Help

This section of the site describes what Philly Future is, how to use it, and its policies. If you can not find the help you are looking for, click here to send us a question or feedback.

About Philly Future

Learn about and share the diversity, history, sites, sounds, joys, concerns, and news of the Philadelphia region.

Philly Future is a compendium of the best online writers, narrators, blogs, and commentators in the greater Philadelphia region. Our goal is to empower people to learn of and communicate the diversity, history, sites, sounds, joys, concerns, and news of the Philadelphia region. It's what you consider to be important and in need of being heard. It's the news YOU write, for the city and the world.

We endeavor to do this in two ways:

1. Aggregating the best of our regional web and highlighting those in the community that need to be heard. You can read their latest stories by clicking the The Philly Wire link on the main menu. If your blog isn't listed, click here for consideration to be included.

2. Providing tools that allow you to shape the site directly. With an account you can:

Get your own Philly Future weblog, with it's own address and RSS feed. Your stories will automatically be shown in Philly Future's primary categories. Selected posts will be chosen for the home page.
Post photos to our photo galleries.
Take part in comment threads across the site.

In many ways, you can consider Philly Future, Philadelphia's very own Slashdot (not affiliated - but inspired by), with the important addition of our regional aggregator.

If you have an account, just log in. If you don't have an account, create one today.

Once logged in, click "Write the News!" to get started.

This is no "walled garden". If you come here, see something of interest, and click away to a headline at one of the blogs we are aggregating - the site has accomplished it's goal.

Who is providing this and why?

The all volunteer team behind Philly Future can be found here, but it must be said that Philly Future is largely owned by you - the participants of this site. The community helps to shape and direct the course Philly Future will take. All you need is an account to take part.

Who determines who is a "Featured Blogger"?

You do! Philly Future recently opened up the Featured Blog selection process to all members of the site. There are two distinct phases of the process: nominations and polling. Each phase lasts about two days and will take place over the five days immediately preceding the final selection of a new Featured Blog.

The nomination process will allow site visitors to leave comments to nominate deserving blogs. All you need to do is leave suggestions in the comment thread attached to the designated current nominations post. Basic guidelines for the nomination process are as follows:

Previously Featured Blogs (a list of which is available here) will not be eligible for future consideration.
A blog cannot appear in two consecutive Featured Blog polls.
Nominations must be independent local blogs (or of local interest)

The polling process, which selects the final winner, will be decided by registered users of the site selecting from three finalists over two-day span.

How is this site run?

The site is running an open source content management system called CivicSpace. It was the content management solution Howard Dean used in his presidential campaign. It is a solution particularly suited for online community building. This site would not be possible without the wizardry of RSS and the feeds webloggers provide in that format. Nor would it have been possible without the pioneering work of Slashcode, the CMS that Slashdot.org uses and in many ways CivicSpace is a descendant of.

My feed isn't showing. What's up?

The feed parser this site uses is fussy and won't parse a file if there is the slightest format error in it. To see if your feed has a format errors use the Feed Validator.

Why are updates of my headlines at Philly Future every hour?

Philly Future needs to be polite and not send too much traffic to servers hosting individual blog feeds. I know you will find sites you want to read up-to-the-minute. To do so, you can go to those sites and bookmark them, or better yet, get a RSS News Reader and subscribe using the "subscribe" links listed with each site.

So, what are blogs anyway?

You can read about blogs here.

And what are feeds?

You can read about feeds here.

Can I get a list of all the bloggers you aggregate and are in your blogroll?

Sure you can. And we make it easy for you to add them to yours.

When I submit a story to Philly Future, where does it go?

To your own Philly Future archive and blog. To find it easily, be logged in and click "my blog" in your personalized navigation menu. This is a bookmarkable URL that you can share with others. You get a RSS feed to along with the blog (look for the xml icon).

Additionally, you can click underneath any post where it says "(username)'s blog" to find any other user's personal Philly Future blog.

If you are posting to a comments thread, your comment will show immediately in that conversation.

Selected stories, as chosen by our volunteer team, will be promoted to the Philly Future home page for larger visibility to the community.

What should I write on my Philly Future blog?

Anything you want! Share your personal diary. The trials and tribulations of the kind of work you do. Write about politics or sports. Write about your favorite video games. Whatever you want! Of course, if we detect someone is using this site to transmit illegal or inappropriate material, we will remove those posts and shut down that blog.

