October 01, 2007

Importing OPML into TypePad Blog Sidebar

So for whatever reason, I felt like taking some of the RSS/Atom subscription feeds I've got in iGoogle and putting them in the sidebar on one of my test blogs. (You can see it here on the lower left of this page.)

As is often the case, things are just slightly more complicated then they need to be. iGoogle, (for example), offers an OPML file export - as do many other feed readers - and TypePad lets you do OPML file import. So, no problem, right? Welllll... not quite. OPML, (Outline Processor Markup Language), is after all just another XML format. So while any feed reader really should use the same tag naming for the same sorts of things, there's no promise that others will.

What kind of TypePad TypeList to use for Feed Subscriptions?

TypePad, for example, does allow you to import OPML into a TypePad list, but if you want to do this, you'll need to use the correct kind of list. Specifically, a "Links List." The reason is that you're going to want to have the tags in the OPML file map easily to what the intended output of the TypeList will be. Something like a "Notes" list just doesn't work properly. You can of course edit the OPML/XML file, (which you'll have to do a bit anyway), but there's easy and hard ways to do this.

First, let's take a look at what TypePad's TypeList format looks like. Let's say you create a Links TypeList manually. (By the way, you can do this by selecting TypeLists > Create a New TypeList. Typelistselection



Once you've added a couple of links, select the Import/Export menu choice, scroll to the bottom and select "Export to OPML." Save the file. When you open it you'll see something like this...


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- OPML generated by TypePad -->
<opml version="1.1">
    <head>
        <title>TestLinksTypeList</title>
        <ownerName>Scott Germaise</ownerName>
        <ownerEmail>removed for spam avoidance</ownerEmail>
    </head>
    <body>
        <outline
            text="ScubaBoard - Online Scuba Diving Community - Equipment, Dive Travel, Training and More!"
            type="Link" url="http://www.scubaboard.com"
            title="ScubaBoard - Online Scuba Diving Community - Equipment, Dive Travel, Training and More!"
            notes="Great Scuba Board"/>
        <outline text="Scott Germaise: Personal Home Page" type="Link" url="http://www.germaise.com"
            title="Scott Germaise: Personal Home Page" notes="Here&#39;s a note."/>
    </body>
</opml>

So, now you know what the file you're going to want to import should look like. But,  when you do the same thing with iGoogle, you get something more like this...

<opml version="1.0">
    <head>
        <title>ScottG subscriptions </title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <outline text="blog.pmarca.com" title="blog.pmarca.com"
            type="rss" xmlUrl="http://blog.pmarca.com/index.rdf" htmlUrl="http://blog.pmarca.com/"/>
        <outline text="BoardTracker" title="BoardTracker" type="rss"
            xmlUrl="http://blog.boardtracker.com/rss.php" htmlUrl="http://blog.boardtracker.com/"/>
        <outline
            text="Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media"
            title="Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media"
            type="rss" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/DataMining" htmlUrl="http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/"/>
           </body>
</opml>

Cleaning UP Your Import File

If you look carefully, you'll see that there's some differences. Use your favorite text editor, (that means a pure text editor, not a word processor), to fix the differences. (Notepad works of course, but UltraEdit is better and really any decent search/replace tool will do. I like Search/Replace from Funduc.) "Fixing" the differences here means making sure the tagged elements map properly from your source to your intended target. So here, (at least in this example), the output from the iGoogle OPML export needs to be mapped to the intended TypeList import format. Only the values you care about have to match perfectly. All you need to care about is that the stuff you want will be in a place TypePad's Links TypeList can get the labels and the links. The rest doesn't matter. So first, do what you're always supposed to do and make a copy of your saved file so you have a backup in case you mangle it all up somehow. Then, edit your working copy...

  • Search for  type="rss" and replace with type="link"
  • Search for htmlUrl and replace with url
  • The title should be ok.
  • Ignore everything else.

Save the new file with a different name. Now, use the Import function in your TypeList, browse to the file you just create and try to bring it on in. You should see your items on the list. If you click on them, you'll go to the actual list and you can edit some more if you'd like. (There may even be "notes" in there if you brought those tags in, though these notes should not show up in your sidebar.

Finally, just select the TypePad Design tab, the Select Content to add the new TypeList to your sidebar. Change the order of your content if you like. Preview and publish.

That's about it!

Posted at 01:29 PM in Web/Tech | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 23, 2006

Professional vs. Personal Online Personna

Is it possible to separate a personal, (though not private), persona from your business or professional persona online? It had better be. At least for today's younger generation, given the kind of online artifacts they're - sometimes foolishly - leaving behind. Much is being written about this lately from at least two perspectives; the obvious safety issue of  children divulging personally identifiable information and young adults laying out some of their more foolish antics for future employers to see. But the question being asked now isn't which of these or other aspects may be right or wrong in and of themselves. It's whether these aspects of self can be taken in the proper context, both situationaly and in terms of an individual's life time line.

Why Does it Matter at All?

Reputation matters. We all know that. Credibility matters. Who you are matters. And it matters to different people for different reasons in different contexts. Any stock prospectus says, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results," yet a whole industry analyzes these things in an attempt to determine those future results. Clearly we do the same with resumes. And now it is also done - on a personal level - with the things we leave online. Perhaps some things we'd thought we'd left behind.

Is it possible to segment ourselves online?

It should be possible. However, the ability to do this will depend as much on how we as a society collectively choose to interpret context as much as what we each individually choose to divulge online. (Or what shows up that we didn't personally choose to show.) In real life, we all play different roles. And though the core of our identity may remain the same, we certainly and obviously act differently in these roles. A stoic business person known for cool demeanor in the boardroom may hoot and holler at a child's little league game. With hardly a moments thought, you'll easily come up with many of your own equally obvious examples.

