Cullect Serves Publishers Too.
Exactly. From the beginning, I wanted Cullect to be useful to feed publishers as well as their readers.
There are a number of ways it’s doing that now,:
- Readers can donate a percentage of their monthly Cullect subscription to their favorite blogger, podcaster, writer, publisher (yes, these donations directly impact a feed’s important ranking).
- The Cullect Robot says which reading lists a feed is in and any monthly donation amount.
- Cullect Feed Stats widget can display a feeds most important items or it’s recommended items.
- Cullect recognizes comments-url tag and links to the original feed item.
Status: Down for XSS Investigation
I’ve taken Cullect down while I investigate some reports of XSS vulnerabilities.
I’ll be updating this post as I find out more.
Update 19:00CT - Applied an initial patch and brought Cullect back up.
Status: Expect Turbulance for the Next Hour
I’ll be (re-)testing out a new server config for the next hour or so. Cullect will be up and down during that time. Thank you for your patience.
UPDATE: 8:15pm: Everything looks good. Upgrade step 2 of 3 is complete.
Unavailable for 30 Minutes or So.
For the next 30 minutes, I’ll be testing a new server configuration in preparation for a larger server migration.
Thank you for your patience.
Update: Well, that didn’t work. Let’s try it again another night.
How To: Customize Your Feeds’ Cullect.com Feed Statistics Widget
Cullect has a simple javascript widget that displays all the information Cullect has about your feed, all in a single line of code, all ready for embedding on your own blog:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.cullect.com/feed.js"></script>
You can see the Feed Stats widget in action right here at blog.cullect.com and at GarrickVanBuren.com. For more the sites using it, check out the Widget archive of this blog.
By default, the Feed Stats widget shows;
- 10 Most Important items as ranked by Cullect.com’s Importance algorithm
- Amount of money donated and number of patrons to the feed
- The lists of reading lists the feed is in
- Link to create new Cullect reading list with the feed
- Link back to Cullect.com
If you’d rather show the 10 Most Important items, change the code to include “selected=recommended“:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.cullect.com/feed.js?selected=recommended“></script>
If you only want the 5 Most Recommended items, just say “count=5“:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.cullect.com/feed.js?count=5&selected=recommended”></script>
If you don’t want to show the donations (”show_patrons“) or the Reading Lists (show_lists), change the code to:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.cullect.com/feed.js?show_patrons=0&show_lists=0“></script>
And, just like that you’ve customized the which statistics Cullect displays on your blog.
The Feed Stats widget, like all Cullect.com widgets, adopts the CSS of the site they’re embedded on. If you’d like to change how it looks, here’s a breakdown of the HTML & CSS. Make it look cool.
<span class='cullect-widget' id='cullect-feed-stats'>
<h3>[Your Blog] at Cullect.com</h3>
<ul id=’[recommended-items OR important-items]‘>
<li></li>
</ul>
<p id=’feed-patrons’></p>
<p id=’feed-reading-lists’></p>
<p id=’start-reading-list’><strong></strong></p>
<p><small></small></p>
</span>
Internet Explorer Shows a Feed? It’s a Bug
mjkeliher and mnheadhunter have helped me identify a fairly serious bug with Cullect reading lists when viewed in Internet Explorer v6 or v7.
IE really wants to give you the reading list’s _feed_, rather than the HTML page.
I’m investigating workarounds. Until I get to the bottom of this, try a different browser.
Thanks, and sorry.
UPDATE
If you’re running IE - could you load up a reading list (i.e. http://cullect.com/1/latest) and let me know if you see the gray left-hand column w/ ‘feeds’, ‘curators’, etc in it. Thanks.
UPDATE 2
Sounds like IE is cooperating again. Yeah!
Cullect is Feeding MIMA’s Summit 08 Reading List
That’s Cullect in the bottom row, 2nd from the right.
The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association is prepping for their big, annual Summit on October 1st at Elsie’s in Northeast Minneapolis (my backyard).
To set the tone, they’ve created a Cullect.com Reading List - http://cullect.com/mima08 - and loaded it up with the blog and Twitter feeds of the presenters.
These event-based reading lists is something I’m very interested in. Seems like a great way to warm attendees up to a topic and its presenter ahead of time.
Cullect’s Eponymous Features
Just like that deli down the street that names its sandwiches after the celebrities that have dined there, Cullect has a handful of features inspired by someone special:
- The Arik Jones: Authentication and posting to Tumblr.com
- The Dave Slusher: Link spidering
- The Hugh MacLeod: iPhoto-compatible RSS feeds
- The Peter Fleck: Authentication and posting to Blogger.com
Thank you all.
How To: Change Reading List Item Count, Order, Pagination
In each view1, Cullect shows 50 items by default2, these items are then ordered most-to-least (’descending’) based on that view3.
You can change all this things by putting the following variable in your URL request (works for all supported formats4)
count=#(how many items do you want? maximum of 50)offset=#(this is how pagination is handled)order=a(ascending) ord(descending - the default)
Example:
This is equivalent to http://cullect.com/1 :
http://cullect.com/1.html?count=50&offset=0&order=d
This will give you the second 50 items:
http://cullect.com/1.html?count=50&offset=50&order=d
This will give you the second 50, least Important, items,
http://cullect.com/1.html?count=50&offset=50&order=a
1. Important, Latest, Recommended, Tagged, Hidden
2. The default count in Javascript widgets is 10.
3.
- Important = most Important, un-hid items, to least
- Recommended = most recently recommended to oldest recommended
- Tagged = most recently tagged to oldest
- Latest & Hidden = most recently published to oldest. Latest doesn’t include hidden items.
4. .Atom, .HTML, .JS (Javascript), .JSON, .M (’mobile’, i.e. text-only), .RSS, YML (yaml),
Outbound Feeds are Unavailable: 16 Aug 2008
The reading list feeds out of Cullect aren’t working correctly (js, rss, atom, etc) - I’m on the case. Follow this post for updates.
Update 11:15CT
The feeds are back and better than ever. Available formats; RSS, Atom, js, json, M3U, PLS, YAML.