Bloglines..you are sooooo dropped!

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Dear Bloglines,

It’s over between us.

You were my first serious aggregator relationship. I know I flirted with RSS Reader and RSS Popper, but I settled on you.

I loved checking in on you and how you responded with new and exiting feeds. I loved those extras you did for me…like providing a blogroll on my sidebar and letting me see what others subscribed to. The “Sub with bloglines” button. Ahh..memories.

I used you as my first blogging software. I know I was misguided and you just couldn’t fulfil that need…but I thought your great aggregation made up for it.

I used to visit you regularly and you were always ready with an update. Recently, you’ve just not been up for RSS fun when I drop by. Your performance is…..slow. I know some users want intimacy and a bit of teasing with their updates, but for me it’s all about frequency, frequency, frequency.

I’m sorry, but I’ve been dallying with google reader. It’s not quite as fancy as you are, and doesn’t have all the features you have..but it can give good update.

I hope you understand. It’s time for me to move on. I hope to keep in touch through my sidebar, but for now I just don’t want more than that.

Goodbye and good luck.

Kathrynarium

Speaking in tongues: Libworm and VLINT

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Two new library resources:

1. Libworm: describes itself as:

the librarian RSS engine
over 1000 RSS feeds go in
exactly what you need comes out!”

I still subscribe to feeds for individual blogs, rather than feeds for searches. I’ve noticed that some more techno-savvy bloggers are tending toward the latter. This may just be the tool that makes me switch – but I doubt it, I’m too attached to connecting with people’s voices and their individual lives

2. VLINT (Virtual.librariesinteract.info: blog central for Australian Libraries in Other Worlds)

Since Lorelei Junot very nicely offered me a building in Cybrary City for Australian Libraries to share, we’ve been pottering about the building. VLINT started as a place to record the nuts and bolts, daily operations of the project. This gives whoever takes on the project (soon I hope) a history to work with.

snail suggested that we could broaden it to include Australian Libraries in all “Other Worlds”. Great idea. I really hope someone interested in virtual library branches or gaming in libraries starts posting.



TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Let go of the past

OPML and the Internet Librarian conference

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OPML is widely used to group a whole lot of RSS feeds into one bundle, ready for importing into an RSS aggregator.

I just imported my first OPML file into RSS Reader. I tried at Bloglines , but it said it would take 2 hours to import, and I was just too impatient. Bloglines has been a bit flakey recently, anyhow, with outages and delayed updates.

You could use OPML to provide “starter feeds” for people setting up RSS. You could provide information from a subject search, especially if the client wanted to know relevant resources rather than information. The grazr box on Peta‘s sidebar at Innovate is another use of OPML. To create OPML files, you can use a site like OPML Workstation.

What was in my bundle? Feeds associated with the Internet Librarian 2006 conference held 23 -26 October in Monterey, California. Over 1000 delegates attended and it had sessions like videocasting with David Lee King, RSS feeds and javascript with Meredith Farkas and mashups with John Blyberg. Here’s the full program.

The OPML file was created by Nicole Engard at What I Learned Today .The goodies she packed in were feeds for :

  • del.icio.us tags IL06 and IL2006
  • technorati tags IL06 and IL2006
  • flickr photos tagged IL06 or IL2006
  • conference wiki at pbwiki
  • conference organiser’s blog

This week has been quiet in my “library techie” folder at bloglines. Last week it was full of detailed notes from the conference sessions. If I want to follow up any, I can look at posts from 23-26 October in blogs on this list of people blogging the conf. It was compiled by Jennifer at Life as I know it .

TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: New beginning