Typically, there's a tacit understanding about this. Eveybody gets it. We have our family, social and work lives and perhaps other social circles as well. A bad joke in the locker room is maybe OK, whereas you'd never do that, (OK, some of us would; and might pay for it), in a business setting. Sometimes these "worlds collide." Most often, we can choose when and how and to what extent our worlds overlap.

But what happens when a name search online may reveal multiple aspects of your online self; likely out of context?

My Perspective, Then Some Ideas for the Future

From my perspective, having been online and having worked in the online industry for over 17 years, I've personally left a fairly long trail of online artifacts. (Yes, there was an online industry 17 years ago.) While some of my historical postings or web pages  findable in archives reveal immaturity, (or even some not so historical items), I'm thankful that even back then I was fully aware of the potential future impact. And I didn't say or do anything in public online environments that - I think - would drastically damage a future reputation. (Such as it is and whatever that may be.) Like anyone, I may have made a variety mistakes in life, but those are between me, my family and friends. In any case, while my personal online activities go back to the early days of online and web, they didn't extend back to my teen years. The teens and early 20-somethings today are online. En masse. Will the things they say come back to haunt them? Clearly, sometimes the answer will be yes. The thing is though, they're not really making an informed choice when they're putting up their homemade videos and such. Maybe someone coming across this content may take it in context. Even then, some stuff may be seen by some as going too far in any context. Would they still choose to post such things if they really thought how it could come back at them?

My personal choice to have a home page, place information on it and so forth, is my own. People may judge me based on some of what I have to say. I've intentionally set up two separate blogs. One business/professionally oriented, the other personal. Since my full name doesn't appear on either, ideally anyone who'd seek out my personal web page to see who's talking would at least see that attempt at context. There's other things that I didn't choose. A search for my name will reveal - for example and among other things - that I used to be a whitewater kayaking instructor for an outdoor club. This is trivial. But the thing is, I didn't ask for this to be online nor was I asked if it was OK. While I couldn't care less about this snippet, what if instead of something 'neutral' such as a former hobby there was a membership list of a political organization I belonged to? So sometimes we can't even choose what goes up that has to do with us. Though we may have recourse to get it down, once the genie's out of the bottle, it's out.

Just How is Context Interpreted?

There's already a ton of societal norms here. Though just what they are will vary from culture to culture. If a couple is arguing in a closed room somewhere and we happen to open the door and walk in to this, most would likely say, "Oh, Sorry," and bow out. That same couple in a crowded theater might be met with, "Hey, could you two just take it outside please?" (Or perhaps some slightly stronger suggestions.)

But we don't have these tools and rules for online personas. Not as they might relate to varying contexts we might find ourselves in online and offline. Though computer mediated communications from bulletin boards/forums to chat and so on have been around for decades now, it's really only been since maybe the late 90's they've become truly mainstream. There are ideas of so-called "netiquette" for online behavior in chatrooms and so forth, regardless of how poorly followed. But there doesn't seem to be clarity on how to separate online from offline when it comes to a visceral feel for the varying context.

Personal web page publishing only came about in the late 90's. More recently, some easy to use form-based "About You" pages have been available on a variety of services. Along the way, everyone - and especially the so-called Gen Y'ers and after - have become more sophisticated. And now we have the easy to use blog world, which - ease of syndication aside - is purely an interface invention. The technology to create a serialized journal-like web page publishing system existed as long as there have been online forms. But it took until the mid zips, (or whatever the 00's are called), for this idea to find its time.

End result? There's a whole lot more personal expression going on then ever before. Some it is professional, some corporate. Some someplace in between. How can we tell which is which? And does it even matter?

So What's Next and What Should We Do?

These are just my opinions on how maybe we can collectively get to a balance that allows for online self-expression with an understanding that traditional social boundaries still exist. Though for better or worse they more easily collide online, so the road to that balance requires both those who create and those who view to take some small steps.

  • Accept that We Own Our Words
    Even the younger generation that's spewing all manner of brilliance and creativity, but also trash need to fully understand free speech has two sides. We can say what we want, but understand that others will make judgments and perhaps take actions based on what's said. Understand that while you have a right to self expression, and maybe there should be a privilege to be accepted in context, some extreme things may just break through that wall. Consider this before publicly exposing such things in non-anonymous online environments.
  • Try to Accept the Context
    Just as we would offline, we need to try to understand the context in which things are being said. (This is likely especially for those beyond the 20-something years. Consider your antics as a young adult. Should the few worst things you may have done at a party have kept you from the high end job you do so well today? If they'd been captured by a cell phone camera - with or without your knowledge or consent - should that have been the thing you'd want a hiring manager to weight beyond the skills you chose to put on your resume?)

  • Don't Crash the wrong online worlds together
    As a manager at a company I once worked for, I once got a somewhat decent resume from a candidate. Unfortunately, the Email address was at an Email provider called slacker.com. I trashed the resume. It wasn't so much that the 20-something "kid" had that as an Email. Had I found that on a web search, I'd not have cared. That's his personal life. I might have thought him a bit more of a moron, but in the context of "ok, he was being a kid," and he'd of at least gotten to an interview stage. In the end though, it was the poor judgement he used in applying for a serious job with that Email which was more than I could look past. Moral? Don't do things where you force the wrong context on people. It doesn't usually work out in real life, nor will it online.

There's probably more. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Posted at 06:22 PM in Web/Tech | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Most Recent Photos

  • Typelistselection