July 11, 2005

Comments

Thanks, great stuff! Can't wait to try it.

Hi, I'm already using BuzzBoost to display the latest submissions to my public-access electronic music feeds, but another feature I'd like to add is public syndication that would let anybody use the same javascript to syndicate the feeds on their own websites.

It would be uber cool if we could do something like this:

var numItems = 10;
var displayDate = false;
var numDescriptionWords = 15;
getFeed(numItems, displayDate, numDescriptionWords);

Of course, that's just a silly example, and you might want to do it differently, but it sure would be cool. I could create a point-and-click customizer to spit out the source code for users to paste to their own sites. Better yet, FeedBurner could supply some simple customizer code for users like me who want to syndicate their content. =)

Thanks again for this awesome addition to your already excellent services!

- Eric

Good news, Eric -- You can already do all the things you suggested!

Since the JS block can be pasted anywhere, you can share it with others. You set the default display preferences, but the people who syndicate your posts can override the parameters right in the JS code snippet. See the bottom of Using BuzzBoost for info on parameter overrides.

We anticipated that publishers would want to use BuzzBoost as a way to allow others to resyndicate their content. Once the dust settles from this initial launch, we'll work on adding features that more directly address that use.

great feature...but can also be used for evil potentially in the blog plagiarism that Fred Wilson talks about at avc.blogs.com.

Michael,

(Clarifying my earlier comment)

Because we use Javascript to run BuzzBoost, it is not a tool that could be leveraged effectively by a blog spammer or somebody trying to steal a publisher's search engine juice . Those tricks rely on taking RSS content and repurposing it as content that can be indexed by search bots on a third party site. BuzzBoost content will not be indexed by search bots since it's JavaScript-based. We have created this as a tool for publishers to promote and distribute their content, while also trying to be careful about nefarious uses and limiting those.

Hey John,

That is great news!

Those pages were being updated while I was working on my implementation. It was actually pretty cool watching new features appear as I hacked away. I guess I could have waited for the dust to settle a little before demanding features that were already in the works...

- Eric

Great! I implemented it on my weblog: http://hmestrum.blgos.com and the corporate site: http://tulip.com/Site/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=7&tabid=15

Thanks to Rick Klau who pointed this out to me - I just implmented a feed of my books on hold from the Ann Arbor District Library into my blog Vacuum using BuzzBoost. It replaced RSS-To-Javascript which did the same thing with a bit less finesse.

http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2005/07/colophon_books_.html
has the how-I-did-it details.

Hey guys... love what you're doing. I run a blog and often keep my journal on a boat, when I come ashore, I transcribe/type my journal entries into blogger. Blogger lets me change the time and date of my entry to whatever I would like. This is very convenient. Buzzboost, however, seems to place the date of when the entry was placed in blogger, not the date that I tell blogger to reflect as the posting date. Is that confusing? Anyway, please let me know if I am way off on this.

This is a cool addition to all you offer.

I've been using your headline animator in many, many places on the sites I maintain.

On my CafePress shop at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com, I'm now using the BuzzBoost to publish my brand new blog on the home page of my shop and the Headline Animator in the footer on every page of the shop -- a two-for-one way to keep customers informed. This is much better than the What's New page I used to maintain.

Now, I just need to syndicate the new blog to my other sites.

Thanks!

JD

Quick question - is there a way to turn off the and tags?

I'm using this in my typepad typelists and the alignment and bullets are causing me to lose about 1/3 of my column space. I'm attempting to find a fix on my end too.. but I'd love to know if I can simply have the content delivered as paragraphs.

I need help. I am using the feature to convert RSS to HTML on my site (notesontea.blogspot.com) but I would like to format the style of buzzburner generated html. Where can I make this change?

Thanks.
Leorg

Is there a parameter that would enable me to skip over the first entry when displaying feeds. For example - If I am using feedburner buzzboost to display an archive under the most current post, I don't want the first list item to be the same as the post that is in full above it.

Another example - movable type archiving uses 'offset="n"'.

I had the same problem with the list tags
as Lex and agree that the using paragraphs with a class would be a better implementation. I worked around it with the following bit of css:
li {display:block;
position:relative;
left:-40px;
list-style:none;}
setting the list-style to none removes the disc and the other bits remove the indentation.

Apart from that, Buzzboost is a great feature and is just what I was looking for - serendipity!

Thanks,
Martin

Martin,

CSS certainly allows for multiple ways to solve a design challenge; we appreciate you sharing your approach and hope it helps others who don't want to use the -powered approach in its default state. Thanks!