TroppoSphere |
TroppoSphere is a project I’ve been working on for quite a long while on and off. It’s intended as a feed reader for people who don’t want to use a feed reader! A gateway to a world of news and expert opinion and analysis for those with feedreader phobia.
I suspect there are quite a lot of casual blog readers who would like to check out a wider range of blogs, but can’t be bothered learning how to install or use a feed reader (or don’t even know what one is).
Essentially I’ve created a “hard-wired” online feed reader here at Club Troppo, featuring carefully selected news feeds along with feeds from the best or most popular Australian and some international blogs in a wide range of categories. The blogs whose feeds I’ve included here are those most commonly featured in Missing Link editions. In my judgment they fairly consistently publish interesting posts, at least as judged by the Missing Link editorial team.
Feedback is welcome. I’m happy to add additional feeds to those already featured here, but there are limits imposed by the need to ensure that the pages load in a reasonable time. Accordingly at this stage I have limited the selections to 5-7 blogs or news sources in each category, with each subscription displaying extracts from the most recent 5 stories in the case of blogs and 10 in the case of news outlets.
News
Opinion
- Australia – centrist blogs
- Australia – left-leaning blogs
- Australia – left-leaning blogs (2)
- Australia – right-leaning blogs
- Australia – polling
- International – political blogs
Hi Ken – great initiative. Very useful aggregation for those with or without Feeds. Just one question, though – how did you decide which blogs were left and right leaning? LOL just kidding.
So that was behind the cat’s got the cream expression before you left for work today! Found it sooner than you thought I bet!
Congrats o great silent one.
What a great service!
I was wondering whether you may consider sport blogs in your ‘specialist’ section, I always click on the ones included in the missing link posts.
As a soccer nut I was initially disappointed that there was no soccer feeds in the sport news section. But then going to the sites of the FFA and A-League I saw there was no RSS facility. Rather poor really.
I emailed the FFA and they told me that it was to be included soon.
Ken Parish:
As a hard-wired Luddite and long-time gobblidygookaphobe …. you’ve got my interest. :-)
Guido
Yes I was thinking about starting a sports blog category. I should be able to create a feed from your sport category at your new blog. Then there’s Shaun Cronin’s Sidelined blog, and Mike Salter’s one. Any other good ones you can point me towards. I mean Australian sports blogs. I know there are lots of overseas ones, but I doubt they’d be of very much interest to our mostly Australian audience.
General request
I would also like to find some good Australian blogs focusing on blues, jazz and rock music. We’re a bit light in those areas, both for Missing Link and this new feature. Amanda Rose mostly looks at country music. FX Holden used to have a fair amount of music content but seems to have fled to China. I realise that some of the general blogs carry music posts from time to time, but what I’m looking for are predominantly music blogs. Any suggestions?
Ken,
As for music blogs, May I recommend my own Rock’n’Roll Damnation? On a highway to Oahu with matters rock’n’roll and starting to do a little more on Hawaiian music. Even the odd guitar lesson.
As for music blogs, check some of these out
http://www.wirelessbollinger.com/
http://www.a-reminder.org/music/
http://decomposingtrees.blogspot.com/
http://clipclopclack.com/
http://oceansneverlisten.blogspot.com/
http://www.twelvemajorchords.com/
http://polaroidsofandroids.com/
Thanks Mules and Shaun. Will check this evening.
Ken I am at work at the moment, but I would be more than happy to find good sport blogs that Troppo readers may find interesting.
It looks nice. Of course, no classification scheme is perfect, but I think of my blog as more “left-leaning general interest” than “specialist economics”
Guido
Assistance will be gratefully accepted.
This is terrific, Ken – well done! Although I have to note that – once again – access to Andrew Norton’s blog appears to be broken.
[…] Ken Parish has had the same inkling. Over on Club Troppo he’s unveiled the Tropposphere, which is, as he puts it, a “‘hard-wired’ online feed reader’ hosted by […]
Commentary from Lauredhel.
Liam, you are Bad.
If enjoying hostility, harsh criticism and unsolicited snark is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
OK here are some sports blog that may be interesting.
http://beerandsport.blogspot.com/
Light hearted blog written by a Rugby fan
http://www.grods.com/category/sport/
You may already know about GrodsCorp. They deal in many subjects, and I like the way they look at sport and society.
http://www.owatalk.com/
Oatwalk is pretty down the line. But it is about sport and kept pretty up to date.
http://sidelined.com.au/
Good honest commentary about sport, but NRL in particular
http://aussiegolfer.blogspot.com/
Golf bores me to tears. But then again to many people so does soccer and I love it, so I can’t complain.
http://www.cricket-blog.com/
About cricket. See Golf comment.
http://www.mushroomandrooster.net/category/Sport/
I like the attitude of this blog. It is about a variety of subjects. Pity they don’t talk about sport enough.
http://greenandgoldrugby.blogspot.com/
Need I say more
http://bigleaguelittleleague.blogspot.com/
Blog about the AFL
http://www.theserve.com.au/
Very professional looking blog/website. Contains all latest news about all the major Australian sports.
