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Posts Tagged ‘OPML’
Defining OPML and relating to DITA maps
From an information design perspective, OPML is a great format for outlining information, showing information’s hierarchical structure and relationship to other entries. I had only really thought about OPML applications as advanced organizers for lists of RSS feeds, but I suppose there might be other applications as well. This definition on whatis.com alludes to multiple organizational uses for OMPL, saying “…OPML has been used to organize many kinds of data as it may be customized for each application.” But what are these other uses for OPML? Can anyone point me to examples?
I sometimes find it difficult to articulate my enthusiasm for OPML, and this definition offers a great overview. I always have seen OPML as a great way to store lists of RSS feeds in logically-named folders. Here’s another excerpt from the definition:
OPML allows a user to classify where content should be placed within a hierarchy as it is being created. This feature makes the format extremely useful for the creation of “living documents,” where relationships and content are continuously updated.
I think that OPML and DITA maps may be closely related cousins in the list family. From the DITA specificiation, DITA maps organize topics for output to a specific deliverable, including generating navigation files and links to related topics. DITA maps offer the ability for quick re-organization of topics to create multiple deliverables. I envision DITA maps as offering an alternative to single-sourcing by letting you pick and choose from a large array of topics, whittling the DITA map down to just the print book combination or just the online help combination that you want. With the power of DITA maps, you can create two subsets of documentation from the same superset of topics. I think that the “living document” description for OPML is also fitting for DITA maps. Just ask Jen Linton, who co-authored the Introduction to DITA: A User Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture book using DITA. She was able to completely re-organize the book within weeks of publishing by simply changing the DITA map. Nice! Now we just need a drag-and-drop interface for editing DITA maps.
If you’d like to work with an OPML editor, there’s one you can download on the opml.org site. And remember that there’s a TalkBMC OPML file available for downloading that contains an organized list of all the blogger feeds, comment feeds, and podcast feeds for talk.bmc.com. Very handy!
Reading IT-related blogs
What are you reading on IT blogs?
Ever feel like you have 100 channels but nothing’s on? I’m definitely feeling that way about television. Now that I have a TiVo®, though, my television viewing is sharply focused to just the content that I want to know about. I recently showed a co-worker of mine my RSS aggregator, Bloglines, and he said “It’s like TiVo for web pages!” That’s the perfect explanation.
So. How do you find good, insightful, relevant blogs on topics that matter to you? I recently read the CNet Top 100 blogs list. You can also download the list as an OPML file and import it into your newsreader. Their categories are a little “out there” to me. Their categores are Cutting edge, Digital lifestyle (that one’s vague), Law/politics, Mac nation, Open source, Search/media (this one’s an odd combo to me), Security/threats, Software,Tech business, and Web culture. Many of my favorites are on that list, but I think it’s definitely bent towards a geeky Mac bloggers’ list, and weighted towards computer technology. I would have also added a “Parenting” category as well as an “Automobile” category. And what about Mobile?
For IT-related blogs, I’ve got several categories in mind. Examples include IT Governance, Infrastructure Management, Application Management, Change and Configuration Management, Identity Management, IT Culture, Mainframe, Capacity Planning, Performance Monitoring, Enterprise Architecture, Network Administrator, and Service Oriented Architecture, all categories for which I’m doing searches for blogs. What categories would you choose for IT-related feeds? What would make your top 10 (or 100, even) IT-related blogs list?
Import all subscriptions for talk.bmc.com with one OPML file
Here’s a file you can import into your RSS aggregator to get talk.bmc.com content
How about a file you can import and get all the talk.bmc.com content at your fingertips? I know I wanted one to “click in” with my 179 other feeds that I read in bloglines. So I made one using the OPML format, got some help from the web team for testing and editing, and now we can all import it into bloglines.com or other RSS readers. Here it is:
Right-click on the file name and save the .opml file locally, and then use the import feature on your RSS reader to bring in all the subscriptions alphabetically ordered. The web team has agreed to keep it up-to-date when new feeds are added. Thanks, you guys!
There’s a comment thread about this on Peter Armstrong’s blog and I think this OPML file will do nicely to let you not only follow all content on talk.bmc but also organize the individual blogs neatly.
We tested it on Bloglines (IE and Firefox), SharpReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Outlook 2003 on WinXP). The one thing I discovered is that if you already have an RSS feed in your reader, importing this file won’t add duplicates of feeds that you already have. So if Bloglines tells you “0 feeds imported” it might be that you already have all these feeds! Enjoy.
