If you’ve been following this blog lately you know I’m super psyched about OPML as a way to create and share bundles of RSS feeds. I love it! Creating an OPML file is like being an editor for a living anthology. I hope that lots of people will be creating OPML files all over the place on every topic soon. Here’s a few quick notes on what I’m doing in that department, please drop a comment if you have any thoughts to contribute.

• I’m going to interview Lisa Williams, who blogs at OPML Fan, for Net Squared in a couple of days. I’m going to ask her, amongst other things, for some real clear basic info that I can share with others.
• I’m going to try to write up a “What is OPML?” resource page to go on the left side bar of this site. The closest thing I have right now is probably the 5 Useful OPML files post here.
• I’m also going to write up a short and sweet “How to use OPML” tutorial with pictures and everything. Unless someone helps me through it, I’m not even going to mention the OPML Editor ’cause I don’t know how to use it and haven’t been able to figure it out yet. I’m just going to talk about using a feed reader to import and export the darned things and a text editor to write them.
• Dave Winer has released an OPML 2.0 spec for public comment, if you’re interested. I have to admit, I am perplexed by his statement “We now know how OPML is being used, and where the problems are, and I think are ready to produce a frozen and extensible format and spec.” Isn’t adoption just starting and likely to take off in all kinds of unexpected directions?
• Some of the files I’ve posted here have relied on the scraping tool at WotzWot. I know that many people can’t imagine scraping an RSS feed, but there are lots of very cool organizations that are so far behind the curve that they don’t publish feeds yet! Anyway, WotzWot has been freaking out about bandwidth choking inactive feeds and is working out a way to deal with it. Looks like the service is now going to require monthly clicks to keep the feeds active, which though not ideal, is better than the broken feeds I’ve got now.
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  Mailfeed.org can’t handle the bandwidth demands for their email to RSS service. This is very nice when it works for subscribing to an organization’s email newsletter by RSS, or offering that option to other people – like in an OPML file with other related feeds. They say that it looks good for going back up, but there’s a sexy AJAX alternative at mail2rss.org. It sure would be nice if the ground wasn’t shifting underneath our feet all the time.
• I’ve totally been fantasizing about creating a blog for OPML files on various topics. Kind of like Resource Shelf or Research Buzz, but just for new resources available in OPML, particularly feed bundles. No feedback on this yet, but I might just go do it anyway. I may not be “qualified” for something like this, but I can put together an OPML file and you can import it – so there.

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