Rethinking sourstock.com
Sat, 06 Dec 2008
I hate to abandon any project to which I’ve dedicated serious time and effort. I created sourstock.com as a way to showcase the talent and diversity of Florida’s online content providers. This is still a worthy cause, but the tools I chose to accomplish my goal are insufficient to the task.
I’ve decided to halt any regular update of feeds at sourstock.com. I’ll leave the current site up for now, but will likely shutter it after the holidays.
Florida blogs deserve a community: I’d hoped to provide a platform that could bring all that content together into a searchable, categorized and tagged index. I built sourstock.com upon open source software and that project’s development is stalled indefinitely. I really like gregrarius, but I don’t think it can serve my current needs. While gregarius offers unparalleled features, it hasn’t scaled well.
As the index grew from a few hundred blogs to more than a thousand, performance of sourstock.com became an issue. Categories and tags were disabled in order to keep the site responsive. I pruned years of stored posts from the index, trying to streamline a massively bloated database.
I’ve worked hard to keep the index limping along as a service to fellow Floridians, but I must find a simpler solution, one requiring less effort to maintain. I never saw a business model in the venture: No advertising ever ran on the site, out of respect for the content providers I showcased. I’m out-of-pocket a few dollars for domain registration, but beyond that, sourstock.com cost me nothing but my time.
I’m done nursing a broken aggregator. I’d prefer to rethink the concept without regard to the limitations evinced in the current implementation. I’m fairly sure that I’ll scrap the current code and feature-set. What will replace the site is yet to be determined.
Related:
» Link: / projects / Rethinking sourstock.com
Announcing sourstock.com, your connection to Florida blogs
Thu, 03 May 2007
Following a great deal of research into Florida blogs, I've created an aggregator site which tracks more than 700 feeds. It's a public RSS newsreader, tuned in to the most creative folk in our state, from the Panhandle to the Keys.
Features:
- Syndicated content is funneled from hundreds of diverse Florida sources.
- Feeds are polled at hourly intervals, the site updates twice an hour.
- Most podcasts can be played with a single click, using an embedded flash player.
- Customize searches and subscribe to a search's RSS feed.
- Search Florida blogs from the browser's toolbar, using opensearch. (While visiting the site, select the dropdown icon next to the browser's search box: Then add sourstock.com to the browser's search engines.)
- The site works nicely with mobile devices.
- There's an opml list of Florida blogs, for import into the user's newsreader-of-choice.
sourstock.com is my meager attempt to draw attention to some of Florida's best creative talent. The content showcased on the aggregator site remains the intellectual property of its creators, and all items are linked to their original source. (If any content providers wish to be removed from the site, they may contact: dave AT spacecoastweb.org).
I have chosen to feature full content whenever a blog provides it, as this provides greater semantic value for the site's search function. This is to help people find relevant posts.
I prefer to use full feeds, rather than a summary, because the search feature works better if it has the full text. I believe that interested visitors will click through to the blogs they find via the site; to comment on a post, or to learn more about the content creator.
Once, I was leery of giving my full content away for syndication, but I've changed my position. Nothing is going to stop a page-scraper from grabbing content and republishing it: Throttling an RSS feed only hinders the honest folk, who prefer to read blogs in their newsreader-of-choice.
I'm hoping the site will connect readers to blogs they might not have found otherwise. It's about building community and meeting neighbors.
I built the site using Gregarius, a web-based RSS/RDF/ATOM feed aggregator. Right now, the full potential of the site hasn't been realized. There are many features in place, but much work remains. In time, most blogs will be categorized, and locations will be provided, (if available). Eventually, it will become a multi-user site, where members can login and customize their feeds.
At present, I don't know if I can make the site commercially viable. Advertising over other people's content may offend the content providers. Yet if traffic to the site gets as heavy as I expect it will, I'll need to cover the bandwidth, and maybe even the cost of a dedicated server to handle the workload. I've got some thinking to do on how best to approach this problem.
I'm releasing the site to the public before it's ready, (it's still in alpha-testing). There are likely to be glitches. Have patience with the server, as I don't know that it will take the strain. I would have waited a month, or two, before announcing the site, but current events have persuaded me to launch early.
» Link: / projects / Announcing sourstock.com, your connection to Florida blogs
Superior postharvest handling qualities
Sat, 27 Jan 2007
Growers in the Indian River region once relied upon sour orange rootstock to support their grafted fruit.
Citrus Rootstock Usage in the Indian River Region - "Sour orange rootstock is considered unsurpassed for maintaining fruit quality, and also is widely believed to provide superior postharvest handling qualities."
When I was young, a family friend owned groves which were no longer financially viable. Many trees still bore sweet, juicy fruit, long after the groves were abandoned. Every season for several years, I and my friends picked a truckload of fruit from those weedy groves. Because the trees had not been tended, some had completely reverted to the sour orange stock, while others bore sweet and sour on the same tree, depending on the branch you picked from.
We left the sour oranges on the tree. They would later fall and ferment, to become a wild hog's ambrosia. Sweet citrus was also left to rot. A few hour's harvest yielded more fruit than we could distribute to friends and family, so we only took the best of the several varieties available.
What I've just written is a slice of local lore. It's also a metaphor about a project I'm working on.
A few Florida bloggers have seen the project, which is now in alpha testing. It's not quite ready for the world, so they are respecting a press embargo until the site launches. Last year, when I published the Florida blog directory, I had an overwhelmingly positive response. An updated and expanded Florida blog directory would be a logical guess as to what I'm working on, but it is much more than that.
You can be an alpha tester. To qualify, you must be:
- curious about what Florida bloggers are writing,
- willing to respect an embargo on publishing information prior to the site's launch.
Want to know more? Contact: dave AT spacecoastweb.org
Update: Announcing sourstock.com
» Link: / projects / Superior postharvest handling qualities