Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

All day long I keep finding new mini sites at OPMLworkstation’s public directory that I want to share.  For example, a very nice, comprehensive intro to the RSS market.  Courtesy of Rafael Sidi.  Title page below.

Really Simple Stuff
Web 2.0: Current Realities and A Look To The Future
NFAIS
November 18, 2005
Rafael Sidi, VP Product Development
Elsevier Engineering Information

All day long I keep trying to get back to work, and then I go mouse
around at the public directory of OPMLworkstation and find some new
mini site that I want to share.  Here is one. A very nice, comprehensive intro to the RSS market.  Courtesy of Rafael Sidi.  Title page below.

Really Simple Stuff

Web 2.0: Current Realities and A Look To The Future

NFAIS

November 18, 2005

Rafael Sidi, VP Product Development

Elsevier Engineering Information

You can see and browse the files that members of the community have made public at OPMLworkstation. 

Just click here.

No registration is required.  This directory is open.

Click “browse” by any listing to see a mini site. 

For example the irish podcasting project.

Seattle Mind Camp mini site.

This mini site is based on an opml file of participants in a seminal
Web 2.0 conclave.  This file is hosted by Dave Winer in his OPML-roll.  Just for fun I pasted the list into OPMLworkstation, validated and save it, clicked “browse” and generated this mini site.

Interesting post by Dave Winer on Web 2.0,
two models of how to pursue it.  I think RSSI is in the number two
camp, I know we are not in the number one camp, and I hope we are not
in number three. 

BTW I don’t really understand the number one camp, honestly.  Excerpt from Dave:

2. There’s the Mike Arrington version of Web 2.0, which he explained snarkily in his traitors memo,
but he really believes it, and more power to him. I adore Mike, learn a
ton from him, and am willing to humor him ad infinitum. That’s why when
I debunk #1, he gets caught in the cross-fire, but I don’t resign from
the workgroup. I kind of
like the idea that we’re appropriating the marketing slogan that makes
the carpetbaggers so rich. There’s a certain kind of justice to that.

Bernard Flasch and Peiter Overbeek are developing the quite wonderful site Opmlmanager.com.

They have published their user list in OPML. Their list in turn
includes lists of OPML put together by a number of interesting folks
and pointing to a deep and rich array of sources. 

This list is spidered and syndicated through OPMLsearch.  By
searching for the list under “opml manager” and then clicking “browse”
by a search result, the OPMLsearch service generated this display of the user list just now.

An instant syndicated maxi mini site has been created, based on a set of large, complex data provided from a distributed community of contributors!

This user list displayed in this fashon becomes a dynamic, always fresh
“maxi mini site” with many levels of content and large number of
contributors.

Contributions that are OPML all the way down
can be traversed easily. 

And contributions that are OPML pointing
to RSS can be read as reading lists.  For example, Alex Barnett’s reading list.

The only problem with the OPMLmanager user list is that some of
the users did not put in any OPML, so their links are empty.  As a
result, when you work through the directory some of the outline lines
just point to an empty file.

OK, perhaps the user list display, in all its depth, is not really a “mini site” at all.  I really like the small, fast, to-the-point mini sites  at PowerPoint-fed  OPMLworkstation.

By contrast, the user list is a full-fledged OPML public
directory site.  Whatever we call it, I think it illustrates the power
of OPML to reveal and make explorable vast swatches of web content, and
to integrate the clinical judgment/knowledge of many many individuals. 

OPML provides a very effective integrating approach for “distributed
creativity” of certain types.  Such lists are essentially
dynamic bibliographies of web content, arrayed by bibliophile.

Bela and the RSS Labs team just released a new version of OPMLworkstation. 

Many many thanks to folks in the OPML community who provided feedback
on the first version, as well as ideas directly for this version.  Thanks for sharing lots
of very valuable “wishes”.

OPMLworkstation has been expanded to provide free private and public hosting of OPML.

OPMLworkstation also has a one-click “browsing’ or tree directory
feature.  What I think is fun is that users can create open public “mini
sites” that are similar to Dave Winer’s OPML blogroll. 

1.  Someone used OPML to publish a set of instructions for installing Joomla!  Just click here.  Not sure what Joomla! is, but the mini-site is fun and includes a playable video link.

2.  Here is one that I think is in dutch.

3.  Here is a Shel and Scoble presentation.

4.  Here are class notes to John Palfrey’s Harvard course discussion of Grokster and the Grokster case.

5.  Here is a mini site version of TopTenSources for venture capital.

I think mini
sites may be a good way to share reading lists, project plans (password
protected), and university class notes and study guides. 

The mini sites generated at OPMLworkstation come with a permalink.  The
permalinks are currently kind of ugly, but they work and will be
simplified in short order.

If you have a PowerPoint presentation you’d like to share, you can
convert it on OPMLworkstation, and in one-click generate a mini site
version.  You can then email the link to colleagues.

PowerPoint outlines become OPML outlines, which are universally
searchable, shareable, and viewable with web-based services.  No
more “PowerPoint silos” in the organization.  OPML versions of
PowerPoint files constitute the richest possible metadata enabling, for
example, full text searching. 

In OPMLworkstation the “slide
view” of each PowerPoint page is converted into a .gif graphics file,
each of which is apppended to the OPML outline at the appropriate
place.  PowerPoint audio files are automatically made into
attachments to the OPML, and can be played.  This means that one
could do a podcast in PowerPoint, using the voice annotation feature
built into PowerPoint.

Files produced by the PowerPoint converter are valid OPML.

OPML may be input from other sources.  OPML is an open standard, after all. 

Bloglines (the largest market share open aggregator–when will Yahoo open up its OPML interface?)
OPMLmanager (a very good web-based editor)
OPMLeditor  (the best overall editor, client-based)

OPMLworkstation can automatically upload OPML if it is given a URL, or  users can cut-and-paste OPML files.

All files uploaded or cut-and-pasted are automatically tested with the OPML validator, using the validator (with Dave’s
permission) as an open community web service. 

OPMLworkstation passes the
file in question to the validator, and then parses the results to look
for indications that the file successfully passed the validation test.

If a file does not validate, the user is given that
information within OPMLworkstation and is also directed to the OPML validator site for more
information. 

OPMLworkstation does allow a user to save invalid OPML.  Why?  So
that the user does not lose his or her work.  However, invalid OPML cannot be browsed
as a mini-site or otherwise further processed until it is fixed.

Any specific user file can be private, public, or public and indexed at OPMLsearch.

A user can can choose to keep any or all OPML private, viewable only in
his or her own password-protected “MyOPML” area, or a user can make
them public for the OPML community. Users can choose which of their
public files will be indexed and searchable at OPMLsearch.com.   For
now, any registered user can see all of the community files hosted at
OPMLworkstation in a community directory.

Currently an OPMLworkstation
account is completely free for members of the OPML community. 
Since one can become a member of the community simply by declaring that
one is a member, membership is free and open.  The site has a
no-nonsense terms of use, and no-nonsense privacy protections.