their Twitter account directly. A computer software program can extract the link information for a blog from its RSS feed and post each one to Twitter, if Twitter allows it, and Twitter allows it. That is the root process of RSS-to-Twitter systems. It involves the automated extraction of data from an existing RSS feed and then posting that data to an existing Twitter account. That is the gist of how it works.
"RSS to Twitter" is a metaphor
RSS to Twitter is also a statement of origin. It started with Twitter and Twitter users, and it makes sense. If I can write a blog post and manually post a link to it on my Twitter account, and I do that every day, how much more efficient is it to automate the process? Quite a bit, for me, and it is not limited to Twitter.
The RSS-to-Twitter process immediately found use and support for other social media platforms. Now, it is possible to automatically send a notice of my new blog post to a multitude of social media outlets. RSS-to-Facebook, RSS-to-Delicious, RSS-to-Blogger, RSS-to-Tumblr, RSS-to-Google Buzz, and many more are now a practical reality. It is being done and it is growing, slowly. It has instant and obvious appeal to internet marketers.
RSS to Twitter - How it's done
This is not a genuine "how-to" for converting a RSS feed into a Twitter API feed. It is a "How to use free web resources to do that which you lack the time or the motivation to do yourself." The main free to use on-line force behind RSS-to-Twitter is Twitterfeed.com. There are also use-for-pay services such as SimpleFeed.com, that caters to multinational corporations, but that is not for us. Another free to use service that went dark is RSStoTwitter.com. The individual developer did not come up with a working business plan that made his RSS to Twitter service pay for itself. It was unsustainable.
So, "how it's done" for most of us non-programmers revolves around using Twitterfeed.com, or something similar.
Twitterfeed.com accepts RSS imput, converts it to a Twitter-compatible format, and feeds the result out over the following channels:
What good can come of RSS to Twitter?
That remains to be seen, as far as I'm concerned. Right now I am busy trying to understand its potential, once I figure out how it actually works in practice.
See my RSS syndication map - a work in progress
The essential differences between email and social media will make the inevitable issue of automated social media spam by way of RSS feeds much easier to deal with Unlike email that can be sent anonymously and from anywhere, automated feeds to social media outlets come from identifiable sources through a connections that must be negotiated. More importantly, the target is not a captive audience as with email. People encounter social media channels only by choice, so far. RSS spam can be more easily regulated or ignored.
How RSS to Twitter works
A human can share a blog post on Twitter by posting a link to their Twitter account directly. A computer software program can extract the link information for a blog from its RSS feed and post each one to Twitter, if Twitter allows it, and Twitter allows it. That is the root process of RSS-to-Twitter systems. It involves the automated extraction of data from an existing RSS feed and then posting that data to an existing Twitter account. That is the gist of how it works.
"RSS to Twitter" is a metaphor
RSS to Twitter is also a statement of origin. It started with Twitter and Twitter users, and it makes sense. If I can write a blog post and manually post a link to it on my Twitter account, and I do that every day, how much more efficient is it to automate the process? Quite a bit, for me, and it is not limited to Twitter.
The RSS-to-Twitter process immediately found use and support for other social media platforms. Now, it is possible to automatically send a notice of my new blog post to a multitude of social media outlets. RSS-to-Facebook, RSS-to-Delicious, RSS-to-Blogger, RSS-to-Tumblr, RSS-to-Google Buzz, and many more are now a practical reality. It is being done and it is growing, slowly. It has instant and obvious appeal to internet marketers.
RSS to Twitter - How it's done
This is not a genuine "how-to" for converting a RSS feed into a Twitter API feed. It is a "How to use free web resources to do that which you lack the time or the motivation to do yourself." The main free to use on-line force behind RSS-to-Twitter is Twitterfeed.com. There are also use-for-pay services such as SimpleFeed.com, that caters to multinational corporations, but that is not for us. Another free to use service that went dark is RSStoTwitter.com. The individual developer did not come up with a working business plan that made his RSS to Twitter service pay for itself. It was unsustainable.
So, "how it's done" for most of us non-programmers revolves around using Twitterfeed.com, or something similar.
Twitterfeed.com accepts RSS imput, converts it to a Twitter-compatible format, and feeds the result out over the following channels:
- Twitter,
- Ping.fm,
- Hellotxt.com,
- Status.net, and
What good can come of RSS to Twitter?
That remains to be seen, as far as I'm concerned. Right now I am busy trying to understand its potential, once I figure out how it actually works in practice.
See my RSS syndication map - a work in progress
8.04.2010
RSS syndication feeds: Importing feeds to Tumblr.com
It is possible to import RSS syndication feeds directly into Tumblr.com and have the feed posts appear in Tumblr almost just as if they were originally posted there. This is a great convenience for establishing and maintaining a semi-automatic blog post RSS syndication feed distribution system, but Tumblr is not totally overjoyed at the prospect of becoming an automated dumping ground for posts coming from and going to someplace else. Tumblr is in the business of community building.
On Tumbler, an external feed will remain active only so long as a real live person regularly originates posts on Tumblr itself. "You must log into Tumblr frequently or directly post to Tumblr frequently in order for feed imports to remain active," says Tumblr representative Mark Lafountain, here.
In truth, the only genuine advantage from importing an external feed into Tumblr is is you have a collection of followers who read the feed.
On Tumbler, an external feed will remain active only so long as a real live person regularly originates posts on Tumblr itself. "You must log into Tumblr frequently or directly post to Tumblr frequently in order for feed imports to remain active," says Tumblr representative Mark Lafountain, here.
In truth, the only genuine advantage from importing an external feed into Tumblr is is you have a collection of followers who read the feed.
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