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.
