Alex Hoffman

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Synthetic Feeds and Australian Bloggers

There has been some discussion recently in the Australian .NET community about creating an Australian community weblog server, so one could have an aggregated feed for Australian weblogs.

However, to create a weblog and feed which combines Australian weblogs, one simply needs to create a "synthetic" feed - one which combines or filters each individual Australian feed. Why create a new server, when there are hundreds of free services ready to host a weblog?

One service that one can use to create a synthetic feed is Feedster (www.feedster.com). While not perfect, it can produce an amalgamated feed based on a list of weblogs in OPML (XML) format. An example OPML document that contains a list of Australian weblogs (known to me):-

OPML (XML) List of Australian Weblogs

To make it more user friendly, I have created a stylesheet (XSLT) that converts it to html for display. I have a simple transformation web service that one can use to combine the two:-

Web Page Listing of Australian Weblogs

Then given the OPML document, one can use Feedster to generate an RSS feed that combines all the Australian weblogs:-

RSS 2.0 Feed - Combined Australian Authors (last 30 entries) 

Simply add that URL to your favourite aggregator (I like SharpReader and intraVnews for Outlook).

One could use the same technique to create a quick amalgamated feed of your choice.

Update: the OPML file is now being maintained by Frank Arrigo.

Published Monday, February 02, 2004 7:47 PM by Alex Hoffman

Comments

# re: Synthetic Feeds and Australian Bloggers@ Monday, February 02, 2004 11:30 AM

Hi there,

As one of the authors of Feedster, I wanted to say thank you for this post. It nicely illustrates how to use Feedster for meta operations like this.

Nice job!

Scott

Scott Johnson of Feedster

# re: Synthetic Feeds and Australian Bloggers@ Wednesday, February 04, 2004 3:28 AM

thx for doing this alex
cheers

frank arrigo

# Accenture Interview Hits@ Thursday, February 05, 2004 2:49 AM

Very much like Mun i've recently starting getting a lot of search engine hits for "Accenture+Interview" in my referrer logs recently. Accenture Technology Solutions (ATS) must be on a massive hiring drive, or at least they must be in the UK! I'm not sure that there is much help either of us can give to anyone that is interviewing with ATS at the moment. If you know your stuff and are a good communicator then you should have no troubles acquiring a position with ATS. The HR interviews are the same you will experience at any medium-large enterprise. The skills interview will catch you out if you don't know your stuff, so shy away from applying for positions that you are not qualified for, and be wary of padding your CV with falsehoods. (I know this is a "durr" type moment but im sure there are people out there that do it :) ) On another note, Mun, maybe we should set up "Accenture Bloggers" OPML file and create a synthetic feed using Feedster along the lines of what Alex Hoffman has done for Australian .NET bloggers? If anyone is interested drop a comment onto this post (if any accenture bloggers actually find my blog)....

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