Syndication

[lethargic_man]

Syndication's not something I've paid any attention to until now, but another non-LJ blog's been started I'd like to keep track of, and it would be nice to be able to collate all the various blogging systems I'd like to follow.

Now, as I'm not a paid member of LJ, I can't syndicate their feeds onto LJ. I can create a "live bookmark" for them on Mozilla, but that's not really what I'm looking for. What I'd like is to be able to combine all the feeds into an equivalent of my LJ friends page, so I can read the latest entries on all blogs as they come in, and see at a glance whether there are new comments posted.

I could spend a week or so putting together a piece of Perl to do this for me (and wrestling with the issue of authentication), but I suspect I'd be reinventing the wheel; such a tool must already exist.

So, anyone got any recommendations?

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Bloglines do something like that?

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

http://bloglines.com/ is one website that aggregates feeds. Not sure if the reading experience will be what you're looking for, though.

Wrt comments, there is not (AFAIK) any "comments" field in the RSS spec, and RSS feeds don't tend to tell you how many comments there are on any given entry. I think you might be SOL on that front.

What's the blog you want syndicated? Someone else can set it up for you easily enough. Are you *sure* it's not syndicated already? Feed its RSS/Atom URL into the field at the bottom of http://livejournal.com/syn/ and if you don't get shown an existing feed, let me know and I'll do it for you.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Are you *sure* it's not syndicated already? Feed its RSS/Atom URL into the field at the bottom of http://livejournal.com/syn/ and if you don't get shown an existing feed, let me know and I'll do it for you.

Ah, thank you, that'll do nicely (though I'm not entirely sure about comments: the feed I just added didn't reflect original-site comments).

Pretty sure that won't apply to the blog that was created this morning, but I'll see what I can do about getting syndication (may come back to you afterwards).

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

http://maromuk.blogspot.com is the new one. Thanks!

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

maromuk_blog

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Thank'ee kindly, ma'am.

[liv]

As a free member, you can watch any number of syndicated feeds on your friends list. So all you need to do is get a paid member friend to "create" a feed by telling LJ the appropriate URL, and then you can incorporate the feed into your LJ friends page. I am a friendly paid member at your service if you see any more blogs you really want to slurp over to LJ.

But you won't see new comments that way. I think a very rare few blogs have separate syndication for the comments, so you'd see effectively a new post every time there was a new comment (assuming you created an LJ feed in the same slightly roundabout way). But that's not at all standard.

I recommend: languagehat and makinglight.

And, ooh, new userpic! I like, it actually looks like you, and happy.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

So all you need to do is get a paid member friend to "create" a feed by telling LJ the appropriate URL, and then you can incorporate the feed into your LJ friends page. I am a friendly paid member at your service if you see any more blogs you really want to slurp over to LJ.

Thank'ee too, ma'am.

But you won't see new comments that way. I think a very rare few blogs have separate syndication for the comments, so you'd see effectively a new post every time there was a new comment (assuming you created an LJ feed in the same slightly roundabout way). But that's not at all standard.

Hmm; I'd guess that works both ways too, i.e. Hannu's not going to see the comment I posted to tomorrowelephan rather than Tomorrow Elephant (http://tomorrowelephant.net/).

And, ooh, new userpic! I like, it actually looks like you, and happy.

I noticed they'd doubled the number for unpaid members without telling me. I need inspiration now for an icon to go along with my limmud (http://www.michael-grant.me.uk/limmud.html) tag, now. And also to remember what other icon I thought I needed back when I didn't have room for one.