Technology Nerd » user generated content http://tnerd.com (Technology, as it happens, When it happens!) Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:27:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 RSSMixer-Create and Mashup of your favorite feeds and share! http://tnerd.com/2008/09/15/rssmixer-create-and-mashup-of-your-favorite-feeds-and-share/ http://tnerd.com/2008/09/15/rssmixer-create-and-mashup-of-your-favorite-feeds-and-share/#comments Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:18:16 +0000 Vivek http://tnerd.com/?p=1664 RSS has changed the way we consume information on Internet. The benefits are just too many when it comes to reading stuff using RSS. Taking into consideration the significance of RSS in coming years and to leverage the power, flexibility and ad potential of RSS, various companies are trying to create opportunities. Not to ignore the significance of RSS marketing for driving traffic,many websites and companies have dedicated RSS marketing teams. If they don’t then I am afraid it’s about time for them to make a move before anyone else.

Working on this same philosophy of leveraging from RSS, there’s a new service which creates a of RSS feeds that you love into one single feed. The service is called as RSSMixer and the of feeds that it generates is available in the following format.

  • RSS Feed
  • HTML
  • Mobile
  • Widgets

I am still trying to understand what are the connotation of this model. If I were to use my not so lame thought process to march into an unknown territory of interpreting things, I’d say there’s a lot of potential. Let’s see how:

  • For the users: Let’s say I am in dire need of subscribing to designers and concept creators related blogs and feeds. I can start looking online for such websites/blogs and eventually subuscribe to them. Or the easier way would be to get a RSSMixer feed of some user who already have these blog feeds with her/him. Looks like a great potential for sharing the feeds in a very convinient way.
  • For the blogs and feed providers. I am sure at some point of time this service could generate statistics based on various mashedup feed hueristics to give food for thought for the bloggers or feed providers. This however, would be quite number crunching and analytically rigorous.
  • For the company RSSMixer, this has the advantage of both creating oppurtunities with and in future using the same to come out with a revenue generation model.

Having flabbergasted so much about this service it’s would ironical to see it not staying up to it’s potential. Let’s take a look at the screenshot of the service.

I tried creating a of feeds from ReadWriteWeb, FlickrBabes feeds and got the following feed:

http://www.rssmixer.com/mixes/9844-mix.rss

We hope this service lives up to it’s potential.

Tags: ,
]]> http://tnerd.com/2008/09/15/rssmixer-create-and-mashup-of-your-favorite-feeds-and-share/feed/ 0 NowPublic-Crowd Powered Media http://tnerd.com/2008/08/06/nowpublic-crowd-powered-media/ http://tnerd.com/2008/08/06/nowpublic-crowd-powered-media/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:21:17 +0000 Vivek http://tnerd.com/?p=1101 With the outgrowing number of Web 2.0 services launched each day, I am not sure how many of us after signing up with them keep a track on regular basis. is one of the most powerful philosophies of Web 2.0 era. From videos (youtube), to photos (flickr) to (digg), the new mantra for success today is create a platform for users to upload/generate content.

With the plethora of such services we usually miss out on some great ones which could make it big on the web 2.0 arena. One such service is called as NowPublic. boasts itself of being a place for media powered by the crowd. IMHO, I always have beleived that the media should be powered by the crowd. However, the philosphy of is very much similar to Digg. What separate it however from digg is that it’s focus on stories. Digg has become a platform to popularize blog articles written by users and manipulated to be top story on digg. is more closely attached to and has a very strong focus only on articles and media related stuff.

Let me take an example to prove this point. Let’s say I want to read the tech related stuff on . I go to Tech & Biz section and what I see is only related to tech and business. Articles like these:

  1. Instructor teaches students how to code viruses
  2. Asian Cloning Industry Gears Up
  3. Inflation will stay high despite a global recession
  4. iPhone comes to Estonia

I don’t see articles (which are more popular on digg) like

  1. Top 5 iphone applications
  2. 5 Known Office Suites for Linux
  3. The 12 Worst Fitness Inventions Ever

I hope I was able to distinguish the two services. I am not trying to suggest anything about which is a better service (If I were to say that, I still spend a lot of time on Digg and love it to core).

Let’s now see what makes “Wisdom of Crowd” when it comes to media a better platform. First thing I do when I get up in the morning is to check BBC site for my diet but off late I love going on for the very basic fact that I get a more diversified dose of compared to BBC. Not that BBC reports are of low quality, it’s just that they can only do so much with a dedicated staff and freelancers. Also, some part of BBC is now attracting user reported/generated and Indian media is not untouched from the same phenomenon. I see a lot of channels encouraginb users to send videos. Freelance is expanding it’s reach.

Tags: , , ,
]]> http://tnerd.com/2008/08/06/nowpublic-crowd-powered-media/feed/ 0