Why Technology Negotiations Are Different

Why Technology Negotiations Are Different isn't specifically related to libraries, but I found it somewhat relevant nonetheless. Sort of reminds me of some of the issues we face with integrated library systems, communication problems between techies and non-techies, the temptation to hold onto old ways, etc. I really think we should be exploring the business and marketing literature more than we currently do. [Source: Harvard Business School Working Knowledge]

PubSub lets you 'filter' your feeds

Ok, so Steven Cohen addressed my question (ok, I'm a little embarrassed) about restricting the posts you get from a particular feed to those containing keywords or sentences of your choosing: it can be done in PubSub. I just built 4 subscriptions. Now I just have to wait and see what happens.

PubSub defaults to an OR operator between terms, which is pretty logical here IMHO. I didn't see any mention of truncation (I may have missed it -- I'm kind of impatient) so I just added as many variants of words as I could think of. And they've even set up a group of library weblogs, so happy librarians can filter feeds within their very own circle. Just 'focus your subscription' on 'weblog entries' and check off 'The Librarian List'. Super! There's a 'Comics List', a 'Fashion List' (Lorie?), a 'Law List', a 'PR List', and a 'Real Estate List' too.

More info on PubSub syntax here.

I give up on FeedRinse

FeedRinse is driving me nuts: It promised to answer all my wishes and then stomped all over my dreams of tailored RSS results. I have no idea how it's filtering ResourceShelf, but it's certainly not using the keywords I entered. I thought maybe the keyword 'EPA' was messing it up (perhaps it was picking up any post with words containing those three letters in succession?) but when I removed it, the results were the same: wrong. Plus, it won't let me add any new feeds, so I think it might consider five attempts to set up a feed filter as five filters, regardless of whether those feeds were deleted or not. I was psyched, now I'm annoyed. Guess you get what you pay for... but I'm certainly not upgrading! I'll stick to PubSub. Just wish I could use a matching engine on a specific feed with PubSub... hmm?

Social software and current awareness

I thought this was pretty well laid out: traditional publishing just can't keep up with social bookmarking and other web 2.0 phenomena.

Librarians Do It Better

Cancer patients may want to consider getting search help from a librarian. This isn't exactly news to us, but it's nice to see it in the more mainstream media (if Yahoo! News and Reuters Health can be called more mainstream, that is).

Feedrinse

Ok, Feedrinse is really cool if you're getting sick of sifting through hundreds of posts to get a few nuggets. I think you can create up to 5 keyword-based feeds from pre-existing feeds, and if this actually works well, I'll be a happy camper. I've created a keyword-limited feed from DocuTicker, for example. I'm going to try it out on ResourceShelf now.

Feedpass

Example of a Feedpass page created from the McGill Library bulletins. It seems to be somewhat delayed in that the latest posting listed is May 15 -- and I posted on May 17, as well as on May 19 (although that bulletin had an expiration date which may explain why it didn't display in Feedpass). Cool tool though: it incorporates social bookmarking and even makes it easy to subscribe via email. [My source: Library Stuff]

LexisNexis Canada - RSS Updates

Canadian RSS feeds from LexisNexis. [Source: Library Stuff]

Kebberfegg: Keyword-based Feed Generator

This looks pretty cool: You type in your keywords, select the category/ies such as 'multimedia', 'news and other news search engines', 'other' (love that one), 'press release wires', 'scientific and medical', 'tags and site submissions', 'technology', 'web search engines', and/or 'weblog search engines'... and stare in awe at all the feeds which are automatically generated for you: 'Kebberfegg builds RSS feeds around the specific information you're looking (for) and in the types of sources you would probably find most useful.' [Source: Search Engine Watch]

Ponyfish RSS Feed Creator

If you'd like to create a feed for a site which doesn't have one, Ponyfish allows you to do so.

Blogs Sorted Other than Chronologically

Western Springs Newspaper Obituary Index is an example of a blog which isn't sorted chronologically. This walking paper gives you the info on setting something like this up yourself in WordPress.

Blog search engine: Sphere

Sphere is another contender in the blog search engine category. I can't say I'm any more or less impressed with it than the other engines we've been using, but it's similar to Feedster and PubSub in that you can create customized feeds. [Quasi-review: Search Engine Watch. Sphere: A New Approach to Blog Search]

Blog This!

Blog This! page which includes the bookmarklet, just in case you're demonstrating and Firefox hasn't been set up in advance (hint hint). Oh ya, it seems to be malfunctioning today. I can post from Blogger but not using the bookmarklet. Bummer.

RSS Feeds - More than just news

RSS Feeds - More than just news offers some good if not obvious (and already known) examples of where the technology is headed.