Dan Cameron: How to make a tumblog using Google Reader
nstryker
· 2 years ago
so then i subscribe to a feed of your best feeds? del.icio.us seems more user friend cuz then i don't have to scroll through posts i don't care about.
seriously though, it's funny that this is basically what blogs started as: a log of your web surfing. so now because the idea of what a blog is has changed, but interest in the original concept has not, people have to come up with a new name for it.
Dan
· 2 years ago
I have to disagree: from the beginning I never recalled anyone using their blog to aggregate from multiple sources, actually only recently through RSS has that even been feasible. A tumblog is simply an aggregator for RSS and then presents it in a reverse chronological order (like a blog) on it's own site. A blog is for posting specifically.
I do agree that the del.icio.us is a great RSS tumblelog but it's more work to aggregate through delicious since you have to bookmark everything and since I'm reading my sites through RSS that would be impossible for me to do. Now I have my del.icio.us items, my blog items, and the interesting RSS items in one place.
I'm also assuming people would subscribe to my shared items, which I still need to advertise on this site. But for me I love to see shared items from others, I would definitely read yours and--maybe--Jared's.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
Yeah, you can see mine here (I've just been holding off publishing/advertising it because I'm planning on integrating it into my blog directly so that it all comes through in the same place).
As a side note, if you want to tag (using del.icio.us) items while you're reading them in your feed reader, you can always right-click any link and tag it, and the title links in feed readers usually link directly to the article, so you could go either way.
I'm planning a solution where I won't have to do double entry (meaning del.icio.us->Reader or vice-versa), so I'll update the progress when I get going on that.
As for the history, I do believe that blogs actually started more as journals, with more text-based entries/posts, but I'd also agree that as it became more "mainstream" most "average users" who jumped on the bandwagon primarily used them similarly to what we now refer to as "tumblogs" (which I hate the name of, BTW).
Dan
· 2 years ago
Are you using a delicious plugin or something? I don't get that "side note".
I don't like the term either, I don't even know if it's tumbleblog or tumblog.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
Yeah, the plugin for Firefox lets you right-click (or the equivalent for button deficient systems) and click "Tag This Link".
I was just saying that if you did want to make del.icio.us the source for the tumblog (instead of shared Reader items) and add things from your feed reader to it, you could do it that way. Not that you'd want to, but it would be one alternative.
Dan
· 2 years ago
Yeah, not having content is annoying to readers since that means you just have to click on a bunch of links which I'm and maybe other wont due. I already don't like truncated posts.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
When you say "not having content" are you referring to del.icio.us feeds? Because they can have limited content; the description can either contain excerpts or your own commentary, and the descriptions do come through in the feed.
I'm not saying it's better to do it that way (I don't think it is); I only mentioned it because you and Nathan were discussing using del.icio.us vs. Reader shared items.
Dan
· 2 years ago
I meant "yeah" as "not that [i'd] want to do that".
Yes, I'm referring to delicious not having content. It is not the original post it's just a link and may have a description placed in it manually. But it's still just a link not the actual content. On my shared right now I have video can I get that in delicious?
That was rhetorical.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
Yeah, I was just saying that there can be some (minimal) content in the del.icio.us feeds from the description, and that you could either add your own commentary there or include an excerpt of the content if you wanted to.
I'm not sure if it works this way on the Mac, but with the del.icio.us FF plugin, if you have a section of text highlighted before you create the bookmark, it will copy/paste that text into the description field for you automatically.
Obviously it wouldn't ever be the full content (or video stuff), but sometimes all you want is a link and some brief text, so it could work for that.
Like I said, it's kind of a mute point since if you're choosing one over the other for tumblog functionality, Reader is the obvious choice.
Personally I'd rather be able to "tumblog" from either del.icio.us or Reader without having to involve the other system (in your case feeding del.icio.us through Reader as you described). My eventual wonderful new system will support this. :)
Dan
· 2 years ago
You should look at tumblr then because that's their main service, to aggregate everything for you. You also have full control over how it looks so it might save you some time. Otherwise you should just look into a Yahoo! pipe since that would give you the code you need or simply the RSS you would need to produce it. I might use a yahoo pipe at some point to just create a tumblr RSS feed of my own, that way it would be completely automated and I could do some other little tricks.
