Underneath all that is an implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol, which has been out for a while, but we've never really talked about since it's not really of use to non-programmers, except for one thing -- you can (kinda-sorta) use it to back up your Journal.
I keep saying kinda-sorta because, unless some programmer writes an import/export utility, it's not really going to be super-useful to folks. However, I'll show you the potential value here, using this blog as an example:
1. My blog's URL is http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/
2. To view my blog's Atom feed, I stick "atom.xml" at the end:
http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/atom.xml
3. Now, as developer Miodrag says, "Atom is not for casual browsing - it's xml intended for programmatic processing ... this is only for programmers who want to build custom apps or mashups."
This means that, in the Internet Explorer Web browser, you'll see an ugly mess that's only meant to be read by machines, but it's an ugly mess that contains all the content of your Journal entries (but not your comments, All About me, or sidebar links):
This is the content of your blog entries, as seen by machine.
The .xml file is much more pleasant to look at in Firefox:
You can save this .xml file to your computer.
4. By default, you'll only see your 10 most recent blog entries. However, to see your older entries: specify a page number by adding ?page=2 at the end of your URL (don't forget the question mark):
http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/atom.xml?page=2
Page 2, or the next 10 entries.
5. If you keep increasing the number (?page=3), you'll see the next 10 entries, and so on.
If you enter a number that's too high, you'll get an error message. (Right now, according to my Journals Public List page (http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/), I have 958 entries; at 10 entries per page, that means I can go all the way up to ?page=96 (958 divided by 10 is 95 and change).
So What Do You Do With This?
Well, that's where the kinda-sorta comes in. Not only is going 10 entries at a time labor intensive and completely by hand, right now, we don't have a tool to import or export these XML files. (I'm hoping some developer will create one, but I have no idea if anyone will.) So you can't really do anything with it at this point,
So, like I said earlier, this isn't going to be useful to folks right now. But it's a sample of what people will be able to do, once programmers start playing around with the APIs and create mashups.
If you're a programmer who's interested in creating a mashup, check the AOL Open Blogs API site for more info and complete documentation.
Thanks -- Joe
5 comments:
tO PEOPLE LIKE MYEELF I FIND THIS VERY CONFUSING AND DO NOT HAVE VERY GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IT MEANS.(I do not think I am illiterate either).I DO KNOW ALL MY BUTTONS HAVE NOW DISSAPEARED THIS MORNING IN MY JOURNAL AND I CANNOT POST.I WROTE TO YOU LAST WEEK ABOUT ANOTHER PROBLEM I WAS EXPERIANCING AFTER I HAD COME BACK FROM MY USA BREAK.I AM STILL AWAITING YOUR ANSWER JOE.I DO UNDERSTAND YOU ARE A VERY BUSY PERSON.I CANNOT EDIT WITHOUT BUTTONS AND THIS IS VERY ANNOYING.IT ALWAYS SEEMS THE SAME AS OTHER MEMBERS SAY ALSO .WHEN AOL ARE DOING NEW THINGS WE GET LOTS OF PROBLEMS.PLEASE CAN YOU LET ME KNOW WHY MY EDIT BUTTONS ARE NOT THERE TODAY .THEY MADE A BOOB IN MY YESTERDAYS POSTING TOO DID AOL.I INSERTED 50 PICS AND THEY ONLY SHOWED 14 AND HALF OF THE TEXT WAS MISSING.GRRRR.THE LAST PROBLEM I HAD HAS NOW CORRECTED ITSELF,WHICH I WAS WAITING FOR AN ANSWER TO.HAVE A GOOD DAY HOPE IT'S BETTER THAN MY START HAS BEEN TODAY.I WOULD APPRECIATE IF YOU HAVE ANY ANSWERS TO WHY MY BUTTONS HAVE DISSAPEARED.
kath astoriasand http://journals.aol.co.uk/astoriasand/MYSIMPLERHYMES
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Yeah, way too time and IT guy intensive to be practical, at least for now.
What I'd really love would be a utility that give a 'printable' version of each entry. Not too handy for folks who are big on video and animation in their journal, but perfect for someone like me who'd like to know that his kids will be able to read about their toddler adventures in 30 years.
Is there anything like that around?
Dan
http://journals.aol.com/slapinions/Slap-Inionscom
Astoriasand -- I will follow up in e-mail.
Lisa, Dan -- Some intrepid developer is going to have to create an app around it. I have no idea if anyone's planning on it.
Thanks -- Joe
I have modified the Wordpress atom import script to import the atom files that come from AOL. I'm happy to share it with anyone that wants it. It's a bit clunky and does not automatically fit into the overall wordpress admin system (as that's beyond my skill level). It does import everything into the right fields etc, but obviously does not include comments as these are not in the atom.xml feed.
Now there is also an rss feed from AOL it may be that there is no need for this as wordpress has already an rss importer.
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