Well it’s the weekend and right now I’m not feeling any dev mojo to work on TwitBox; and I really don’t feel like rearranging the office, so I thought I would spend spend some time taking a second look at a couple of new link blog aggregator sites that have been in the blogging headlines.
In my post about link blog aggregators the other day I was a little cranky about the sheer number of them that are popping up all at once and how I found them more of a distraction than anything else. While this hasn’t changed I should mentioned that I have tried a few of them but at the point when I did they just didn’t click with me. Primarily among the ones I had a look at were FriendFeed, ReadBurner and RSSMeme.
Now ReadBurner I already have as a feed coming into FeedDemon so I won’t really be talking about that service in particular but I did have a second go at the other two over the last couple of days. Of the two I think that FriendFeed is probably the most useful especially once I put my Web 2.0 crankiness in check and had a look around. Right now I have it opened as a tab in FeedDemon and have been playing around with friends subscriptions and the such.
What I have come to the conclusion I do like about the service is in fact the community you can create around your various information flows. There are some nice easy ways to interact with your friends information flows that they have decided to share such as the ability to comment within FriendFeed itself on whatever has been posted in your Friends Feed.
But the more I played around the more I can think of two things I would really like to see from something like FriendFeed. the first is a common complaint I have with services like FriendFeed and that is that fact that I have to manually refresh the page. come on folks isn’t this the age of Ajax and all those funky things you can do with web apps these days. How come I have to always manually refresh a page. Make it easy for me – I’m lazy.
The second thing I would really love to see is a public; or at least a developer’s, API. Let me get the data out of there and do what I want with it. Let me be able to post back to my feed, let me be able to use an interface of my choosing to talk with my community on the service.
Now with RSSMeme it took me a little longer until I found the compelling reason to keep using the service since it really wasn’t overly different that what ReadBurner is doing. However what RSSMeme does that I think is a definite plus is that in it’s links section below each item is support for Tags. Finally somebody who gets the potential that using tags has. There is one big problem though and that this idea doesn’t carry through to their RSS Feed. As well the complaint about refreshing that I had with FriendFeed I have with RSSMeme.
Like FriendFeed I would love to see an API; as long as the results provided the same information as you see on the front page of the service. Let the developers in there guys – let us have access to that information and maybe find different ways to present it to the readers. I’d love to be able to maybe build a desktop client that would be able to consume either or both services.
On the whole I will probably keep using both services but chances are that FriendFeed will stick longer than RSSMeme if only because of the RSS feed not including everything that their page on the site includes because for me the Tag links they include are its main attraction of the service. Either that or get some auto refresh options in there after all I’m lazy and this is the lazyweb after all 
Hey! Those services look familiar!
You're an early adopter, whether you like it or not, Steven.
Not sure I would go that far yet
but I do think that most things do deserve second looks especially when it's cranky old farts doing the looking.
Can you go into more detail about RSSmeme's tags? Are you saying that you'd like the RSS feed to have the tags in it (because I can have that done in seconds) or are you saying that you like the tags to be contained in the RSS feed entries tag attribute (because I already do that)?
Thanks for writing about RSSmeme!
Ok, the RSS feed now has tag links next to the “Shared by X people” link. I also would like to mention that we have some AJAX on the site. You don't have to click to read a link, you can click the “read more” link and I load the entire details without making you click to a new page
If you can include the Tag Links as shown on the front page within the RSS feed that I pull into FeedDemon then Yes! (can I say that again YES). I might be out in the cold here but for me Tags are – or at least could be – one of the most powerful ideas to come out of this whole Web 2.0 thing (for the lack of better terminology). I also think is one RSSMeme best features.
If you have read anything I have posted in the past about Ideastreaming you'll understand why I think they are important.
We're getting there LOL
Done; the next feeds that FeedDemon pulls in should say:
Shared by X people. Tagged taglink1 taglink2 taglink3
If you want anything else just let me know
API? or even XML URL
I was more than serious about being able to take services like FriendFeed and RSSMeme and put them into a desktop interface. For me that is were my big interest lies as a developer as not everyone wants to live in a browser but they should still be able to access their favorite information provider in anyway they want to.
That is one reason why I wrote TwitBox (and is going through a rewrite at this point).
And thanks for being willing to be as responsive as you are to your users
Done; the next feeds that FeedDemon pulls in should say:
Shared by X people. Tagged taglink1 taglink2 taglink3
If you want anything else just let me know
API? or even XML URL
I was more than serious about being able to take services like FriendFeed and RSSMeme and put them into a desktop interface. For me that is were my big interest lies as a developer as not everyone wants to live in a browser but they should still be able to access their favorite information provider in anyway they want to.
That is one reason why I wrote TwitBox (and is going through a rewrite at this point).
And thanks for being willing to be as responsive as you are to your users
[...] http://www.winextra.com/2008/02/16/2nd-look-friendfeed-rssmeme/ asks Hoosgot, [...]
Thanks for the feedback. We totally agree with you on both points, and both auto-refreshing and an API are high on our list of priorities.
Thanks for the feedback. We totally agree with you on both points, and both auto-refreshing and an API are high on our list of priorities.
I got on FriendFeed after AssetBar and LinkRiver and I'm going to have to agree with you that for now, it's probably the best aggregator out there. The social parts are great, it centralises so many feeds, and can be posted to Facebook, which are wins all round.
I got on FriendFeed after AssetBar and LinkRiver and I'm going to have to agree with you that for now, it's probably the best aggregator out there. The social parts are great, it centralises so many feeds, and can be posted to Facebook, which are wins all round.
RSSmeme now has Disqus comments (the same you use) on every story….nobody is using it; but it's there
I have RSSMeme coming as a RSS feed but I'm thinking of having it open beside FriendFeed in FeedDemon as the rss doesn't provide the same feel. So I'll be checking out the comment addition – which I think is a good idea BTW
RSSmeme now has Disqus comments (the same you use) on every story….nobody is using it; but it's there
I have RSSMeme coming as a RSS feed but I'm thinking of having it open beside FriendFeed in FeedDemon as the rss doesn't provide the same feel. So I'll be checking out the comment addition – which I think is a good idea BTW
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[...] start and it took me a little while to get my head wrapped around how it worked. In the end though after a second try I found that it became an integral part of by time spent online. For me it became almost a news [...]