Dan
· 2 years ago
Here's a Yahoo Pipe to work off of, I just need to get the embeds to work since merging atom and RSS isn't the easiest to do.
wow, for some reason i'd heard that a weblog was originally (like pre-2000) a log of people's web travels, then commentary started popping in, then more general journaling which eventually became the ubiquitous phenomena known as blogging, but apparently my source on that information was just some idiot spouting off. and now that i'm thinking back on who it was, i realize that that's exactly the kind of thing he would make up to sound smart.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
Yeah, I'm certainly no authority on blog history either, but the article/post/conversation roots are just how I remember it unfolding, but my perspective may be different.
I'm sure the exact history is probably widely debated by people who are (perhaps too) concerned with defining internet history. A quick read through the wikipedia entry for "blog" would seem to support my perceptions of it, but I'm sure there are differing opinions / perceptions about where it started.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
Re: the tumblog / pipes idea - sounds cool, I'll check it out. I already have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to approach it, but this might give me some other ideas as well.
One thing I know for sure is that I want it to be totally self hosted and non-proprietary (no walled gardens) as well as completely open source, so I think that might rule out using tumblr directly. I also want it integrated into my blog without having to fetch data from an external system during page loads. Pipes might be useful to pull feeds into such a system, though.
Dan
· 2 years ago
You should check it out because it does provide you with the JSON so it might help you out for designing what ever you're going to do.
JaredB
· 2 years ago
I think I'm going to have to unsub from your shared items feed if you keep sharing those lolcats images...
Dan
· 2 years ago
What? Some are awesome, <img src="http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/128297925696563750tehcloningmach.jpg"></img>
All Comments
seriously though, it's funny that this is basically what blogs started as: a log of your web surfing. so now because the idea of what a blog is has changed, but interest in the original concept has not, people have to come up with a new name for it.
I do agree that the del.icio.us is a great RSS tumblelog but it's more work to aggregate through delicious since you have to bookmark everything and since I'm reading my sites through RSS that would be impossible for me to do. Now I have my del.icio.us items, my blog items, and the interesting RSS items in one place.
I'm also assuming people would subscribe to my shared items, which I still need to advertise on this site. But for me I love to see shared items from others, I would definitely read yours and--maybe--Jared's.
As a side note, if you want to tag (using del.icio.us) items while you're reading them in your feed reader, you can always right-click any link and tag it, and the title links in feed readers usually link directly to the article, so you could go either way.
I'm planning a solution where I won't have to do double entry (meaning del.icio.us->Reader or vice-versa), so I'll update the progress when I get going on that.
As for the history, I do believe that blogs actually started more as journals, with more text-based entries/posts, but I'd also agree that as it became more "mainstream" most "average users" who jumped on the bandwagon primarily used them similarly to what we now refer to as "tumblogs" (which I hate the name of, BTW).
I don't like the term either, I don't even know if it's tumbleblog or tumblog.
I was just saying that if you did want to make del.icio.us the source for the tumblog (instead of shared Reader items) and add things from your feed reader to it, you could do it that way. Not that you'd want to, but it would be one alternative.
I'm not saying it's better to do it that way (I don't think it is); I only mentioned it because you and Nathan were discussing using del.icio.us vs. Reader shared items.
Yes, I'm referring to delicious not having content. It is not the original post it's just a link and may have a description placed in it manually. But it's still just a link not the actual content. On my shared right now I have video can I get that in delicious?
That was rhetorical.
I'm not sure if it works this way on the Mac, but with the del.icio.us FF plugin, if you have a section of text highlighted before you create the bookmark, it will copy/paste that text into the description field for you automatically.
Obviously it wouldn't ever be the full content (or video stuff), but sometimes all you want is a link and some brief text, so it could work for that.
Like I said, it's kind of a mute point since if you're choosing one over the other for tumblog functionality, Reader is the obvious choice.
Personally I'd rather be able to "tumblog" from either del.icio.us or Reader without having to involve the other system (in your case feeding del.icio.us through Reader as you described). My eventual wonderful new system will support this. :)
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=_G50...
I'm sure the exact history is probably widely debated by people who are (perhaps too) concerned with defining internet history. A quick read through the wikipedia entry for "blog" would seem to support my perceptions of it, but I'm sure there are differing opinions / perceptions about where it started.
One thing I know for sure is that I want it to be totally self hosted and non-proprietary (no walled gardens) as well as completely open source, so I think that might rule out using tumblr directly. I also want it integrated into my blog without having to fetch data from an external system during page loads. Pipes might be useful to pull feeds into such a system, though.
<img src="http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/128297925696563750tehcloningmach.jpg"></img>