How, I wonder, might one go about excavating linkable URLs from within AvantGo?

Today, I came across two stories I’d like to blog, the Beeb on Google’s videoblogging announcement, and the P-I’s story on the upcoming Silver Cloud Hotel near Safeco Field. A story about the addition of satellite imagery to Google maps on the NYT also caught my eye, but proved too horkulated a pain in the ass to link to, even in-browser and online.

I think I have bitched about this before. It’s an unserved need which is generated by my position in the unlikely intersection of three sets: the cheap, the wired, and the bloggy. You might dignify (or ridicule) this absurd self-diagnosis by casting me as a member of the “cheapgnoscenti,” but of course I would never stoop to such a callow coinage. To that subprognothean depth of verbal flimflammery and obfuscatory pyrotechnics, I stoutly rejoin: no sir!

I suspect the answer is within spitting distance. The method is to replace the AG feeds with RSS feeds of the same data (and here’s the tricky bit), rendered within AG via a multi-format aggregator such as Newsmob. This leaves the problem of getting to the links unsolved, as they resulting feeds are still rendered by AG.

In addition, Newsmob appears to be unfunded. In my experience, the service is spotty (although that may be the fault of feed providers) and has a terrible admin UI that more-or-less guarantees each new user will create a new feed with the desired content rather than locating the extant one.

Mind you, this is all groundless speculation. But it describes my experience to date.

Please note: moblogged sans links, fixed in post.

One thought on “How?

  1. Hi,

    Don’t mean to hijack your discussion, please delete this if you find it inappropriate. I’m Tim, creator of NewsMob. You’re absolutely right, the service has been spotty lately. Some of this is the fault of the provider, and some is a result of our internet provider – who is currently upgrading some equipment – so we hope it will be more reliable within the next several days. Also, when you “add” a newsfeed we are checking behind the scenes to see if that feed exists in our database, and if it does we show it to you, and if it doesn’t we add it, then show it to you. In either case, the result is the same to the user, so it may seem that you’re adding sources when you really aren’t.

    Thanks for your time, and thanks for using NewsMob!

    – Tim

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