Moving shared items into a tag

[j38us]

Hi all,

For those of us who miss the "curated links" aspect of shared items,
I've written a Python script to add a tag of your choosing to all your
former shared items. This seems to include all your "note in reader"
posts, FWIW. Not sure how long Google is planning to keep the API
access to the shared items up and running, but it works for now.

The script is here:
http://pastebin.com/zpBFrGiu (tested with python 2.6, but should work
on 2.7)

It uses the mekk.greader Google Reader API client.
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/mekk.greader

Extremely abbreviated directions:
1. Install mekk.greader as a Python package
2. Edit the script and set the following: GR login/password, location
of your shared-items.json export file, and the name you want for your
shared items tag (default is MySharedItems).
3. Open a Python shell, and paste in the contents of the script.

I'm more than willing to help people who aren't programmers, though I
know nothing about running Python on Windows.

Best wishes,
Lucas

[Emmanuel Pire]

Hi!

We have a plan to bring the share feature back. Even better.
Come talk with us http://groups.google.com/group/sharebro

Emmanuel

[Juan Luis Chulilla]

Don't you agree with an actual alternative to the totality of reader's experience?

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[Emmanuel Pire]

That's the whole point. Hivemined is working hard to get this full new experience, a new Reader app.

This is fine, but it's yet another reader app, even it has friend stuff.

Here we are trying to make the google reader apocalypse a good thing.

Sharebros of the world are just pissed off. They could share in an open way, way more open than social networks.

and also through a reader, so you can see the whole story, it's not just links. 

So I agree with what they do at Hivemined, but I think there is something more we could do, not just replace reader but set up a new sort of standard. just like you can tweet anything, you could share anything, via your own pubic feed.

--
Emmanuel Pire
Web development
http://lipsumarium.com/

[Juan Luis Chulilla]

totally agree. Indeed we hastily raise a temporary solution using posterous, and some colleague of mine told me that we were closing our community to new sources.

Indeed we prefer an Open Source Solution (no more golden cloudy chains if possible) but that is only part of the solution. All we need a new way of doing things, and I have a confusion about it: RSS is an Open Format for syndicate feeds, so what do we need for share individual contents? a microformat?

[Alex Chaffee]

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 5, 2011, at 4:10 PM, Juan Luis Chulilla <chul...@gmail.com> wrote:

totally agree. Indeed we hastily raise a temporary solution using posterous, and some colleague of mine told me that we were closing our community to new sources.

Indeed we prefer an Open Source Solution (no more golden cloudy chains if possible) but that is only part of the solution. All we need a new way of doing things, and I have a confusion about it: RSS is an Open Format for syndicate feeds, so what do we need for share individual contents? a microformat?

RSS is fine, but I'll have to check into the current spec to see if it supports "quotes from original source" vs a canonical URL for the item itself. Google seems to have added a few

Microformatty tags in their feed export format, tags prefixed with a g:

As to your python script, it seems great, and I agree it may be time sensitive. I'll look at it this weekend and maybe make a web app out of it and put it on sharebro.org. 

[Garrett Guillotte]

Tiny Tiny RSS already has public sharing that generates a feed, with a similar Reader interface (sharing is even Shift-S).

As for a sharing standard, what about the JSON Activity Stream standard that already exists as an export option from Reader?

[Les Orchard]

On 11/5/11 5:32 PM, Emmanuel Pire wrote:
...

> So I agree with what they do at Hivemined, but I think there is
> something more we could do, not just replace reader but set up a new
> sort of standard. just like you can tweet anything, you could share

> anything, via your own public feed.

Since Google Reader sharing as we knew it collapsed, I'm not so
interested in a centralized replacement. That one will die too,
eventually, for any number of reasons.

That's not to say that a hosted feed reader service with social features
isn't a good idea, though. Expecting everyone to host or roll their own
is a non-starter.

But, consider this quick sketch:

* Take a feed for a site, call it a "source" feed (eg. from CNN, blogs, etc)

* Take someone's feed containing shared links, call it a "share" feed.
(eg. from a feed reader like Tiny Tiny RSS, from pinboard.in, etc)

* Allow subscriptions to both "source" and "share" feeds. Maybe
something in the "share" feed identifies it as such for auto-detection,
or maybe the subscription UI helps the user indicate the type.

