Tag OPML

Entries 5 Total

Bloggers of the World, Unite and Take Over!

Feb 21, ’11 1:01 AM

Become the Media has a purpose. To educate bloggers, journo-programmers, poets, in managing and developing his or her own publishing infrastructure.

The reason I can’t sleep tonight, and am writing this post instead, is that the purpose finally coalesced. From the start, I registered Become the Media as a repository of knowledge to help others publish to the web. Originally, I accomplished this through my blog, Radio UserLand: The Missing Manual. Helping others publish with the powerful tool, Radio UserLand, was my way of giving back.

Now, years later, I’m happy to have found new direction. Based on the idea that Dave Winer puts forth in his post about educating the journo-programmer, I see Become the Media’s future. This time around, I won’t focus solely on a blogging tool. I’ll focus on a top down approach to guerilla style digital journalism. A one-stop shop for journo-programmers, bloggers, and poets.

Some of the sections I envision..

* Register a domain name
* Configure DNS
* Setup  a cloud account with Amazon (for now)
* Get up and running with the OPML Editor
* Setup a river of news
* Install a River2 minimal blogging tool
* Attain an Adjix URL shortener account
* Learn how to use your own domain name for short links
* Push your Radio2 minimal blogging posts to Twitter and beyond

These are just some of the topics I envision. Each section will be screenshot-laden with lots of hand-holding.

What’s the point of all this? To teach people how to avoid the hamster cages (silos) that remove control over our content. In other words, if you Become the Media, then silos such as Facebook and Twitter can’t silence you. By taking matters into our own hands, we can reboot the news.

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Lots To Focus On

Feb 17, ’11 9:15 PM

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had my hands in a number of pots. It feels good. I like experimenting. With the clock running out soon, I’m thinking about heading back to work next week. I’ve got two new clients and some exciting usability projects to focus on which will leave much less time for my personal computer playtime.

The things that have me most interested right now are rivers of news, the radio2 minimal blogging tool, setting up a wiki, tending to my EC2 instance, running an OPML Editor server, blogging, and whipping Become the Media into the shape that it deserves and needs.

That’s a lot to focus on. Thankfully, I’ve been able to get some of those items up to speed in the past few weeks. They are stable enough to run with and possibly share with others. And that is the idea behind Become the Media. It’s always been my platform to share ideas and knowledge with others. I may even request donations for Become the Media should I start hosting rivers of news or providing Radio2 accounts. But any money making ventures will most certainly fall under a different domain. A dot.com existence.

Become the Media = Donation Based/Free.

Dot.Com = Small Business/Not Free.

Once the concepts that I am implementing on Become the Media, such as hosting rivers of news and adding users to the Radio2 server, take hold and prove stable, then I’ll seek ways to turn them into a viable business in some other way.

One step at a time.

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Peeking Into the Developer’s Mind

Feb 13, ’11 9:59 AM

One of the RSS feeds I’m subscribed to is OPML Editor code updates. Since I run the OPML Editor on my laptop as well as my cloud server, I have a keen interest in knowing the status of the software.

On a near daily basis, Dave Winer, the creator of the software, updates the OPML Editor. Sometimes the update is something small and sometimes it is something big. The cool part is that with every update, big or small, Dave releases the code to all OPML users and adds a comment. Here is an example from the last round of updates as it appears in my feed.

Opml editor code updates

It looks like Dave is working on some Amazon S3 integration. Well, since I also subscribe to the OPML Editor email lists, I already know that Dave is working on deeper integration with S3 but the combination of the email list and feed updates is engaging. It’s like piecing together a puzzle.

Of course, I’m only peeking into a very small portion of the developer’s mind in this way. It’s an interesting way to keep tabs on the software that I use.

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Read and Trust and Multiple River2 Users

Feb 1, ’11 7:52 AM

The Read and Trust network of writers comprises a group of indies that are recommended by those we read and trust. I’m not sure who ‘we’ are but the quality of the list is excellent and well worth adding to your feeds.

While visiting their site, I noticed that one can download an OPML file of the entire Read and Trust network, allowing for quick and easy subscription to all the writers in one fell swoop. As a certified OPML nut, of course I grabbed the file. Not only did I add it to my daily feed reading, but I have plans to use the file as my guinea pig.

Allow me to elaborate..

As any reader of mine is aware, I’m an EC2 Poet. In other words, I have my own Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud server (micro instance) running the OPML Editor 24/7. Up until yesterday, my EC2 has dutifully been dishing up my RSS feeds in a river of news format for me.

Now, yesterday, Dave Winer added an important feature to the OMPL Editor. Multi-user support for the River2 news aggregator tool. I’ve been looking forward to this feature because now my EC2 can not only host my RSS feeds, but it can also host another user’s feeds.

The first thing I did was create an imaginary user, ‘readandtrust’ and imported the OPML file I had downloaded earlier. Create a password just for this new user and that’s it. It worked!

Now that my EC2 has two users, I’m going to add a third imaginary user (I’m in full on test mode right now) and then start taking notes. The multi-user implementation has a few kinks to iron out so I hope to help facilitate its progress by putting it through its paces.

The Read and Trust river of news is pass protected so I can’t show it to you. But here’s my river, pushed to my Dropbox, for public consumption, to show you essentially what it looks like. Imagine the Read and Trust network of feeds flowing through instead of my own set of feeds.

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EC2 for Poets – Or, How to Set Up a Server on Amazon

Jan 17, ’11 9:48 AM

Cloud computingDave Winer has distilled the steps involved in setting up a server on Amazon. Why would you want to do this? Well, imagine if you had a new PC and you wanted to have it running software that you can access at any time, from anywhere you have an internet connection. Sure, you could leave the computer up and running in your home office but configuring your router to access that PC can be a bear. Also, you’ll have to find a desk to hold the PC. And, you’ll pay for the electricity to run it. Not to mention you’ll be the one who has to maintain it and get it fixed if/when it needs repair. Not fun.

By following Dave’s doc, you can bypass all the woes I just mentioned and let Amazon do all the dirty work. The benefit for you is that you have your own PC running in the cloud and Amazon takes care of everything. For a price. Amazon will charge you $0.125 per hour. The way to keep this cost in check is to simply turn off the computer (Amazon calls it an instance) when you aren’t using it. Think of it like closing the lid on your laptop when you are done.

OK, so you want a real life example, right? Well, by following Dave’s doc on this subject, one of the steps involves installing his OPML Server. By installing this server, you can add RSS feeds to it. Then, whenever you want to read your RSS feeds, just visit a special webpage that points to your Amazon server.

This is really powerful stuff. Like Dave says, ‘You don’t have to know or care where the server is. You also don’t have to talk to anyone to create a server, and when you’re done with it, just shut it off.’

If you set up your own server on Amazon, let me know how it goes and what you are doing with it.

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