Speed feeding
.22.8 | 4 Comments »
August 22nd, 2005 by Alex
Part of the plan with the telecentre.org ecosystem is to bring relevant content into telecentre.org sites using RSS. In the case of event sites — like the Capetown site that is the very first telecentre event site to get up and running — we’ll use special tags (keywords) to help create our event blogs. That way people who already have their own blogs or web sites can post stories on their own blogs, but have the stories show up on the event site, too.
The challenge is figuring out how to gather all those blog posts together in a way that brings them onto the event site in something close to real time. In other words, how quickly can we move a blog post from a personal site to an event site?
I tested that out today with my first cross-post to the Capetown site. I wrote my post, then included the tag capetowntelecentre, which is the keyword we designated as our “flag this for syndication on the Capetown site” signal.
Next step was to check in — about half an hour later — with the various blog search services that could help us aggregate all these blog posts into a single RSS feed. I had already set up a PubSub search on capetowntelecentre, because PubSub only starts searching for terms once you set up a search; but my PubSub feed hadn’t found my post yet (six hours later, it still hasn’t; nor has it found the test post Rob wrote last night!).
Then I tried Technorati. Technorati had a feed for posts that contained the word capetowntelecentre (where I found my test post), and it had a feed for posts that used capetowntelecentre as a tag (where I found Rob’s post, but not mine, even though I used capetowntelecentre both as a tag and in text. Ah, the enigma that is Technorati.)
Next stop: Feedster, where a chorus of RSS angels opened their throats and spilled forth the whole universe of (two) posts containing the term capetowntelecentre (interesting, pulling mine in indirectly via the Web of Blogs site set up for the upcoming Web of Change conference.) I had a winner! Up went our shiny new RSS feed for capetowntelecentre, which the kind folks at Feedster were good enough to set up (on request) as an ad-free RSS feed, because they thought it was “just the right thing to do” for a “good cause” like telecentre.org.
One more note: Mark tried a test post too, but since he put capetowntelecentre in quotation marks, it didn’t get aggregated; it’s worth noting that you have to avoid quotation marks to make this kind of tag-based aggregation work.
Event blogging with Drupal
.22.8 | 1 Comment »
August 22nd, 2005 by Alex
This is Information Society Week in Capetown, and one of the events taking place is the first telecentre.org workshop to use the new Drupal-based event platform that I’ve helped develop.
The good folks at Bryght have set us up with a freelinking module that lets Drupal function like a wiki. The plan is to use this functionality to support an in-person event, the same way Aspiration uses PurpleWiki to power its convergences.
Because I live only to document, I’ll be posting notes on how our Drupal site seems to work as an event wiki and blog, along with any thoughts on workflow or site setup. Stay tuned!
Healing the world with RSS
.6.8 | 3 Comments »
August 6th, 2005 by Alex
If you need to compare or evaluate different content management system (CMS) options — especially for non-profits or for distributed networks that share content via RSS and tags — check out the results of my recent work on choosing a platform for telecentre.org. Telecentre.org is a project of Canada’s International Development Research Centre, jointly funded by IDRC and Microsoft, aimed at linking up all the telecentres around the world.
Telecentres are basically community technology centres that focus on helping people use technology for economic, social and educational development. They do cool things like using radio to battle locusts in Mali, giving Tanzanian villagers access to the Internet, or getting higher sale prices for Indian sugarcane farmers. In the developing world — and in many part of the developed world, too — telecentres are the key to translating the innovations of the digital age into practical benefits for more of the world’s population.
Right now there are many regional and national networks that help telecentres in their work with everything from training to event support to infrastructure development. But these networks — just like telecentres themselves — often tackle similar problems, and could work more effectively if they were able to share ideas and resources. That’s where telecentre.org comes in: trying to help telecentre networks work more effectively together so that they can do a better job of helping telecentres…and so that telecentres can then do a better job of helping people.
That’s why I was delighted when Mark Surman, the Managing Director of the telecentre.org project, asked me if I could help with the development of the telecentre.org web network. The online network among telecentre network sites is only one dimension of telecentre.org’s ambitious five-year program, but it will support many other aspects of telecentre.org’s work.
The vision is for a distributed network of web sites that share content via RSS and tags, and I have spent much of this summer examining the different web platforms that can help realize that vision. I have had an almost criminal amount of fun working on this - what, you mean you want me to spend my time thinking about RSS and tags? — particularly because Mark has had so many great ideas about how to use these technologies in ways that actually make web collaboration cheaper and easier as well as more effective.
Drupal fans will be unsurprised to hear that we concluded that Drupal is currently the best option for a distributed network, but there are many other tools that we considered seriously before reaching that decision. I have documented the various CMS options in a short document that is available online or PDF form. It may be useful to others who are working on similar visions of multiple sites that work together to share content and build community.
In the course of working on this project I’ve met with others who are working on distributed network projects — but would love to hear from more. If you are working on a distributed network project, please let me know; I’m hoping to organize a community of practice/e-mail list so we can share ideas and strategies.