Radio UserLand: The Missing Manual

Steve Hooker makes some interesting Radio tools. Today I installed his tool, backLogAllRSS. What does it do? Well, you wouldn't know it after reading the page on Steve's site unless you really dig around. So, here's what backLogAllRSS is doing for me.

I want my weblog, iceplant radio, to rank better at Feedster, an RSS search engine. You see, I've been weblogging at iceplant radio since 2001. Feedster came along in 2003 so there are a lot of posts on my weblog that visitors to Feedster don't know exist. What to do? Well, if you are running Radio UserLand just install Steve's tool and generate a backlog RSS file of your entire weblog by pressing one button. Then, index your entire blog with Feedster by telling them the address of that new file.

Now Feedster knows about the entire history of your weblog and will automatically pick up where it left off with your next post. A human will inspect the feed you submit first to keep the spammers away. Thanks for a very useful tool, Steve.

Radio has a news aggregator but I've not used it for a long time. I use NetNewsWire to read my RSS feeds instead. Unfortunately, NNW doesn't handle enclosures. Enclosures are files that can be attached to RSS feeds and automatically downloaded by an enclosure aware aggregator, such as Radio UserLand.

There are some interesting feeds with enclosures that I want to tune in to such as Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes, Christopher Lydon's Interviews and Adam Curry's Daily Source Code.

So, I've added those feeds to my Radio subscriptions list. I've configured Radio to accept and download enclosures. And finally, I turned my Radio aggregator back on so it can check for RSS feeds with enclosures that have been updated recently. If there is an enclosure, Radio will download it at night when I'm asleep, ready for listening, viewing, using in the morning.

What next? I intend to watch Adam's enclosure to iPod project closely and implement it myself when the time is right. That way mp3 enclosures will not only be downloaded to my computer, they will automatically be added to my iTunes list and synced up with my iPod.