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

Viewing lists of sites, blogs, podcasts and other rss sources is a powerful way to learn of new sources, to explore new realms of sources, and to engage new people and points of view.  Viewing lists is a terrific way to discover!

For example, check out the Open Irish Directory!

Sharing your own lists is a great way to meet other people, to express yourself, your creativity and your perspective, and to present information in a dynamic way.

Sharing lists is publishing them.  Published lists are web sites. They are elegant, minimalist web sites that create networks of ideas and people, and make them easily explorable.  For example, here is a course outline for a Harvard Law School course, Spring 2006, on Internet Law and Politics, by professor John Palfrey.

I would like to invite you to view and Share OPML at OPMLWorkstation.com!

Bela and her team have been working hard.  The site is still in early beta, but the community is lots of fun.  You will meet nice folks!

You will dig up cool stuff in the open directory.

OPMLWorkstation membership is free, and includes a powerful (perhaps too powerful) web-based editor, realtime conversion of PowerPoint files into OPML, and the ability to upload and/or spider remote OPML files.   Members have their own private OPML work areas and web-based storage, as well as one-click publishing of OPML from their private space into the commons.

Here is an “open OPML commons” directory of public OPML that is integrated into OPMLWorkstation, but can be accessed independently.

This directory for sharing OPML has a number of useful features:

1.  The diversity of contributions is remarkable. 

The directory can be filtered to highlight specific types of OPML.  For example:

There are video blog lists, including  strange stuff to show.

Here is a reading list of blogs from members of the “mindcamp”

2. Some OPML points seamlessly to other OPML.

Check out this wonderful tree by “gadabe”:

3.  An author has control over how his or her outline is published.  

Here “Spoiltfeeds1.opml” does it all:

By default the outline is published as a tree view, so that it can be read as a directory (in html). 

The outline is also published as machine-readable raw OPML, updated whenever the author makes changes.  This is useful because the newest generation of aggregators, such as Blogbridge and TopTenSources, can target remote OPML files be kept up to date by subscription.

At the author’s choice, the outline can be made editable by the public, and thus becomes a wiki.

4.  “Next actions” are built in.

For example, if the OPML is a list of website URLs, one click on the tree view takes you to a particular site. 

If the OPML is a list of RSS feed URLs, such as this outline on rythm and blues and jazz improvisation, one click takes you to a mini-aggregator so you can read the feed.

5. Authors can created complex, multi-dimensional structures. 

For example, here is a personal list that integrates reading lists, grazer sources, and a massive survey of Irish blogging.

Join us!  Welcome!  Share OPML at OPMLWorkstation.com

Thanks!