If you have your own blog, you might wonder what the benefit is of posting to Philly Future. After all, you don't need to join to add your blog and it is being aggregated already. Posting to Philly Future will give you an important channel to write stories that are seen by other bloggers in this region. Link to other blogs that you think the community should know about. Highlight your own work and write stories that link back to your own blog. Having an additional outlet is always a good thing and who knows what can happen when your posts are visited by the regional blogger community at large?

What's the downsides of using Philly Future as my primary blog?

Philly Future can never provide you with a blogging solution that's as flexible as what you can get when you host with a dedicated blogging service or install and maintain blogging software yourself.

What does "Urbi et Orbi" mean?

It's Latin and means "for the city and for the world". There is no better phrase to describe the purpose of Philly Future.

More information...

Find great Philadelphia related discussion at PhillyBlog.com

Find more Philadelphia related webloggers at eatonweb.

Find more Philadelphia related webloggers on the PhillyBlog webring.

Compliments to the creators and contributors of RSS and Atom. This site would not have been possible without their efforts.

Technology behind this is provided by CivicSpace, and a little elbow grease.

Add Philly Future to Your Browser Toolbar

Add Philly Future to your browser to make it quick and easy to participate in the conversation!

For Internet Explorer - Right-click the following link and choose "Add to Favorites...", choose your "Links" sub-folder and click "OK".

For Firefox - Drag the the following link to your bookmarks toolbar.

PhillyFutureThis!

Select any text you want to quote with your mouse, and click "PhillyFutureThis!" for any site or article you want to share with the Philadelphia community.

Note that you must already be logged in to Philly Future for this to work. I'm working on a solution to that.

From what I understand, this works with Safari, but I need some verification. If you have Safari and want to help - it would be very appreciated.

This work, with some modifications, is based upon the bookmarklet posted on Drupal's wiki but works for IE or Firefox.

Add the best Philly blogs to your site!

Following are blogs and feeds that Philly Future aggregates and highlights daily.

You can add them to your site by including the following JavaScript in your HTML/template where you would like them displayed:

<script language="javascript" src="http://www.phillyfuture.org/blogroll.js"> </script>

If you use a personal aggregator like Bloglines, you can get an export of our blogroll as OPML that can be imported into it.

The Philly Future blogroll

Add Your Blog to Philly Future!

Our mission is to empower people to communicate: sharing the diversity, history, sites, sounds, joys, concerns, news, and people of the Philadelphia region. It's what you consider to be important and in need of being heard. It's the news YOU write, for the city and the world. One important way Philly Future enables this is by having your blog included in our site headlines!

If you have your own blog, are publishing from greater Philadelphia region, and want to be listed, please email its address to phillyfuture (at) phillyfuture (dot) org. It would be great if you could send the address of your RSS/Atom feed as well. You need a feed to get listed. You can read about RSS and Atom feeds here.

Please link back to this site and support the community

Here are three simple ways to do so:

Add us to your blogroll.

Use the following text: This site is part of the Philly Future community. Check out other Philadelphia weblogs in my region.

Here is some HTML you can copy and paste:

This site is part of the <a href="http://www.phillyfuture.org">Philly Future</a> community. Check out <a href="http://www.phillyfuture.org">other Philadelphia weblogs</a> in my region.

If you would like Philly Future to host your blog, simply sign up for an account and away you go! Even if you have your own blog, there are still good reasons to get a Philly Future hosted one - among them is shaping this site's contents directly. More details are available here.

Editor Handbook (FAQ)

Q: How do I promote a story to the front page?
A: For stories posted to Philly Future, visit that story, click "Edit", check "Promoted to front page", and click "Submit". For stories appearing in The Philly Wire, click "blog it", chose the appropriate category, and again click "Promoted to front page", and then "Submit".

Q: What stories should be promoted to the home page?
A: Stories that are pertaining to our region in a significant new way. In particular stories that link to other views across our regional web.

1. Local editorial (opinion pieces), informational (reviews, events, tips, history), and news stories (who/what/when/where/why/how stories) should be sought out. We are the city and when folks visit Philly Future hopefully they can get a feel for the real Philadelphia. The passion, the anger, the love - all of it.

2. Headlines should be short and to the point - sadly there is only so much home page real estate.

3. Ignore cursing. OK, not entirely. If it's in a headline - that's a no go - and if it's used simply to shock - consider it.

