Reaching back into the pre-blog feature archives 

When Donovan mentioned webrings it sounded so 1997 that I believe it may be just the sort of thing that can be rediscovered and "funded." Don't you think? It's another thing like chat that used to happen on personal home pages but hasn't happened to trickle into blogs (because we have blogrolls for that.) Only I think the web 2.0 version of webrings would have to have the word "networks" in there somewhere, just for panache.

(I went back and read that and realized it would be read as a straight-up sincere prediction if you didn't know me a little. I guess that's what smilies are for, except there is no good keyboard smilie for an ironic smirk. I used to use a good graphical smirk a lot. Can't seem to find it. I did find these. One of my better ideas. They're called FUPs -- Frequently Used Phrases -- that you can embed in message board posts at the Republic of Pemberley. Hey, it's another feature that could masquerade as a business! Better get out that business plan template.)

Big list, small list, beggerman, thief 

Adam Green and Anne Zelenka are talking about big reading lists.

I like Anne's filtering idea. She's fed an OPML file containing feeds on parenting into Megite, the new personalized Memeorandum.

I think Megite so far has used blogrolls to pare the world down to a user's little corner of it. But Anne's topic-based file lets her discover parenting feeds specifically. It also might give her ideas on category feeds to add to her list. I ran into the same problem Anne encountered when I was trying to draw up a list about literary adaptations. There just weren't any feeds devoted to the topic, but there were blogs having adaptation categories, and some of them offered category feeds.

As for the 5-10 feed reading list? I agree with Adam that list compilers shouldn't make decisions for users about how much information they can handle. He suggests posting the number of feeds along with a reading list link as fair warning. I'd suggest also estimating and reporting the number of daily posts the feeds might yield.

Also, to clarify, it's not my aggregator that stumbles when it gets fed a list yielding 1,500 posts; it's my brain.

Maybe there does need to be a couple different kinds of lists -- big ones to discover stuff for special information missions, and the smaller, more manageable lists to add to your daily diet of feeds.

Check this out 

grazr.com. I think it's going to be an aggregator optimized for reading lists. Finding out more.

I'm taking bets on how long it will be before there is a reference somewhere out in blogland to "the reading list space."

Over there, over there 

I love my OPML blog but I think I'm going to have to start posting more on my learnandteachonline.com blog . Opml.org won't be hosting blogs forever. I'll try to make sure that I crosspost anything on OPML or reading lists here, or should I point. Which would be better? I don' t think that many people here read my other blog so maybe I'll duplicate posts on those topics with my handydandy "post this" doobie in NewsRiver.

I don't think anybody has announced they'll offer public OPML Community Server hosting, but I wonder if any of you OPMLers are thinking about it.

It's not the sort of thing I'd ever want to get into but I hope somebody blazes the trail and does it soon. Later I'm sure there will be several. Maybe smaller hosting brokers would be interested in doing it -- people who know what they're getting into with support and headaches. Or maybe a computer science department at a college that wants more public exposure. I tried to tell my kids it might be a cool little cottage business to try. They're not buying my OPML evangelism.

Oooh! Oooh! 

Of all the 463 OPML related things l.m.orchard is working on, the one I'd like to see him concentrate on is the XSLT connection with the OPML Editor.