* Whenever "share" feed items whose links match an item in a "source"
feed, the "share" feed items get collated and displayed as comments on
that "source" feed item. Think of it as a relational join: Each "source"
item gets joined on "share" items, if any.

For a hosted feed reader, the cool thing would be to allow "share"
subscriptions to both local users and "share" feeds from off-site. That
way, the sharing can be decentralized and even inclusive of competing
feed reader services.

--
m...@lmorchard.com
http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist

[Les Orchard]

On 11/5/11 7:29 PM, Alex Chaffee wrote:
> RSS is fine, but I'll have to check into the current spec to see if it
> supports "quotes from original source" vs a canonical URL for the item
> itself. Google seems to have added a few
> Microformatty tags in their feed export format, tags prefixed with a g:

Well, in RSS 2.0, there's the <source> element:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#ltsourcegtSubelementOfLtitemgt

That was basically made for this use case. So, you can do a few things:

* Assume all items in a feed are intended as quotes & commentary on the
linked items. This leaves it up to the feed reader to flag certain
subscriptions as such.

* Assume any item with a <source> element is intended as an annotation
on an item from the indicated source feed.

I can't remember if other versions of RSS or Atom have a similar mechanism.

[Les Orchard]

On 11/5/11 7:35 PM, Garrett Guillotte wrote:
> Tiny Tiny RSS already has public sharing that generates a feed, with a
> similar Reader interface (sharing is even Shift-S).

Yes, and I'm using it. It works pretty well via ifttt.com and
pinboard.in to publish my shares offsite.

As I mentioned in an earlier reply, I'd like to see a new social hosted
feed reader accept subscriptions to feeds containing publish shares -
just like the kind Tiny Tiny RSS produces.

Take "share" feeds and match their item links up with a "source" feed,
and you've got comments to hang off the "source" feed item when you
display it.

> As for a sharing standard, what about the JSON Activity Stream standard
> that already exists as an export option from Reader?

I'm just starting to play around with JSON Activity Stream feeds myself,
but this is totally an avenue worth exploring in addition to "share' RSS
feeds IMO.

There's already a "share" verb established by the Activity Stream group
that would work for this putpose:

http://activitystrea.ms/registry/verbs/

[Emmanuel Pire]

Expecting everyone to host or roll their own is a non-starter.

You got the right spirit.

As I see it now, sharebro.org don't even need to host public feeds.

sharebro.org would host your public feed if you like, but you would be able to define you want to host it elsewhere. anywhere.

sharebro-ing is not about hosting, it's about sharing, and following (friends).

for the sharing part, all we need is a button that sends the item straight to our public feed.

1 click.

reader apps could implement that.

For google reader, we can create plugins to inject a button.

The following part is all about managing a friendlist, and manage privacy. 

We want to bring this back with some kind of open protocol that would allow reader apps to pull your friendlist and manage it (in a secured way of course).

For the comment part and "joining" idea, we're still in early discussions about the whole thing, but thanks for the idea. Actually that's almost how I see the thing: a URL identify an "item". you share an item, others can see it in your public feed. they can comment on it. they will see only the comments of people they follow. It's draft a idea of course.

[Les Orchard]

On 11/5/11 8:14 PM, Emmanuel Pire wrote:

> You got the right spirit.

> As I see it now, sharebro.org <http://sharebro.org> don't even need to
> host public feeds.
> sharebro.org <http://sharebro.org> would host your public feed if you

> like, but you would be able to define you want to host it elsewhere.
> anywhere.
> sharebro-ing is not about hosting, it's about sharing, and following
> (friends).

Excellent... the last thing I want to see is everyone pile into another
sharing silo. Let a thousand little interconnected clusters bloom.

> for the sharing part, all we need is a button that sends the item
> straight to our public feed.
> 1 click.
> reader apps could implement that.
> For google reader, we can create plugins to inject a button.

