Wiki-Constructopedia: Personal RSS Feeds
The Wiki-Constructopedia can be taken a step further. As you can see on my site, I play a lot with RSS feeds. That's why I thought it would be a good thing to create a RSS feed that notified the users of new or updated entries in the constructopedia.But then I thought that this wasn't perfect. Do you really want to get notifications for robots that are too easy or too complicated for you? Do you want to get notified if there is a new robot for which you don't have the parts? Sometimes, the answer may be yes, but usually, the answer is going to be no.
That's why I believe it should be possible to make the RSS feed tailored. Everyone should be able to specify which robots should be in her/his feed. The best way to select these robots is probably using the search parameters we discussed yesterday.
Users who are logged in should be able to specify a "RSS search". Every time the Wiki-Constructopedia is changed, everyone's RSS search is re-evaluated (albeit sometimes with a delay to balance the load), and the result is placed in your personal RSS feed (most recent updates first). Then, the only thing you have to do is to subscribe to your own personal RSS feed.
I thought a bit about implementation issues and expected load on the server. I believe there are some clever processing optimizations possible that make such a personal RSS possible for everyone.
As always, this is a request for comment. Do you have ideas to make personal RSS feeds even better?
posted by Filip @ Friday, February 17, 2006
3 Comments:
Very interesting. Another approach might be to use a free service like zaptxt.com that allows you to filter the RSS feed and to get notified when a new RSS entry contains the keyword/phrase you specified. This way you can have just one global RSS feed available on your site, but every user can tailor it to his/her needs, which essentially becomes a personalized RSS.
eduard
zaptxt.com
Ha, but here's the catch: the RSS feed does not contain the parameters used to filter the RSS items.
The RSS feed contains the title, description and maybe picture of the robot, not its individual parts and other information.
Using an external service, I could not detect which robots I can build with the Lego parts I have. I could not say I want a particular author as prior contributor to the robot. Etceteras.
Filip, you're right. ZaptTXT will only filter the Title elements, so it would only work if you wanted to search the title or if you include some other unique attributes to the title.
thanks,
eduard
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