4. Posts that are meant to stir anger and focus on the poster - and not argument and discussion about the subject - in other words trolling - should not be promoted.

5. Posts that are clearly spam should not get promoted.

6. Most important: Posts that are inclusive - that link to other sites - especially other bloggers - to expand the conversation - should be promoted. This site is for growing our web - not capturing it. So whenever possible, link out.

7. Using HTML to increase font sizes, change font colors, and so forth, should exclude a post from getting promoted. (Should HTML be allowed at all?)

8. And most of all - encourage community and communication wherever possible.

Q: What are the circumstances that a Philly Future post or blog should be shut down/deleted?
A: Illegal or inappropriate material should lead to an unpublishing of the content in question and a warning message sent to the user - if possible - warning of deletion if they do not correct the post/behavior. Inappropriate material examples: Posts that are filed under multiple categories they do not belong under in an effort to gain wide visibility for those posts. Suspicious or attention grabbing use of HTML.

Q: How do I excerpt a post so that only part of it shows on the front page of the site?
A: Insert  wherever you want the break to appear

Q: How do I add a photo to a post?
A: [what's our preferred method now?]

Q: How do I add a blog to Philly Future?
A: [we should have separate directions for blogspot blogs, since they require a slightly different method]

Q: Am I allowed to edit other people's posts?
A: While this is an evolving issue, the answer right now is that in general, posts should not be edited without the author's approval. It is acceptable to make minor spelling corrections, but all changes should be made with care, and author approval should be sought whenever possible. If an editor does make a change to another person's post, he or she should contact the author to let him or her know about the change.

How Do I Set Up a New Featured Blog?
1. Click administer > aggregator
2. Find previous featured blog in list and make note of end date (for example
"blond sagactiy" and end date is Apr 23)
3. Find current featured blog in list and click edit (for example "Pax Romano")
4. Edit title to to make note of featured blog dates (for example edit the title to say "Pax Romano's Ramblings (featured blog Apr 24 May 22)")
5. Under Latest items block change it to "no block"
6. Click Submit.
7. Find the new featured blog in list and click edit (for example the lunabomber manifesto)
8. Change title to reflect featured blog status (for example "Featured blog - the
lunabomber manifesto")
7. Under Latest items block change it to 3 items.
8. Click Submit.
9. Click administer > blocks
10. Uncheck previous featured blog block if still in list.
11. Check Enabled for the new featured blog block.
12. Chose a weight of -10
13. Choose the left region.
15. Click Save blocks
16. Done!

Get Published Now!

Share a story!
Log in to your account, click "create content!" -> "personal blog entry", or just click here. It's that simple. Submissions are automatically shown in the categories you assign them, in an archive (your blog) you control, and are syndicated with via your blog's RSS feed. Your post just maybe selected by the volunteer team to be promoted to the home page of the site! Trusted participants are granted permissions to do this without review. If you later want to edit or delete a post, view it, and click "edit" to make your changes. You can do this at any time.
Run a poll with your account
Run a poll at Philly Future. Log in to your account, click "create content!" -> "poll", or just click here. It's that simple. Polls are automatically shown in the categories you assign them. Selected polls are promoted to the home page of the site! If you later want to edit or delete a poll, view it, and click "edit" to make your changes. You can do this at any time.
Leave a comment
Once logged in, you can leave comments in a threads across the site. Your comments will appear automatically and you will retain the capability to later edit or delete them if you wish.

If you already have a blog, and want its headlines included in the site, click here for instructions on being considered.

For any questions you might have, please see our FAQ.

Research, Act, Report

Research

Act

Report

Terms of Service

Use of this site implies consent to the following conditions:

Users who read Philly Future should be at least 13 years of age.
Users who contribute to Philly Future must be at least 18 years of age.
When you contribute content to Philly Future (in any format), you grant permission to the site to display such material indefinitely and to form derivative works pursuant to the site's mission. In addition users grant others additional rights to copy, distribute, display this work under the referenced Creative Commons terms: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Users understand that material submitted to the site is like that of any public facing service (blogs, forums, etc.) on the web – it will be indexed and cached by numerous search engines leaving a permanent history on the web. Additionally, when subpoenaed, the site may abide by requests from law enforcement to give access to any data stored on its systems.

