FeedShow

A new “timezone” feature was requested in the forums:
http://forums.feedshow.com/viewtopic.php?pid=274

It is now available in your “prefs” panel so that you can display times and dates in your local time zone.

Firefox 2 has now an RSS feature. You can easily subscribe to a feed and choose your RSS reader.

Unfortunatly FeedShow RSS reader is not within the Firefox default short list, but here is a way to add Feedshow to the readers list:
“Just Click Add Feedshow“.

Now you just have to choose FeedShow within the list in the Firefox options menu.

More on Firefox 2:
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2006/10/firefox-2-tweaks-web-feed-readers/
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2006/10/adding-online-web-feed-readers-the-easy-way/

FeedShow has now 2 style sheets (CSS).

You can choose your style by clicking on the links at the top of each page (next to the shortcuts reminder). Your style will be stored in a cookie so that you’ll get your style each time you come to read your RSS feeds.

More styles will be added in the next future and FeedShow “1.0″ will also accept style submissions.

Some keyboard shortcuts have been installed in FeedShow.

As you get more and more feeds in your configuration, the mouse becomes an inadequate device to navigate through your unread feeds.
That’s why 2 keyboard shortcuts have been implemented :

• ‘n‘ (next) will go to the next feed with unread items.
  The left menu tree will scroll to to the new selected feed and the content will be displayed on the right as if you had selected it with the mouse.
• ‘p‘ (previous) will go to the preceding feed with unread items.

Just tell me if you want more shortcuts (I don’t believe we need much of them !).
Enjoy !

Some features were added to the OPMLBuilder (FeedShow “Goodies section“):

• an option to detect links in the HTML header only.
• an option to get the MIME types of the documents the links are referring to (helps to detect “xml” documents)

Additionally, relative url are now resolved as described in rfc1808.

OPMLBuilder was released a few days ago, and while checking at ShareYourOPML I noticed there was no way to get OPML files (though you can upload yours !).
A few lines of code later I was able to create OPML files from “Share Your OPML” thanks to “Really” Share Your OPML (built over OPMLBuilder).

Now with “Really” Share Your OPML you can upload AND retrieve your OPML files or create some from the Top100 feeds or other user’s subscriptions.

Why “Share your OPML” doesn’t provide an API or a mean to download OPML files ?

See also: FeedShow Goodies

A new “Goodies” section is available at FeedShow.com:
this section gathers some scripts or tools that can be useful to anyone using RSS, blogs, OPML, …

The first tools I added is OPMLBuilder. This tools helps you create OPML files (that you can import in any RSS reader) from a list of links to RSS files. It can also help you when a website provides a list of RSS feeds (like Yahoo News) but does not provide an OPML file (with all the RSS feeds in it). Yes, you could subscribe to the feeds “one by one”, but I found it easier to import a complete OPML file to my RSS reader. This is why I created OPMLBuilder.

The tools checks at the web page and lists all the links within this page. You just add a filter and click “create OPML” to get a clean OPML file that can import.

If you already have a list of RSS files, OPMLBuilder can also do the job.

Check at the example at the end of the page and it will become clear that this tool was really missing !

John asked for a new print feature that could be used from all the blogs.
This new service is now online.

From your blog template just call this URL,
http://www.feedshow.com/print?feed=[FEED_URL]&item=[PERMALINK]

• FEED_URL is the url of your RSS feed. It must be indexed by FeedShow.
  A feed is indexed if at least one registered user (could be you!) has subscribed to this feed.
• PERMALINK is the url to the item (post) you want to print as specified in your RSS feed.
  Note that only the last 100 items can be printed with FeedShow.

I have implemented this feature on this blog so that you can check the result ! Just click on the “print” link at the end of this post, and you’ll get a printable version of this post !

Tell me if you have any other ideas…

Two mistakes brings a lot of discussion about the new service Feedpass.com.

Why they are wrong:
- They make commercial use of content without any prior authorization of the original publisher.
- They have a wrong design in which anybody can claim a content and get the benefit (money) of it.

May be they should have done something like I do with FeedShow in the Revenue Sharing Program:
- No ads if the original publisher does not explicitly agree,
- Use the RemoteAds RSS extension to get the Adsense codes of the publisher.

FeedPass.com will surely be modified to address these issues…

Discussed here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/21/feedpass-does-absolutely-nothing/
http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/05/19/feedpass-makes-rss-subscription-and-monetizing-other-peoples-co/

FeedShow already provides a way to subscribe to the revenue sharing program via the RemoteAds RSS extension module.
This method is may be to complex for some users that don’t have direct access to their RSS file structure.

This is why an another method has been implemented.
This 3 steps method is really fast and easy.

First you need a Google Adsense account. If you don’t have one, you can subscribe here :

(Note that you don’t have to include ads on your blog if you don’t want to. You can use this account only with FeedShow…)

Then, you only need to publish a post that includes the following lines:

--[Subscribe FEEDSHOW Revenue sharing program]
provider=[Google]
uid=[pub-8635701842554873]
option=[5338430085]
--[Subscribe FEEDSHOW Revenue sharing program]

Just replace the ‘uid’ with your ‘google_ad_client’. Option is ‘optional’ (!) and may be set to a ‘google_ad_channel’ (do not change provider=[Google]).

The last step is to tell FeedShow to take your post into account. You will do it on this page.

You are now ready to get your share (50%) of the revenues made by your content. You can check at this feed to see how ads look like within FeedShow RSS reader.