As long as the sharing results in an output feed, I'm happy. I use a
tool with a bookmarklet that does that right now (ie. pinboard.in). A
friend of mine, Dave Winer, wrote his own software that publishes his
sharing with a feed [1].

If a sharing community accepts subscriptions to share feeds from
anywhere, I'm even happier. Then, we can all play.

[1]: http://static.reallysimple.org/users/dave/linkblog.html

> The following part is all about managing a friendlist, and manage privacy.
> We want to bring this back with some kind of open protocol that would
> allow reader apps to pull your friendlist and manage it (in a secured
> way of course).

FWIW, you could use good old OPML subscription lists of sharing feeds as
friends lists. Those could be portable between sites, and the site
managing the list can decide which subscriptions to include or hide
depending on security/privacy level.

> For the comment part and "joining" idea, we're still in early
> discussions about the whole thing, but thanks for the idea. Actually
> that's almost how I see the thing: a URL identify an "item". you share
> an item, others can see it in your public feed. they can comment on it.
> they will see only the comments of people they follow. It's draft a idea
> of course.

I might end up building something like what I sketched, but you're
totally welcome to the idea too. I'm more interested in seeing this
stuff happen than holding on to it :)

[Emmanuel Pire]

I might end up building something like what I sketched, but you're
totally welcome to the idea too. I'm more interested in seeing this
stuff happen than holding on to it :)

I totally understand the urge. Dexter like... ;)

I've been doing it actually. Still, please hold on for some time. 

Help us building the thing, don't do it alone. We're stronger together. 

We certainly don't want the community to scatter into small groups on different hosts, unable to find friends. This would be like making a new social network. 

Instead, discuss a new open way with us : http://groups.google.com/group/sharebro

[Juan Luis Chulilla]

It would be nice to federate different communities and platforms, allowing users the discovery of new fonts, users and networks of users. Reader was so big that, once and again, you discovered new interesting people with interesting sharings.

It is unavoidable that sharebros will create new, isolated communities. Indeed we are like after the fall of roman empire, scattered around the countryside and looking for protection. New cloud services would be like feudal lords, and FOSS services would be like walled cities of free people.

Sooner or later this dark age will end :)

[Emmanuel Pire]

Love ur comparison with fall of roman empire, i think it's quite right.

Temporary communities indeed will popup, but they should know they're temporary and join us to define a unified way to share and discover feeds.

[seetolearn]

I tried to rephrase your idea in my blog because I had something similar
on my mind.
http://seetolearnru.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoupling-of-google-reader-features.html

I do not incline towards quickfixes, I can wait for a proper
replacement. It is easy to assemble a quickfix and promise that it will
become a second Google Reader in the future. :)

The reason I wrote the post on my blog is that I am afraid it will be
lost in this group.

[Alex Chaffee]

This thread is like the movie pitch and groups.google.com/group/sharebro is like the screenplay :-)

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 10:14 AM, seetolearn <seeto...@gmail.com> wrote:

I tried to rephrase your idea in my blog because I had something similar on my mind. http://seetolearnru.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoupling-of-google-reader-features.html

BTW there's already a "source" tag floating around the RSSverse. 

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#ltsourcegtSubelementOfLtitemgt

(thanks, Les).  Part of the beauty of URIs is that they can be recursive (by pointing to resources which themselves contain URIs), so no need to fragment your concept of what a feed is. An RSS item can contain content of its own *and* point to the original source of that content already.

In other words, all feeds are source feeds. 

-- 

Alex Chaffee - al...@stinky.com
http://alexchaffee.com
http://twitter.com/alexch

[Emmanuel Pire]

You say on your blog:
"A post sharer. It stores and publishes only identifiers of shared posts. GUI is not necessary, as it is more convenient to share from a feed reader, where a user is able to read a post before sharing it."

You've got the right idea I think.
Also read about your concepts of "sharer" services.
I'm in favor of being able to choose your "sharer" as well as your host(s).
But if we want to have comments, A is using X sharer, B using Y. they can follow each other, works fine but what when A or B shares ? what about comments ? I feel there is a solution that would be only about creating the concept of open sharing, and let whoever want to do it do it, without the fear of scattering the sharing community.

Very interested in this. if you have new insights, please share !