Of course you have the professional blogs such as those at the fox website
http://www.foxsports.com.au/blogs/
And of course Association Football (soccer blogs) not trying to be biased here!
The round ball analyst – http://www.roundballanalyst.blogspot.com/
The Football Tragic – http://thefootballtragic.blogspot.com/
La pila di Pippinu – http://pippinu.blogspot.com/
I’ve asked some bloggers I know if they know others that they like. If they tell me of some I will post again!
Cheers
Many thanks Guido. I’ll look through them and create a sports category tonight, as well as adding all of them (and your new blog) to the ML sports category for daily review. I’ll also incorporate some of Amanda’s music suggestions. I might end up splitting the arts section into several separate pages – music, visual, theatre/film and general.
BTW I actually agree with Lauredhel (despite the gratuitous snark element). PC, tigtog and Helen Smart at the very least should be included. There are around twice as many left-leaning blogs reviewed by ML daily than any other category, so I was forced to be more ruthless/arbitrary there than anywhere else. Trouble is, the left page is as long as I can make it without being ridiculously slow loading. Several of the above cross-post fairly often at LP anyway, so I figured they’d at least get some representation in the featured feeds. I omitted Robert Merkel for the same reason.
However a better solution might be to create a second left-leaning page. That way I can include all the above and also meet John Quiggin’s request that he be included as a left-leaning blogger rather than an economist (I agree he more frequently posts about general political or environmental topics tha about economic ones).
Ken
This is a fantastic innovation. Good on you! You could become THE blog portal of choice. You should patent it. I can already feel a frisson of gatekeeper potential and filthy lucre! :)
Thanks, Ken.
An extra page? They don’t call us Lefty luvvies the chattering classes for nothing! :-)
How about a specialist feminist category? Legal Eagle and I don’t strictly fit into the ‘law’ category, but it still works. How about putting PC, the Hoydens and Helen Smart together that way?
Sorry Ken….I forgot After Grog Blog which is an excellent one (but I suspect you may know of it already)
http://aftergrogblog.blogs.com/agb/
Other two cricket ones suggestions from Tony of
Cricket With Balls.
http://cricketwithballs.blogspot.com/
It’s by a young bloke, which is reflected in his… errr, young bloke style, but he’s dead set keen and knows the caper.
A female journo from Perth runs Miss Field’s Cricket Blog. Once again, it’s young, but it’s not dreadful.
http://miss-field.blogspot.com/
SL, I dunno, I think classifying blogs under ‘feminist’ might be counterproductive. Think of all the people who automatically wouldn’t read them. :-) It would have a ghettoising effect that’s probably the opposite of what I, at least, am trying to achieve in a general way, viz a sort of gradual consciousness-raising by stealth.
And I’d be stuffed coming and going if classified under ‘feminist blogs’, because many real full-on hard-core feminist bloggers would be deeply shocked by my frivolity and levity, particularly at the moment when I’ve no time to write considered posts on deep subjects. I too prefer ‘left-leaning general interest’ or something of the sort. But I take the point about page loading and so on.
Ken – nice intiative. Thanks for being included but i sadly dont get to post much on my own site anymore.
In light of Miss Hathaway’s illumination the feminazi mind, I BEG you to have a separate category for them. Watch the fur fly.
Keep it up, JG — I await the moment when you finally figure out that every time you trash a blogger, everyone else’s support and affection for the trashee increases — and right across the political spectrum too, which is an astonishing achievement, however inadvertent. But I don’t expect you to figure it out any time soon, and in the meantime most of the flying fur I see in Ozblogistan is coming in rather icky chunks out of your own hide.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he was any good at it, but the way it stands it’s like watching someone play the dozens with himself.
I dunno, Haiku – Mr G’s pretty good at playing with himself. The problem is that he thinks it’s an interesting spectacle for others.
I think it might have been Nabs who described him as the Australian blogosphere’s premier public flasher. That was a good line, whoever it was.
Even JG’s powers have their limits, pavlov. They wouldn’t work on Niall for instance. But otherwise you’re correct.
Can I nominate Graeme Bird’s blog for the left wing category? He is now proposing that CEO salaries should be capped at $200,000
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/so-how-ought-ceos-be-paiddeflating-book-value-increase-by-nominal-gdr-growth/
PC
Darl, when are YOU going to learn I do not “trash” you! Please point to a post where I have “trashed” you. Yes, I “play” with you, but I do not “trash” you. In fact, if you are honest, I think you will find I am actually quite respectful and deferential towards you.
‘Trashing’ implies a degree of success to me. PC, you have quite uncharacteristically failed with terminology here. For the life of me though I can’t think of the right word for chucking snotty tissues at someone across the classroom while humming the chorus from I Was A Teenaged Marxist.
The word you’re looking for FDB is “Fuqtard” – spelling optional.