Get fed: Comparing 3 RSS feed scraping tools

I wrote a blog post today over at Read/WriteWeb about a small message posting service called CBox that’s being used by a man believed to be the last practicing blogger under Burmese military rule. CBox doesn’t offer an RSS feed, which is a real shame. For my post, I thought it would be nice to be able to offer readers an RSS feed they could subscribe to in order to follow the events there via this blogger.

Just because there’s not an RSS feed where you’d like there to be one is no reason to give up hope! Here are 3 tools you can use, depending on the circumstances, to scrape an RSS feed from a page that doesn’t publish one.
Continue reading →

Kind words from recent client: Softrax

I keep saying that I’m going to write up a particular case study here about one of my favorite recent clients, the Massachusetts-based accountant trainers at Softrax. We worked together on a major project for their site RevenueRecognition.com. I’m just a few days from having something long to post on it, but I did get a nice quote that I can post now. More on the way about the very interesting work we did together. I like to work with people in a wide variety of industries, these are accountants.

Marshall provided us with a very effective and manageable system to bring a wide range of relevant news content onto our site. He did a great job managing the project – it required minimal technical resources and was very cost-effective. Our percentage of returning visitors and our depth of visit metrics have both improved since the implementation.

– Gerry Murray, Director Corporate Communications, Softrax

Thanks Gerry!

I’ve been getting lots of inquiries about my consulting services since leaving my day job to join Read/WriteWeb and do more consulting – but as they say: just because you’ve got work now is no reason to stop lining it up for the future. Drop me a line if you’d like to discuss what we could do together.

A post about some of my favorite tools: Gmail RSS, FeedYes and FeedDigest

My friend Justin Kistner has started a blog carnival of sorts that he’s calling Advanced Operators, all about working with new tools online. He’s had smart people contribute posts on all kinds of topics on their blogs and I thought I’d participate in this round.

The topic this week is “my favorite tools.” Justin has posted a good long list on his site (as well as the snazzy picture here that he designed himself!); I decided to focus on three tools in particular that I’m particularly jazzed about right now.
Continue reading →

On blogging: an interview with an old friend

My old friend Justin Kistner just relaunched his website with a hot new WordPress theme, an enviably beautiful description of his consulting services and an interview with me, his old high school debate rival. We’ve met back up ten years later in the tech world and he interviewed me about being a professional blogger. I hope you’ll check it out if you’re interested.

Justin’s consulting services are also worth a look. He helps companies “understand your needs and define your project before you hire web design and/or programming talent.” He’s a very smart guy. I hope we can do some work together, in fact.