RSS Tip
Hey folks, I just ran into somewhat of an interesting problem. You may remember a while back when I mentioned that Abilon was my favorite RSS news aggregator. I've been struggling to find a way that I can keep my RSS feed list synchronized between my various computers. I tend to read about 60-70 feeds per day and often don't have quite enough time to read them all in one sitting or at the same computer. I tried first exporting and copying an exported OPML file (Outline Processor Markup Language) to my various computers and then re-importing and then manually keeping track of what I had read/not read. Not very fun folks...
So, I found NewsGator. Now, I had tried NewsGator Outlook Edition, not too bad but I really much preferred Abilon. Turns out that the great folks at NewsGator have a version of NewsGator for the online crowd - aptly dubbed NewsGator Online. Long story short, I created an account, logged in to import my feeds and then hit a wall. When I went to import my OPML feed file into NewsGator all I got was an error message saying that there was an error in my OPML file at such and such a line, position ##, etc. Now, being the geek that I am, I immediately opened the OPML file in my favorite text editor (Ultra-Edit), looked up the offending location and, drumroll please, found nothing out of the ordinary. What to do, what to do??? I decided to try importing the OPML file into a different news aggregator and got exactly the same result. Now I was faced with a serious dilemma, do I manually cut/paste all of my feeds (XML entries) into NewsGator Online one by one, or do I find some other way to try and fix my, apparently damaged, OPML file.
A quick Google(TM) turned up some rather useless links for OPML. However, I did find one interesting thing. A potential OPML converter tool. I was hoping I could download this, re-convert my OPML to OPML and then import into NewsGator Online. Well, that didn't turn out so well. Back to the search game and I found a great little tool at RSSCache.com
They have this OPML converter tool online that you cut and paste your existing OPML contents into and then it spits out a nicely formatted OPML file. Not really certain what they are doing in this conversion because the text in the file is the same but it looks like it checks syntax and cleans up the layout of the file considerably. You can find their tool here.
So now I returned to NewsGator Online, pointed the import tool to my newly re-formatted OPML file and hit the import button and voila, all of the feeds imported perfectly, including my categories that I have my feeds sorted into. Very, very nice stuff. I'll have to get back to you on the actual NewsGator Online functionality as I haven't had much time to use it yet but so far it looks promising. I know one thing that I like already, I can read my feeds online with my PocketPC... It's not a big display but it works pretty well.
- Riker -
So, I found NewsGator. Now, I had tried NewsGator Outlook Edition, not too bad but I really much preferred Abilon. Turns out that the great folks at NewsGator have a version of NewsGator for the online crowd - aptly dubbed NewsGator Online. Long story short, I created an account, logged in to import my feeds and then hit a wall. When I went to import my OPML feed file into NewsGator all I got was an error message saying that there was an error in my OPML file at such and such a line, position ##, etc. Now, being the geek that I am, I immediately opened the OPML file in my favorite text editor (Ultra-Edit), looked up the offending location and, drumroll please, found nothing out of the ordinary. What to do, what to do??? I decided to try importing the OPML file into a different news aggregator and got exactly the same result. Now I was faced with a serious dilemma, do I manually cut/paste all of my feeds (XML entries) into NewsGator Online one by one, or do I find some other way to try and fix my, apparently damaged, OPML file.
A quick Google(TM) turned up some rather useless links for OPML. However, I did find one interesting thing. A potential OPML converter tool. I was hoping I could download this, re-convert my OPML to OPML and then import into NewsGator Online. Well, that didn't turn out so well. Back to the search game and I found a great little tool at RSSCache.com
They have this OPML converter tool online that you cut and paste your existing OPML contents into and then it spits out a nicely formatted OPML file. Not really certain what they are doing in this conversion because the text in the file is the same but it looks like it checks syntax and cleans up the layout of the file considerably. You can find their tool here.
So now I returned to NewsGator Online, pointed the import tool to my newly re-formatted OPML file and hit the import button and voila, all of the feeds imported perfectly, including my categories that I have my feeds sorted into. Very, very nice stuff. I'll have to get back to you on the actual NewsGator Online functionality as I haven't had much time to use it yet but so far it looks promising. I know one thing that I like already, I can read my feeds online with my PocketPC... It's not a big display but it works pretty well.
- Riker -
posted by CT @ 11:52 PM
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