Up till today, FeedJournal Publisher users was limited to specifying a date, without time, when filtering articles from their feeds. For high-traffic feeds this was not inefficient. Also, when automating newspapers publishing, a hardcoded date is not appropriate.
Now, you can specify how old articles to include in the newspaper by entering an number of hours. For example, to include all feed articles published in the last 24 hours, you enter “–24h”. It’s as simple as that.
One of the most requested features since the inception of FeedJournal has been hyperlink support in the generated PDF newspaper.
Now it is available!
Users of both the free FeedJournal Reader service and the commercial FeedJournal Publisher can today select the Show web-style links-setting to render links as blue underlined text. This is the default setting. Users who are primarily interested in a traditional paper reading experience can unselect the check box to hide the links. Regardless of this setting, links are always available in the PDF, and the reader sees the URL targets by hovering the linked text with the mouse pointer.
In addition to links inside the article, clicking the headline links to the web page where the full article is published. And in the byline, the feed name links to the web site where the articles are published. Article and feed links are always rendered as normal text, not as HTML links.
In addition to the new links, today’s update also includes better extraction of metadata for Atom feeds.
The new link feature has required large modifications of the code base, and much effort has gone into testing. However, should you run into any feed or articles where you notice abnormalities, please report them to support@feedjournal.com.
A new doXtop press release describes how FeedJournal Publisher let clients generate newspapers that doXtop hosts, distributes and adds social features to.
FeedJournal users can host, embed and collaborate on to their generated newspapers using a plethora of third-party services. DoXtop is a leading and professional provider in this area.
Recently, I’ve had the pleasure to talk to Paul Caspers, creator of doXtop, about how we can go forward and extend our integration to offer an excellent user experience. When the new Publisher interface will be unveiled later this year, you will all be able to see how all the pieces fit together.
Liberty Newsprint, recently featured on this blog, is a prime example of how content providers are using FeedJournal and doXtop. Please have a look at the press release, embedded below using doXtop.
Recent user feedback has helped us to weed out a couple of bugs in the FeedJournal Reader service. Most importantly, a recent update to Internet Explorer, caused the Reader service to fail to generate newspapers.
Another issue caused articles without a publishing date to not be included in the newspaper.
Both of these bugs did not affect the commercial Publisher service. The fixes were deployed earlier today, and are now available to all users.
Change log:
Joel Robinson at Liberty Newsprint kindly set aside some time for me to ask him how he uses FeedJournal to create new print-issues of the aggregated Internet newspaper.
What is Liberty Newsprint?
An experiment in content (news) distribution. I want to see if I can brand a compelling customized newspaper that people would be interested in reading, and eventually, quality content producers interested in contributing to.
What are you using FeedJournal for?
I'm using the FeedJournal application to assemble a variety of daily full-text RSS feeds into the Liberty Newsprint Daily Edition.
How has FeedJournal helped you?
Without FeedJournal it would be impossible to gather daily RSS feeds from the internet in such a readable newspaper format.
How do you plan to use FeedJournal in the future?
Eventually I see using FeedJournal as the application to print anything from the internet on a regular basis. Also, I see it as the application I'll use to customize news and information when I eventually buy an e-reader like the Kindle or any other future e-reader device.
What other ways do you see people using FeedJournal?
Any large to medium sized company that writes newsletters or has a bulletin board from a variety of sources would do well to use FeedJournal Publisher. FeedJournal could definitely help order and manage the flow of institutional information in a much more timely and efficient way. If you work for a large company think of how many e-mails you get about things that you'd rather read in an easy to read, up to date, RSS newsletter. For example, lunches, the company picnic, party, retirement... the list is long.
A week ago, Stuart contacted me to ask if it is possible to generate newspapers with the Publisher service that are not hosted on FeedJournal. He was concerned about the privacy of his clients’ proprietary information.
Thanks to Stuart’s suggestions, it is now possible to disable FeedJournal hosting of PDF files by simply deselecting the check box Host on FeedJournal in the Publisher management interface. This new feature is immediately available to all users of the FeedJournal Publisher service.
How can you use HP’s new computer-less printer to get your FeedJournal newspaper?
That was the first question I asked myself when I read the press release for HP’s innovative new web-enabled printer, with the outlandish name “HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web”. I still don’t have a definite answer to the question, but I am eager to make it as easy as possible for FeedJournal users to get the latest version of their personalized newspaper.
HP’s strategy of launching Tabbloid suddenly becomes a little bit more clear, even though they have a long way to go until they will have something similar to FeedJournal’s offering.
HP says in their press release that developers can distribute applications for the printer using HP Apps Studio, but it will not be available until the end of 2009. Attempts to contact HP have been fruitless so far. Hopefully they will offer an early access or beta program soon.
Too bad for HP, since it will give the competing printer companies a chance to catch up with their own web printers and newspaper generating software.
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