Sunday, January 15, 2006

It looks like this site, in Hebrew, is doing something with reading lists. They have a list of top tech bloggers. I've linked it into my community directory. Let's see what comes back. Yup, it's a reading list. Excellent. 

SJ Merc interview with Mike Arrington. 

Halley Suitt makes the Merc too with a quote making fun of men with erectile dysfunction. It wouldn't be hard to illustrate how offensive this is by flipping it around, but you can use your imagination.  

This guy says bloggers are wrong about mainstream media, but then for the most part, he doesn't say which bloggers he's talking about. MSM has a place, but they can't ignore the pressure blogs create for them to be more disciplined and to work harder to report what's happening instead of reporting conventional wisdom. The profession of journalism has gotten lazy, preferring to report controversy on issues where there is only idiocy and not a meaningful debate over facts. This has led to a political meltdown in the US, with a major city in ruins and more and more of our spending happening in a faraway country of little significance to our interests. The press even admits culpability, and yet we still debate whether bloggers are right or wrong in predicting their demise. Well, I don't know who predicted it, but as I've said many times here they don't seem to need anyone's help in their aspiration for oblivion, they seem to be doing just fine on their own.  

Political Gateway: "With the exception of President Tarja Halonen, all of the seven other candidates have been writing their own internet weblogs to show voters that their daily lives are just like those of the general public." 

Reading Lists on a live server 

I've set up my test NewsRiver installation with the new reading list code, and subscribed it to the original bloggers and the news-oriented podcast lists.

The usual caveat applies, the test server may not be available tomorrow or the day after, but it is available today, so far.

Reading lists in NewsRiver 

Getting pretty close with reading list support in NewsRiver.

I have two example reading lists I'm working with..

1. One that links to the feeds of the blogs of ten "original" bloggers chosen by Top Ten Sources, and

2. Another with 18 news-oriented podcasts, chosen by yours truly.

Of course should the curators change the feeds included in a list, the reader adjusts automatically. That's the idea behind reading lists, they're live, they recalc.

I expect to have the pieces in place pretty shortly, and some interesting partnerships to announce as well.