Re: My take on shared feed lists

[Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>]

--- In syndication@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Winer" <dave@u...> wrote:
>
> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/myPublicFeeds.opml
>
> We really need a user narrative on this, from an aggregator point of
> view.
>
> "First the user does this, then this, then myPublicFeeds.opml is read 
> and a list box presented to the user."
>
> Something like that.

+1

Here's a specific scenario... there is a person named Jeremy Zawodny. 
He has a weblog at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/.  Inside that HTML 
page is the following link:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" 
href="http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/index.rdf";>

On that page is lots of orange XML buttons.  Three of which actually are 
related to Jeremy's site.  All three are valid RSS.  One of which 
contains full posts, the others merely contain summaries.

It would be nice if a person who knows nothing about directory or feed 
formats could be presented with the option to chose between full format 
and summary when they say they want to subscribe to a site.  This would 
go something like this:

User enters the URL of the weblog into an aggregator.  The aggregator 
finds a link to a directory of choises.  It presents those choices in a 
pop-up for the user to select from.  Hover text over each of the choices 
would indicate more information that allows people to make informed 
decision.

At this point we have a number of proposals:

http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/fdml/SyntaxProposals

Perhaps each could identify how they would address this scenario, or 
even if this scenario is in the scope of the problems they intend to 
address?

- Sam Ruby