Material submitted by users of this site is assumed to be original or, if not original, properly attributed to its source(s).

Reproduced content from known third-party sources should be used judiciously, and in the spirit of fair use guidelines (substantial portions of protected content should only be reproduced with the explicit permission of its source)

Material submitted to this site is expected to be free of libelous, racist or otherwise legally actionable content.
Any use of this site that constitutes illegal, harassing or threatening behavior (as determined by site management) is forbidden.
Any breach of these conditions may result in corrective action being taken, including:
- the editing of submitted content
- the un-publishing of submitted content
- disciplinary actions against a registered user or IP address, up to and including banishment from this site and/or necessary legal remedies
The site is not responsible for content submitted by users, unless the site operators are made aware of improper use and given ample opportunity to investigate and, if necessary, correct such use.
If you do not consent to these terms, you should not use the site. In the event that a party has had content appear on this site without such party's knowledge or consent, that party may request that the content be altered or removed, and the site will make every reasonable effort to comply with any such plausible request.
This service is provided as is. There is no waranty, implied or expressed, as to the serviceability or reliability of the site. Matters of editing, publishing or un-publishing, banishment or any other participatory choices are subject to the final decision of the site's management team.
These terms are subject to change at any time. Likewise, the service can be altered or terminated at any time based on the discretion of site management.

In the event that these terms change, the site will attempt to notify with a prominently posted notice of any change in terms.

The Philly Ad Network

The Philly Ad Network is a network of Philadelphia's most influential bloggers, brought together to make it easy for advertisers to reach Philly's opinion makers.

If you have a blogads account, are a blogger publishing from the Philadelphia region, and would like to participate, let us know. This is a Philly network. That's Philly in all of its diversity. Left and right. Hip-hop and Rock. Sports and Humor. You set your own ad rates. You approve, per ad submission, who can advertise, and you can control the look and feel of the ad-strip itself.

If you do not have a blogads account, are a blogger publishing from the Philadelphia region, and would like to participate, let us know. We can sponsor your membership and get you started right away.

If you are an advertiser wanting to reach Philadelphia's market — you can't do better than advertising with the influencers. Click here to place your ad.

Participating blogs should add the following HTML to their sites to display the Philly Ad Network banner:

<a href="http://www.blogads.com/advertise/philadelphia_regional_blogs/order"><img src="http://www.blogads.com/advertise/philadelphia_regional_blogs/logo" alt="Advertise in Philadelphia!" border="0" height="71" width="130" /></a>

Please email phillyfuture at phillyfuture dot org for more information.

The Philly Future Team

Karl Martino - Founder and Host

A software engineer for Comcast Corporation and a former senior software engineer for Philly.com, web home of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. You can read his recent interview by Ed Cone for much more background into why he started and maintains Philly Future. There is no connection between Karl's employers and his efforts at Philly Future - this is strictly a labor of love - for the web - for the city. You can read more from him at his home page paradox1x.org.

Howard Hall - Citizen Editor

A Bucks County native, Howard is an avid coffeehouse enthusiast who lives for therapeutic writing, clever quotes and hopeless causes. His favorite words of wisdom are "Brevity is ... wit" (from Shakespeare, via The Simpsons).

When he isn't trying to foster community at Philly Future, he might be observed checking out an art-house flick, working at his "real" job, or sharing random musings, poetry and haiku at non-breaking space.

Scott McNulty - Events Czar

"Philadelphia's Most Influential Blogger" (a title which is self proclaimed and totally unfounded), has been writing on the web for several years. Razor like wit, breathtaking good looks, and brevity are all things Scott wishs he had.

He can be caught blogging at Blankbaby and sounding off on all things Apple at TUAW. With his copious free time Scott likes to write in the third person about himself, read blogs, and watch Star Trek.

Matthew Gold - Citizen Editor

Matt moved to Philadelphia from New York City in December, 2001, but has had roots in the city for a long time. He became a proud member of the Philly Future team in January, 2005, and thinks that this site is the best thing to hit the city since Pat Olivieri slapped a pile of meat and onions onto a long roll and called it a day.

Albert Yee - Photographer by day, Photographer by night

A native New Yorker, Albert made the move to Philadelphia in May of 2004 and hasn't found a worthy slice of pizza yet, but has had many a great 'steak. He gave up the world of sales the following Spring to live by the mantra "Do no evil" and has never looked back.

