RSS - Transports of Delight

This is what I like so much about this technology. The other day I followed an email link to Digital Divide Network where I set up an account and nosed through the options. One of which was to have my own free blog.

Now I post stuff about development so there's a case for doing that, but who wants to repost everything twice just to have a presence somewhere else? Not this lazy so and so.

Fortunately the TakingITGlobal platform on which the site runs is right up to the mark in lots of ways. One of which is that, in setting up the blog, there is an option marked "External RSS Feed?". Bingo, all I have to do is give it the RSS for my Development postings and I'm in,posting automatically.

Problem, TypePad doesn't offer RSS for category based feeds. However, it does create the categories as Technorati tags. Now what?

Google for "create RSS category feed from Typepad" and turn up several links for those with the more expensive accounts to create template yadda yadda which I can't do. But there is one for The Distant Librarian: Using Blogdigger to create custom category. Looks promising. Leads to a posting that links to Science Library Pad which has full details on how to do it.

So, Blogdigger it is.Search using site: kn.com.au AND subject: (development) Good, now I get the posts tagged as Development but only two of them. To get the whole thing I need to know my blog ID. Fortunately in each result there is a "Focus" Link. Click the link and I find that I am blogID:6287

Re-enter the query using the ID and Bingo. Nearly there. In the top right corner of the results is an option to subscribe to the search with XML or Atom.

Now back to the Digital Divide Network and paste in the external RSS Feed and TahDah!! Done.

Of course, now that I can do that, I'll create feeds for every category and give anyone who wants them the feed that meets their requirements.

Did I say how much I like this stuff? I've been blathering on for years that the web is just a transitional phase of the net, but never been able to explain what the next stage will be, Now I have an answer I'm happy to stand up for. RSS,

Comments

[Taka]

I came across these today which you might like as well:

http://reblog.org/
http://ethanz.newsilike.com/default.aspx

:-)