Michael O’Connell: I am glad to see this new IBM-wide blogroll, and continue to be impressed by IBM’s adoption of blogs, as well as podcasts and other communications tools.
Some feedback:
It is hardly “IBM-wide”. I have at least six IBMers in my blogroll that are not included.
Shouldn’t a blogroll be available in OPML, or FOAF or XOXO or something?
I see Unicode encoding errors on that page — represented by a � on Firefox
It looks like they have the old address for Anant, and include a number of bloggers who haven’t posted since last winter.
Perhaps somebody could come up with a “IBM” theme/stylesheet for the site? Also, if there is a more central location that this should be hosted, I’ll gladly redirect this traffic there.
One of the most interesting aspects of the IE vs. Firefox battle is the development of the ecosystem of extensions or add-ons. It’s not just about bugs and features. Right now Firefox had a great advantage in this space but you can see Microsoft trying to catch up.
Microsoft has an interesting partner in Trailfire, a recommended download for IE7. See link: [link]
But this extension is also available for Firefox. See link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3524/
I think the ecosystem for Firefox and IE will decide who wins this battle. What do you think?
I missed the OPML the first time around. I don’t have a problem with OPML when used for subscription lists (I do believe it is oversold as the solution to other problems). What I do have a problem with is OPML for subscription lists is how it is practiced.
This OPML is not valid, nor even well formed. More significantly, it places feed description data into the text and title attributes instead of description attribute as spec'ed.
The autodiscovery link doesn’t even follow the recommendation of the (draft) specification (see note 8).
At the moment, I’m more likely to get better results by screen scraping.
I’m not too big on blogrolls. OPML for me is just a way to get my list of feeds from one reader to another. But I sure do like the way that Planet aggregates all of those feeds into one. That’s something that really should be done more often. For my information consuming purposes, that is Atom’s answer to OPML.
That would be XBEL; cf. Uche Ogbuji. Unfortunately, while the format enjoys wide support on the Linux desktop, adoption as a feed list exchange format is nil – a shame, really.
The [link] is an official IBM site. I’m not sure that this planet is, and therefore should it be wrapped in a template that makes it appear to be ibm.com?
The reason why some bloggers are excluded is that it is “opt-in” from an IBM perspective, i.e. we are supposed to register our sites for inclusion. Some bloggers have chosen not to do so.
Andy: I’d very much like to see this hosted on an ‘official’ site. I have code. I have templates. I’ve already said that once that happens, I will redirect all traffic there.
I want to make it as easy as possible for this to be done. Who do I talk to to make this happen?
As to opt-in, as soon as I found out about this, I filled out the form. Since then, the site has not been updated, and I’ve heard nothing. I also doubt that Anant registered the wrong weblog and that others who have not been active since the beginning of the year have both registered and been approved.
Come on IBM, Up Your blog Game, Its time to get busy with OPML
Sam Ruby: IBM Blogroll I have been wondering why IBM has been so slow to jump on the OPML bandwagon. If you’re at IBM and don’t know why you should be excited by it then go read Alex Barnett’s blog.......
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Yesterday Sam Ruby posted this interesting blog entry with a bit of feedback about the new IBM blogroll. It garnered some good comments as well ... worth a look. Of particular note is Sam’s “planet” (a concept developerWorks has covered on...
Amy Belinger and O’Reilly Media have released a new 'Short Cuts' - Getting Acquainted with OPML.As its title suggests, it is a great starter if you want get going with OPML...Congrats Amy!"You’ve put off...
Sam Ruby asks, "Shouldn’t a blogroll be available in OPML, or FOAF or XOXO or something?"More and more bloggers are making that realization lately. Pat Phelan and Tom Raftery are the latest to have have replaced/supplemented their blogrolls with...
I suppose you’re not at liberty to disclose the reason for that request? After all, it’s not like the blogroll itself or the stuff posted on the weblogs listed is confidential – therefore anyone interested could reconstruct a Planet IBM-Bloggers.
I got a laundry list ranging from doing IBM business on a non-IBM site, to branding issues, to not having prior approval from IBM Communications.
I tried to discuss it, simply to be told “no exceptions”.
I suspect the key issue was the IBM look and feel; I could have changed that and pursued the other issues further (I’m not known for giving up easily) but given that the source was quite obviously both stale and incomplete from the moment it went out — and has never been updated since (see curl command above) — I simply saw no point.
Yesterday Sam Ruby posted this interesting blog entry with a bit of feedback about the new IBM blogroll. It garnered some good comments as well ... worth a look. Of particular note is Sam’s “ planet ” (a concept developerWorks has covered on...
Yesterday Sam Ruby posted this interesting blog entry with a bit of feedback about the new IBM blogroll. It garnered some good comments as well ... worth a look. Of particular note is Sam’s “ planet ” (a concept developerWorks has covered on...