Short Circuit's Journal: Tightening the Circle by Loosening it

Tightening the Circle by loosening it.

I've noticed that the Journal Circle is divided between at least three blogging platforms. You have folks who use their Slashdot journals, folks who do most of their writings on Multiply, and at least one guy (bwjones comes to mind) who posts on his own server and links back in both his Slashdot journal and Multiply blog.

It occurred to me that all modern blogging platforms have one thing in common: RSS. Then it occurred to me that I could glue the Circle back together by building a configurable RSS aggregator.

Here's one way it could work. (I have in mind at least one other, but I suspect Praedon would want to jump on that incarnation. ;-) )

1. An administrator installs the software and sets a group access code.
2. Jo/e Circle Member creates an account (after providing his group access password)
3. Jo/e Circle Member enters a list of RSS feeds, and selects whether each one may be added to the group master feed. (The master feed is visible to anyone with the right URL.)
4. Jo/e Circle Member can then build a personal feed from any of the feeds found in the group master feed, and any private feed he's been given an access code to.

From time to time, I take on a personal programming project as a skill-building exercise. This was supposed to be a relatively simple one. However, I've been asked to help implement one of my other ideas on someone else's site, so I'm not going to have as much time to work on this one.

The question is, if I built this thing, would any of you use it?

Meta RSS

[pythorlh]

Basically what you're tlaking about is a meta-rss feed, which would contain links to the various rss feeds that the circle post to. I don't think that a new application just for tracking it would be necessary, just a post of the meta feed itself, which everyone who wishes to could subscribe to in their own rss agregator. I use Bloglines myself, though I only use it for a handful of the multiply feeds, and I still visit the journals by hand. If there were a meta feed, I could leave it completely in Blogli

Re:

[pythorlh]

And now that I post that, I realise that a simple OPML format (www.opml.org [opml.org]) list of the feeds would allow me to import them into Bloglines, and probably be readable by other agregators, as well.

Interesting

[TopShelf]

One benefit right off the bat would be that for some of us, Multiply is blocked at work. Plus, I'd link my /. journal into such an app, but not my Multiply one. It's simply a rehosting of my hockey blog, which I doubt the Circle is interested in. I keep the personal/work/other stuff on my /. journal.

Speaking of such,

[ak3ldama]

you should put up a JE on how you guys are dealing with SPAM on the Rosetta code site.

Re:

[Short Circuit]

Only logged-in users can make edits, but that doesn't work against spambots that create users.

I intend to change the name of the login fields, I just haven't had time to look at Rosetta Code since a few weeks before my grandfather passed. Once I get broadband at home again, that will be the first thing I do.