His thoughts on politics, food, culture and all things considered can be found at Philly and his images of Philadelphia and beyond at dragonballyee.com.

Jeff Friedman - Citizen Editor

Moved to Philadelphia in 1989 to attend Temple University, where he majored in Political Science, going on to receive a law degree from Temple University School of Law in 1997. Jeff is currently a consultant to cities and counties across the nation. When not saving large governments from fiscal ruin, Jeff is active in various civic and community groups. He serves as the Co-Chair of the East Falls School Committee, is an East Falls Development Corporation Board Member, is on the PhillyCarShare Board and is also on the Young Friends of City Year Board. His blog - America's Home Town - is devoted to the broadcast of positive news about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and includes insightful commentary from time to time.

Ron Burkhardt - Citizen Editor

Ron is a lifelong area resident, raised in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia, now living in Delaware County. A graduate of Temple University, Ron is working on attaining a Masters Degree in Organizational Dynamics. He works at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a husband and father. His interests are civic participation, governmental transparency, and politics.

What are blogs?

The following is from "We the Media", by Dan Gillmor. You can find more detailed information about blogs, citizen journalism, and the the read/write web by reading his book, or by getting your own blog up and running - you'll be surprised how easy it is.

Weblogs and their ecosystem are expanding into the space between email and the Web, and could well be a missing link in the communications chain. To date, they're the closest we've come to realizing the original, read/write promise of the Web. They were the first tool that made it easy - or at least easier - to publish on the Web.
So what is a weblog, anyway? Generally speaking, it's an online journal comprised of links and postings in reverse chronological order, meaning the most recent posting appears at the top of the page. As Meg Hourihan, cofounder of Pyra Labs, the blogging software company acquired by Google in February 2003, has noted, weblogs are "post-centric" - the posting is the key unit - rather than "page-centric," as with more traditional web sites. Weblogs typically link to other web sites and blog postings, and many allow readers to comment on the original post, thereby allowing audience discussions.

Blogs run the gamut of topics and styles. One blog may be a running commentary on current events in a specific arena. Another may be a series of personal musings, or political reporting and commentary, such as Joshua Micah Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo.com. A blog may be pointers to other people's work or products, such as Gizmodo, a site devoted to the latest and greatest gadgets, or a constantly updated "what's new" by a domain expert, such as Glenn Fleishman's excellent Wi-Fi Networking News and commentary page. While some blogging software permits readers to post their own comments, this feature has to be turned on by the blogger, and a significant number of prominent bloggers have not enabled the comment feature. At the other extreme, the Slashdot weblog, featuring news about technology and tech policy, is essentially written by its audience.

What the best individual blogs tend to have in common is voice - they are clearly written by human beings with genuine human passion.

Blogs are, as New York University's Jay Rosen puts it, an "extremely democratic form of journalism." On his PressThink blog, a site that has become essential for anyone looking at the evolution of journalism, he offers 10 points to explain why. Here are the first three:

1. The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most (not all) of todayï¿½s journalism comes out of the market economy.

2. Journalism had become the domain of professionals, and amateurs were sometimes welcomed into itï¿½as with the op-ed page. Whereas the weblog is the domain of amaï¿½teurs and professionals are the ones being welcomed to it.

3. In journalism since the mid-nineteenth century, barriers to entry have been high. With the weblog, barriers to entry are low: a computer, a Net connection, and a softï¿½ware program like Blogger or Movable Type gets you there. Most of the capital costs required for the weblog to "work" have been sunk into the Internet itself, the largest machine in the world (with the possible exception of the international phone system.)

The nature of journalistic authority is shifting, he told me.

In a "bottom-up, chaotic system like weblog world, certain sites are important without anyone designating that," Rosen said. Moreover, when the people formerly called the audience are now participants, "that's a different kind of relationship."

Businesses have joined the conversation because blogs fill a gap. A few years into the commercial Internet, companies discovered the value of email for marketing and customer support, not to mention internal communication. Then came the plague of spam, which threatens email as a tool for external contacts. Most corporate web sites, meanwhile, are like most annual reports: static, stiff, and turgid, with the most revealing information hidden in footnotes - sometimes to disguise the truth, not tell it - and led by a "Letter from the Chief Executive" (or vacuous mission statement) that appears to have been written by a committee of lawyers and marketing people.

