The Feed.

Really, it's not that impressive. More utility and use rather than ingenuity or complexity. I just reworked the RSS feed code into something a bit more useful.

I've always considered myself somewhat of a content aggregator, collecting articles from the internet and sharing them with friends whom I feel would enjoy them. However, there are always the links where I am unsure whether to whom, or even if I should, post online. I can share links on my Facebook feed, but even then I select only those which cater to appreciable friend groups present.

But no longer. Now, with The Feed, I can share indiscriminately, shouting into the void without a care in the world.

(I have an intense hatred of Twitter, due to its "artistic" character limit. Sure, constrained writing is interesting, but as a blogging service, no. Just no.)

The Feed is a dynamically generated RSS feed drawing from an SQL table, which is populated by a bookmarklet residing on my bookmark bar. Upon the identification of any even mildly interesting article or discussion, a single click of the bookmarklet will automatically upload the link and title information into the database, allowing it to be presented in The Feed.

Low-effort content aggregation. No need to hunt for share widgets or leave the page. Just a click of the button, and it's available for all of nobody to read.

One problem is that the content portion of each item in the feed is currently merely the link. It would be best to populate it with some amount of content from the page itself (especially when sharing images, as the image is the entire content), however, all websites vary, and it is difficult to automatically populate content from all websites. (Some solutions include looking for a content div or an RSS feed, but those are still quite unreliable.)

Still room for improvement, but it's the bare-bones of an automatic personal content aggregator feed, which doubles as a historical archive of what I find interesting.

Functional.

Tagged with programming
Posted on2014-06-01 06:20
Last modified on2014-11-02 22:57

Comments (1)

2015-07-17 01:20:56 by Mauve:

Can I see how you made the bookmarklet? :3