Inroads
I’ve added a new feature to the weblog, a boxlet called Inroads. It’s a list of sites that lead to this blog in some fashion – blog indexes, update notification sites, rss feed search engines. Upon reflection, I should probably add Google to the list. For now, here’s a rundown of the sites listed currently appearing in the Inroads boxlet(on the right… acroll down if you don’t see it):
- Blogdex – A project of the MIT Media Laboratory, it tracks the disemination of ideas via links read from websites. Collect data via spider.
- Bloglines – A web-based News Aggregator. Subscribes to RSS Feeds, allows you to read your subscriptions from anywhere.
- Blogrolling.com – A set of Blogroll (a list of web links) management tools. Among other things, lets you know when a site you read has been updated. Accepts ‘pings’ (update notification messages). This blog began pinging yesterday, thanks to Tatsuhiko Miyagawa’s ping_weblogs_com_rpc plugin for Blosxom.
- Blo.gs – Another site that lets you track sites you read for updates. Offers various forms of notification. Accepts pings just like Blogrolling.com; I’m pinging them the same way.
- Blogtracker – Allows you to track sites you read, see recent updates. Offers browser integration. Gets update date from Weblogs.com (see below).
- Feedster – Feed search engine. Indexes RSS (and Atom) feeds, allowing you to search the content of nearly 250,000 blogs and other sites that offer feeds.
- Syndic8 – Directory of RSS Feeds. Find feeds (news, sports, blogs, you name it) based on almost any criteria.
- Weblogs.com – Lists weblogs that have changed in the last three hours. Offers its data as XML. Accepts pings, which I provide as outlined above. As far as I know, this is the original ‘ping me when your site updates’ website.
There are many other sites out there like these. Why did I list these sites? Each site listed links to jclark.org in some manner. I have either registered with these sites (to be spidered or have my feeds polled), or someone else reads this site via on of these services, or I ping them when I update. Some of these are services I’ve used myself (such as Feedster and Syndic8). Some are sites I’ve found in my access logs (referer URLs of User-Agent strings), such as Bloglines. Weblogs.com is one that I’ve been meaning to ping for a long time now, and it turns out that blo.gs and Blogrolling.com use the same interface for pinging. Three birds with one stone; and each site offers something unique as well.
This list may grow; I had intended to list Technorati but they seem to be having technical difficulties as of late. If you find any of these helpful, drop me a comment. Likewise if you want to recommend a similar service.
Update: Fixed the link for Blogtracker.
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