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RSS, Time and Radio2

By Adam Curry on Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 8:59 AM.

My time is valuable, to me. 

If, and that's a big if, I would contract myself as a consultant, my going rate would be somewhere between $500-$1000 per hour. 

I was reading a book recently that delved into the concept of time. It really is just a concept after all. 

The author wrote that we used to be a people that kept time, then we started saving time and these days we are serving time, like slaves. 

This hit me deeply, and I started by not setting an alarm clock (if I can get away with it) nor do I wear a wristwatch anymore. 

I don't want to be a slave to time, and whatever time I have left on this earth I intend to spend wisely. 

So when technology comes along that can save me an hour a day doing a fairly repetitive mundane task, I rejoice in the possibilities of what I will do with this valuable asset. 

I've been working with Dave Winer's EC2 Poets group for several weeks on the 'minimal blogging tool', that is much more than it sounds like. It runs on the OPML Editor app and platform. One of it's benefits is that as of it's current release, it's saving me an hour a day of creating, editing and managing rss feeds. 

To me, that is obviously a very valuable tool, and I have the feeling that this is just the start of what will come out of it. 

I want to explain how it is saving me so much time, because I believe that others can benefit from it in ways yet unimagined. I hope this piece will inspire you. 

In January 2010 I came up with an idea for an iPhone app. It would be an app that carried a 'show' about apps. It helps you see what an app can do before you go looking for it in the appstore, and because I'm producing the video in a new and specific way, it looks as if the app is actually running on your phone. 

I felt this would be a huge advantage over screenshots, text descriptions and (gamed) user ratings. 

As a bonus challenge for myself, I decided I would learn how to develop this app myself. You know, prgramming stuff. 

I've written extensively about my learning experience and curve, but the big aha moment came when I found Brent Simmon's new company TapLynx, who were selling a 'framework' that basically runs off rss feeds. 

I certainly understand how rss feeds work, having been a part of the ideation of the enclosure element, which subsequently enabled podcasting. 

I set out to use RSS as the driver for my mini network of shows, first on the iPhone, then on Android (with amazing development work from Chris Skalenda) and recently I've expanded into books. 

If you boil it down, I'm doing 3 podcasts. 2 a day for apps, 3 per week for books. All in video. 

The apps, are just glorified 'podcatchers' that understand the data I'm sticking in the feeds and create an audience experience. Once the app is on your phone, I can update it with new content every day. And I do. 

Enter the nightmare I encountered as I looked for a tool that woud help me create and manage these feeds. All I wanted was a 'console' that would be my master control panel. This piece might not have existed had I not re-connected with Dave and his work on radio2. 

There simply wasn't a decent tool to be found that was flexible enough to give me a 1-2-3 process of creating the feeds, uploading the files and publishing the result. 

Although I'm very appreciative of the FeedsForAll tool I used for more than a year now, the process was still very labourious and not browser based. I certainly didn't feel comfortable enough to let an intern manage the process, which, in all honesty really should be possible, since this stuff has been around long enough. But it wasn't. 

If you've ever created and mantained a podcast, then you know what it takes to upload files, copy the links to the files etc. 

In my case, I'm using rss to a very full extent; I use the title, description, enclosure, but also the link element is important, since this is tied to the 'Get This App' button that takes you from my app right to the featured app in the app store, Android Market or Amazon page if it's a book review. Add to that a nifty thumbnail that shows you what your about to watch and anyone who's been down this path knows the amount of work I was doing. 

And this is exactly what radio2 does for me now. 

It gets even better. Once my 'appisode' is ready and I have a thumbnail image, I simply go to the featured app's page in iTunes, or Appbrain (Amazon books if its a book review), I highlight some text for the description and click on a bookmarklet in my browser bar. 

The radio2 interface appears and I click a button to select the thubmnail image file, I click a button to select my video file and hit post. 

That's it. 

I sit back after this 2 minute process and just wait for eveything to upload and presto. The show is live on a couple hundred thousand phones worldwide. 

Now that's broad podcasting 

That's just the start of what is happening in OPML Editor land. I'm writing this blog post with it which stores my blog on Amazon's highly robust and inifintely scalable s3 service, I communicate with my radio show producers through the instant outlining system and publish a river of news that is constantly updated 24/7. 

Oh, and I also use it to post my tweets to twitter. It's seamless and I not only get to keep an archive of my tweets, I also can see in real-time who's clicking on the links I tweet. 

The word awesome comes to mind. I'm sure I'll have more adjectives as time... goes on.