My local install of Elgg now reads in entries from RSS files and aggregates them on a page. A couple of interface tweaks and I’ll upload my work to this site, probably over the weekend. Assuming there isn’t some kind of almighty programming hiccup, this should be a neat little feature – it’s certainly just as usable as, say, Bloglines. I’m having trouble getting Magpie, the RSS engine we’re using, to grab multiple dc:subject entries intelligently, which means imported entries aren’t tagged as yet. But I have no doubt I’ll get that fixed.
A good example of how this might aid integration is Moodle courses, which can be made to export RSS feeds. Suddenly you get information about your course as part of your learning landscape – and there are, ooh, a good fifty thousand other services also using RSS. More on this when it’s up and running.
Meanwhile, I wish someone could syndicate some sunshine for me; Oxford is overcast, wet and cold, and there’s some kind of electricity problem in my office which means my overhead lights are at most shining at half brightness. (Surely a health and safety issue.) I feel like I’m working in a cave, without the benefits that caveman dwellings usually provide. A roaring campfire would be superb, but I’d settle for something warm to wear and the ability to scrawl pictures of bison on the wall.
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