This blog is no longer updated.

Since I own the domain name for a couple more years, and the hosting was paid-in-advance, it's still here. But I've moved on to Hawaii, and no longer have the need to publish all the sorts of neat stuff that made up the contents of this website.

If you've linked to me, you are invited to unlink, as your readers will no longer be presented with new content. Thanks, Steve

This is Topic: XML and the like Following are the News Items published under this Topic.

RSS and XML: Seoul Computer Club Presentation. The slides from my presentation to the Seoul Computer Club (their homepage here) (and .gifs of all the slides) are available for your review.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Saturday, December 10, 2005

Manually Create RSS files A while ago, I linked to an Excel file that you could use to publish RSS feeds. Via Larkware, Phelios' RSS Writer is a standalone application that allows you to create RSS files from scratch and upload them to your server for publishing. If you're savvy enough to understand when you need to publish RSS feeds, I'm betting you're probably can figure out how to create them without assistance from programs like this - but what the heck, it's free.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, September 13, 2005

RSS: 1,2,3. OK, it doesn't get any easier than this. Click the link. Follow the directions. Trust me, RSS is *the* way to read a whole bunch of stuff really quickly. And feel free to download and import my list of feeds.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Create RSS Feeds via Excel Mark at AutomateExcel posts a great spreadsheet that uses VBA to create an XML file that you can upload to your server, based on the contents of the spreadsheet. This screenshot gives you an idea of how it works - you plug some standard site information (site name, file name, etc) in the top, add as many rows as you want, and click "Create RSS Feed".           The VBA is well commented, and appears pretty easy to modify to display *any* kind of list you've created in Excel. As my friends Bill & Ted say, "Most excellent." Expect to see this one around the office, folks.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Another RSS Reader - blogbot Blue 6 has released blogbot - an $18 plug-in (14 day free evaluation available) for Outlook that lets you read RSS/ATOM feeds in Outlook. Looks pretty solid. They also offer blogbot Lite for free, which plugs into IE. I'll say once again, if you're not reading RSS, you need to try it. It's the easiest way to keep up with dynamic web content. Not just blogs, as you can see from the right-hand side, I've subscribed to Exchange download feeds, Security Bulletins, and MSDN software listings.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, December 14, 2004

w.bloggar v3.03 Playing around with w.bloggar today - looks like a pretty cool way to publish without using the web interface. The only use I see for it is that it'll ping weblogs.com for me, which is something I can't (yet?) do natively in PostNuke. Other than that, offline post editing isn't really great. Update: Why is this in the XML category? Because it uses the XML-RPC connection within the blog application to transfer stories between my PC and the server, vs. via HTTP POST/GET as my browser does. It's something to crack open and play around with - can I post via Outlook (not via email, that's been done, but with the application, as Scoble does with his Link Log? That's why - the other PostNuke site I run would kick butt if I could add posts via Outlook. More stuff to work on.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, November 11, 2004

Firefox's Live Bookmarks. Firefox's Live Bookmarks allow you to bookmark an XML feed (instead of a webpage) and then view the titles of most recent feeds in your bookmarks menu - the bookmarks are updated as the site content is updated. Used this code in the theme: (...net/backend.php is my RSS feed - change the link to your RSS feed and change the "title") <link href="http://www.rokus.net/backend.php" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="ROKUS.NET"> Firefox browsers now see an RSS button on the bottom right. Live Bookmarks display in Mozilla: Thanks to David L. Farquhar for the howto.      comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, October 05, 2004

What I'm Reading Created the right-block today. Exported my OPML file (conveniently named "my.opml") and tweeked the script from http://ken.coar.org/burrow/blogroll.php to convert the OPML to HTML. Got rid of the word wrap by truncating to the first 20 characters or so. Probably ought to separate the OPML files into topics of interest to break up the list into more friendly chunks. And technically, it's not everything I'm reading, it's just the stuff I read via RSS. So, what does all this mean? OPML is the Outline Processor Markup Language, which is an aggregation of all the newsfeeds, blogs, and MS-stuff I read through NewsGator. If I want to send my list of feeds to another RSS aggregator, I export OPML from the source program (NewsGator) and import it to the destination. If you want to subscribe to all the feeds I subscribe to, you can just copy the file. Think of it as a big paper clip around all the RSS feeds that I use. So, what's the big deal? I no longer have to sync my feeds manually - I can publish a single OPML file, import it at home, import it at work, post it on the web, and all my feeds are synchronized. So, go ahead and download a copy of NewsGator, intraVnews (both are Outlook plugins), Pluck (IE plug in), or sign up for NewsGator Online for free. Import the OPML file and start reading!! Code to create the blogroll follows: Read more...      |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Saturday, September 18, 2004