To the extent that even a business blog can bring information to the audience - internal or external - with more style than we tend to see on business web sites, enterprises will benefit. But what brings people back to personal weblogs is their individualized perspective.

Personal blogs also tend to be part of running conversations. One blogger will point to another's posting, perhaps to agree but often to disagree or note another angle not found in the original piece. Then the first blogger will respond, and other bloggers may join the fray. As tools are developed to help people follow those discussion threads across different sites, the cross-fertilized conversations will spread both in numbers and complexity even more quickly than they do today.

To date, blogs have been a medium mainly for individuals, though group blogs are proving to be a smart medium in some circumstances. The most popular individual bloggers draw tens of thousands of visitors daily. It's safe to say that several million people have at least tried blogging. How many do it reguï¿½larly is unclear, but the best bet is several hundred thousand.

The addition of audio, video, animation, and other multiï¿½media to weblogs has been an obvious move. But it's taken some time for these mediums to become part of the blogging toolkit. Bandwidth (or lack thereof) is the main reason. But as networks improve, we can take for granted that what technologists call "rich media" formats will infiltrate. (I've added audio and video to my own blog, with limited success.)

Blogging software has evolved a great deal from the first products of Dave Winer, Evan Williams, and other pioneers to the genre. The most popular, as of this writing, are Movable Type from SixApart, Radio UserLand, Live Journal, and Blogger, but a number of competitors such as 20six47 have emerged.

Get started blogging

For Do-it-Yourselfers

Resources

What is RSS and Atom?

phillyfuture.org makes extensive use of feed and syndication to list area weblogs. It's important that you understand what these are, and make sure your website can provide them in order to be listed!

The following is from the website FaganFinder. You can find more detailed information about feeds, RSS Aggregators, and subscribing to feeds, there. Additional thanks should go to Pittsburgh Webloggers for finding this concise description.

What is RSS?

Before you go any further, realize this: RSS is really simple. Just because it is an acronym doesn't mean that it's complicated. Don't get scared away, there's really nothing to it. I said it was an acronym, but depending on who you ask and what version of RSS you are speaking about, it may stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or a variation on one of those. None of that matters to you anyhow. Another thing that you don't need to care about is the versions. There are 0.90 and 0.91 (created by Netscape), 1.0 (by RSS-DEV), and 0.9x and 2.0 (by UserLand Software) versions, but almost all applications that handle RSS feeds can read all the different versions.

When a website has an RSS feed, it is said to be syndicated. There are various other syndication formats besides RSS (such as Atom), but RSS is by far the most widely used and supported today. RSS files do not have a common file extension, although they frequently end in one of .xml, .rss, or .rdf(note that other extensions may be used also). The term 'scraping' refers to creating an RSS feed for a website that doesn't provide one itself (i.e. scraping the text off of the page). That is, scraped feeds are not created by the same people who created the content within the feed. Scraped RSS feeds may stop working if the page changes its layout.

What is Atom?

Atom is a format quite similar to RSS. It was created by people who felt that RSS could be improved upon, and some that disagreed with some of the politics regarding RSS. Some people are heavily involved in the (quite unimportant, in my opinion) argument as to which format is better. The Atom format is in development, but as of February 2004, Atom version 0.3 is stable. There are pros and cons to the format, but that's more complex than I am going to deal with here. The basic difference is that while Atom is somewhat more complex (for producers of Atom feeds), it is also able to carry more complex information, and it is consistent across the syndication, storage, and editing of information. Just about everything on this page which discusses RSS applies equally well to Atom. You can learn more about Atom at the official website, AtomEnabled.org.

What is OPML?

OPML is an XML format for outlines. You can read more about it on the OPML website. An OPML file can be made that lists all the RSS feeds you subscribe to, and this can be very useful. Many RSS aggregators can produce (export) OPML files, and many can read (import from) them. This is a very useful feature. Suppose that you are using aggregator ABC to read 50 RSS feeds. Your friend tells you that aggregator XYZ is so much better than ABC, so you want to try it out. Rather than re-subscribing to all 50 feeds from XYZ, you can export an OPML file from ABC, and import that file into XYZ, assuming that both aggregators have these features. Many people put their OPML files online, which would allow you to instantly to subscribe to all the feeds that they read. Share Your OPML is one website that makes use of information from many people's OPML files.

Sister Sites and Inspirations