Blog anything

June 20, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis

Blog anything

: The irrepressible Marc Canter proposes a universal blog-this button at reblg.com. If I’m getting this right, he will create a routing system that will send any post’s permalink to any blogging tool (and, I assume, the same could work for subscribing to any RSS feed via any RSS reader… something we need). Marc’s email announcement:

With ReBlog.com end-users will be able to click on a ëReBlogí button and send a piece of micro-content or microformat to their favorite tool for editing, annotating or just plain prettying up. End-users would specify what is their favorite tool at a simple web service or in a MIME handler that they downloaded and run on their own machine.

Even though itís been possible for years, most of todayís aggregators and tools do not support the notion of displaying a button to easily allow end-users to ìBlog Thisî particular post or article. Sure some aggregators enable plug-ins to kludge this option, but in general most bloggers are forced to ëcutí the source of a post and ëpasteí it into their favorite tool. With each tool or environment comes a different kludge or hack, with its own rules and gotchas to contend with….

ReBlg.org would enable end-users to register their favorite tool of choice so that wherever they traveled on the web, by simply clicking on the ëReBlgí button ñ they could easily send that post to their favorite tool. If the end-user doesnít want to rely upon our web service, then they can simply download a MIME handler to do that routing for them.

  • Jack Stewart

    Sounds very similar to XMLSub

  • http://marc.blogs.it Marc Canter

    Hey Jack and Jeff
    No – Reblg.com (or whatever we finally name it) isn’t about RSS feeds – it’s about maintaining teh structure of microformats and/or micro-content and not beoing locked into one tool. The same will go for an output routing servic e- so we can send stuff anywhere – simultaneously.
    You see – as we’re building DLAs – we found that we neede dthis and we needed away for our industry to interconnect tools together.

  • http://www.kn.com.au Earl Mardle

    Jeff,
    Awasu ( http://www.awasu.com )has a very elegant kludge to say the least. I select the text from the post, hit Tools/Zempt and, using this command line C:\Program Files\Zempt\Zempt.exe zempt:newPost?title=”{%TITLE%}”&link_title=”{%TITLE%}”&link_href=”{%URL%}”&text=”{%SELTEXT%} it drops the item title into the subject line and the selected text into the body field and I’m away.
    Awasu is also working on an editable, multi post workpad that lets me drop several related items into the pad, edit the contents, comment on them and then boost the lot via Zempt (and hopefully Qumana) to the blog.
    I’m not wild about preserving formats, but maintaining links and especially those back to the source do matter. And being able to publish to any format (rtf, email, html, blog, spreadsheet, PPT stright from the IM interface is still my dream.
    We’ll get there.