Ramblin’ “In The Car Podcast”

Making your own media

A few days ago, Dave Winer talked about “making your own media”, meaning that individuals could create lists of sources and distribute them. Dave called for Democratic podcasts, but he has a podcast “river of news” site with multiple podcasts. I thought – why not create a river of news site for some other list of sources as an example?

I recently became aware of a blogging challenge called Blaugust (during the month of August, natch!). On their media page, they had a link to an OPML file of all the participants. I copied that file, added it to my River5 subscription list, and created a river of news site for that list of bloggers. I have instructions on how to do this for yourself – so get busy!

For the record, I have added a link to my OPML feed list in the Links section of my navigation bar (My Blogroll/Feed List). However, I had to add a Links block in my list of widgets before I could see it – grrr!

Updating my River5 install

I have had some problems recently in getting the web reader feature in my River5 RSS reader install to work. Since I recently revised my main subscription list to create a blogroll OPML file, I decided it would be good to perform a clean install and start fresh with a smaller set of feed lists. I am recording the following steps to document my work.

  • Completed backup of current river5 folder from server
  • Saved my latest feed list as readinglist.txt
  • Found post about River5 callbacks, could not find my callback script
  • Looked at artcasting site, saw how I used a modified form of riverbrowser.js to display the pictures
  • Deleted river5 install on server
  • Uploaded clean River5 install from Github to river5 folder on server
  • Updated package.json to recent changes (allowing latest Node.js version)
  • Updated config.json to current content (removing initial tab setup from Github, setting max number of items in a river, setting podast download flag to FALSE
  • Updated lists folder
  • Added exampleRiver4Callback.js from C:\NodeApps\Rivers to callbacks\addToRiver folder on server
  • Did npm install, no issues
  • Did forever stop river5.js (had to, since server would not allow me to run new app)
  • Did node river5.js, watched startup in Putty, saw web view of lists
  • Did forever run river5.js
  • Checked my reading list app, saw new river file, all is well!