This semester I am taking a complete respite from the usual big ed tech conferences… well, I am taking a break from all of them. The time spent traveling, the cost of travel, really do not balance for the things gained. That said, online conference have yet to really find a niche yet that provides […]
Oh, what I would do with $72,000,000 of blog bucks! From How Much Is My Blog Worth?: Inspired by Tristan Louis’s research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc, I’ve created this little applet using Technorati’s API which computes and displays your blog’s worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the […]
I’ve been tinkering with my simple approach of using MovableType as a publisher engine to create podcast feeds and content listings for audio content that is used across several different web sites. While there are many ways one could go about this, I am finding this to be efficient and fast. I only have about 7 feeds set up, but they are pushing across multiple web sites, with different design layouts.
This allows me to create a single directory of content and RSS files that can be accessed by any of our other PHP web pages. So the main podcast entry page lists all the casts on our site, and th elistings provide links to web sites connected to the audio, a description, a URL for the MP3 file, and now, stealing the idea from the EDUCAUSE blogs, the slick niftyplayer, and embedded flash audio player, e.g.:
But by setting up categories, I can have content filtered to feeds that are associated with specific project, such as our Dialogue Day podcasts, Ocotillo podcasts, and our Online Learning Group podcasts.
MovableType generates the correct RSS 2.0 feeds with proper enclosure tags, as well as generates the small text files that are used to provide the content to these pages. There is also another template that provides the content used to display as “What is Podcasting” info on these different pages. It works well because it is not publishing a full blog, just some small bits of content files.
For example, a snapshot of my current directory includes:
where *.inc are the main podcats listings, *_nav.inc are shorter listings that are just links to the sites that include the audio, and *.xml is a podcast feed.
Below I will describe in a bit more detail how it is done and provide a download of the template files. To use these you will need to
* have a web site that uses PHP for its content pages
* have an understanding of linking to web directories up and down a web server structure
* use or be able to set up MovableType on your server (I use the last free version, 2.661, but it ought to work on the 3.x versions)
I read a long time ago a column by an auto mechanic who said the hardest customers to deal with were ones who tried to guess what the car’s problem was rather than describe the symptoms, e.g. someone saying, “I think the hydrowidget is sheared off” rather than, “I hear a harsh squealing noise when […]
How says there’s nothing worthy on blogrolls…. Found on a sidebar— is this a long lost blog cousin to CDB? http://sitcogblog.blogspot.com/ Strike out on Jakob’s Weblog Usability Law #1…
My experiments with new services that offer tools to mix a set of different RSS feeds into one was interesting, and the comments brought in a few more. I’ve updated the original post to include: Aggrssive lazytom’s feedjumbler FEEDcombine Feed Findings FrankenFeed Feedjumbler had likely the easiest setup and mix of good output features, FrankenFeed […]
Thanks to an email from Ralph in Austria, I updated the bookmarklet tool for Simpy on my Multipost Bookmarklet Tool, the cheesy script I made for combining multiple social bookmark tools into one. Since these days I have pared my tool set down to one tasty tool, I have no idea if the others have […]
According to Molly’s Web Design and Development Personality Indicators: Frustrated with the range of attitudes and opinions I deal with as a standards-oriented educator, I’ve decided to begin a project (very) loosely based on the Meyers-Briggs personality indicators. So, dear readers, I’m hoping you’ll help me add and refine my categories, but I’m off to […]
The least thought-out posts gain the most comment? As a follow-up to Me 2.0 someone kindly sent a serendipitous Bloglines pairing of my post and something else that is sort of related (might need the full-size to appreciate):
What a nice surprise that search results returned from Google now act like the are supposed to- a hover or a right/control mouse click on a link actually points to the site listed, rather than a re-direct via a Google.com address: This has been most annoying for blogging especially as I use Google to locate […]
