Dr.K: News Machine

Having tried both methods of RSS to HTML - I have decided to use BuzzBoost from FeedBurner rather than RSS Include.

My reasons:

(i) RSSInclude only provides for 10 news items and BuzzBoost allows for unlimited items

(ii) BuzzBoost supports more in the way of CSS than RSSInclude and can be configured any way I choose.

Not that I am unhappy with the service that RSSInclude gives - just that as my feeds are coming off FeedBurner anyhow, and that I can customize the BuzzBoost code to give me more control over the look and feel of the News-Machine pages - means that it wins hands down.

For now ...

Tags: feedburner, buzzboost, rss, html, headlines, rssinclude, rsstools

Posted by drk at 04:51 PM | Permalink

Because my main blog moved host and URL this weekend I was re-assigning DNS for the hackershandbook domain and managed to totally break this weblog.

It now looks like its fixed - the problem stemmed from an incorrect URL pointing to the CSS used for this site.

Sorry about the problems - normal service has now been resumed.

If I've missed any links and anything is broken - let me know.

Posted by drk at 02:35 PM | Permalink

New section of News Machine focussed on business IT solutions and IT Operations / Infrastructure management.

I worked for years as an IT grunt sysadmin and network admin - but being an IT Infrastructure manager gave me a different perspective to a systems or network perspective - one that was business orientated rather than tech-orientated - with regard to my approach to IT.

Anyway I knocked out a quick list last night and built the page - enjoy - and if there's anything else IT management related that you are interested in - let me know.

Tags: it operations, it management, it news, business it

Posted by drk at 01:13 PM | Permalink

Not really a "tag cloud" because it doesn't use tags - but I've just added a CloudSearch view for adsense/adwords top paying keywords.

I've been working on something else with the ZoomClouds XML for a while now and the idea for this cloud came to me after I set up the page for SEO News.

There are more details on the page - any feedback would be appreciated.

Tags: top paying keywords, keywords, seo, google, adsense, adwords, cloudsearch, zoomclouds

Posted by drk at 09:21 PM | Permalink

I've just added a comments section to News Machine - if anyone wants to leave feedback or comment in any way then go there.

Tags: news machine, rss, aggregation, google, yahoo, content analysis, zoomclouds, tagclouds, rest, feedburner

Posted by drk at 07:35 PM | Permalink

The other thing I have changed with the SEO News page for Tim is the way that RSS is presented

Up until now I've been using RSS Include to embed the RSS inside the webpages here - but the limitations of RSS Include are that there are only 10 headlines - not good when you are trying to track between 10-50 news items - especially as the Google News engine always hogs the top two items ...

So I'm trying the Feedburner Buzzboost RSS to HTML program instead.

I'll see how it works out - I miss the control over the look and feel of the RSS displayed inside RSS Include - but the 10 headline limitation means that right now BuzzBoost is better for displaying all the headlines that come up inside the KCU search group.

Feedback please - I will set up a comments page in the next few weeks - until then just email me.

Which looks best? RSSInclude or BuzzBoost?

Tags: rss, rssinclude, feedburner, feedburner buzzboost, buzzboost, news-machine

Posted by drk at 08:59 PM | Permalink

I've just made a new page for Tim Rendle so he can track the current news in syndicspace about his chosen topic.

If he chooses his keywords correctly - then the whole of syndicspace will be available for him to explore his chosen subject.

This is true - especially if he uses the tagsearch view for auto-discovery of new keywords on a regular basis.

Sometimes the web need human input after all!!

Then feeds it back to the KCU cluser unit (i.e. email me with changes!)

Used correctly it should enable Tim to track new keyword spaces in real time. (within the cycle of updates in the online systems being used for this experiment - which means a high degree of error. Google News - for example - sometimes doesn't update its news view for days - meaning the same cloudsearch view will appear for days on end).

The current keywords for Tim's KCU are: google optimization, keywords, primary keywords, secondary keywords, seo, search engine optimisation, website promotion, adsense, adwords, traffic analysis, pagerank, alexa, link analysis, google, search engine, web spiders, pay-per-click, ranking optimization and webmaster.

This should change - the autodiscovery feature of the tagsearch engine supplied by ZoomClouds means that if this system is monitored and feedback given - the KCU should stabilise very quickly and redundant keywords eliminated to make a more compact tagsearch view - and a more compact news search.

CAVEATS: I hate the way google insists on not letting me remove their "Top Stories" from the page/feed - it messes the whole thing up big time ...

Tags: news-machine, drk, rss, experimental, tim rendle google optimization, keywords, primary keywords, secondary keywords, seo, search engine optimisation, website promotion, adsense, traffic analysis, pagerank, alexa, link analysis, google, syndicspace, search engine, web spiders, pay-per-click, ranking optimization, webmaster

Posted by drk at 08:18 PM | Permalink

Right now I use OMEA reader for all my offline RSS stuff - I don't think it matters which reader(s) you use - the categorisation systems are often the same.

For example - most categorisation software of this ilk allows you to build categories and subcategories to represent you favourite feeds - a tree stucture view.

You end up with a taxonomical structure that is like a directory hierarchy - easy to build and find things if you are used to organising structures likes this - but very contstraining if you want to build a cloud based directory.

I end up with a big tree structure which I can navigate easily - after all I've categorised and sub-categorised the feeds according to my own personal categoisation system - but which can be (a) very big, (b) highly personalised, and (c) search is clunky for other people - you end up bolting on a search engine for free text search.

So - underneath the root of my tree I build taxononomic structures based on my knowledge of directory structures, my preferences and my chosen categories.

BUT - suppose the RSS newsreader I was using DIDN'T use a taxonomic-directory tree type structure all the time?

Suppose I just multi-tagged each RSS feed as I subscribed to it - and then the RSS reader organised my feeds according to a tag similarity metric - and not just according to my fixed categorisation.

The representation of my feeds could still be a tree structure - but it could also be represented as cloud structure.

Then I just need to add in a reliable tag semantic extraction program which looks at the content of what I read and there will be yet another view of my data - a roving cloud that had "highs" and "lows" and "storms" when something big hits my RSS SyndicSpace.

Then my I wouldn't be restricted to a directory view of my feeds - I'd have multiple views that would dynamilcally change as RSS SyndicSpace changes.

I wouldn't need to work my way through all my feeds category by category, feed by feed, in a linear fashion.

If something becomes "hot" and many weblogs are carrying information about that subject - my representation of SyndicSpace would change to draw my attention to what is new.

Technorati does a lot of this for me right now

In my RSS reader I have a whole bunch of categories which are nothing but clusters of tags based on my chosen categories. I still have to check them out daily - but I can see everything that is written about the subjects withing the tag clusters.

It makes my life simpler - I know what I am interested in right now so I can navigate my tree structure easily - but it makes "discovery of the new" very difficult.

My categories are my fixed view of the world - not the world itself - and when the world changes - I want my view of the world to change also.

What I need is something that takes account of my personal preferences and automatically tags new information according to what I want that day - it will make the "discovery of the new" much easier.

Tags: tags tagging folksonomy tagsonomy tag clusters tag clouds tagclouds categorisation collective emergent categorisation syndicspace

Posted by drk at 06:04 PM | Permalink

I tried to explain to someone the other the day that there were at least two kinds of tags that I used - "public tags" and "private tags"

Of course both kinds of tags are public - its the reasons why I tag and how I tag that gives rise to this dichotomy.

When I tag something in a social bookmarking system like del.icio.us my express intention is to make that bookmark easily findable by me - the social bookmarking aspect is a desirable effect of the way that del.icio.us handles tags.

But when I post something to my blog and tag it with Technorati tags my express intention is allow other people to find it - the social ranking aspect is just a desirable effect of the way that Technorati handles my tags.

I'll give a concrete example: When I tag sites or posts in del.icio.us with "extreme tales": it means that I want to be able to find those information resources within the context of the "extreme tales" book project I am currently working on.

But when I tag my Extreme Tales blog posts in Technorati with the tag "extreme tales" it means that I want other people to find those posts using the tags "extreme tales" - I don't need those tags for myself because I already know where to find the article I have written.

The tags remain the same but the intentionality behind the act of tagging is different in both cases.

The ultimate private tags are when you tag resources according to something personal - when I tag resources with the name of my wife - that tag has no meaning for anyone else but myself and my wife.

It's an act of private tagging solely designed for our mutual private search space - to enable access to resources that otherwise would be lost.

Anyone else looking at that particluar tagspace would only be confused - a huge bundle of content that is only related by one thing - the personal preferences of someone they don't know and are unlikely to know - tagged solely with their name. This private tag strategy gets a little harder if your wife is called "Ubuntu" or you husband is called "Ajax".

No matter how good tagging, folksonomy and the semantic web become people will still retain these two motivations for tagging - so "private tags" and "public tags" are here to stay.

Tags: tags tag tagging folksonomy tagsonomy tag clouds tagclouds tagspace

Posted by drk at 06:01 PM | Permalink

I've resuffled Space Science News and broken it into three pieces:

Space Science News: The emphasis is mainly on near earth technology and space exploration

astronaut, cassini, deep space network, earth observation, galaxy evolution explorer, geosynchronous orbit, hubble, huygens, iss, lunar exploration, mars exploration, mars global surveyor, nasa, satellite, soyuz, space probe, space shuttle, space tourism, spirit rover, spitzer

Solar System News: Science and Astronomy solely focussed on the solar system

asteroids, solar system, venus, comets, solar storms, earth, ,jupiter, sunspots, magnetic storms, mars, mercury, titan, meteorites, near earth objects, neptune, planets, pluto, saturn, solar flares, uranus

Astronomy News: Theoretical and Cosmological type stuff

astrobiology, astrophysics, big bang, binary stars, black holes, chandra, cosmology, dark matter, galaxies, gamma ray bursts, nebulae, nova, observatory, pulsars, quasars, radio astronomy, seti, star clusters, stars, supervova.

The system isn't perfect but its a good chance to see how it scales - the question is - how many keyword cluster units do you need to completely cover a field like astronomy?

Posted by drk at 06:04 PM | Permalink