Jon Aquino's Mental Garden

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Sunday, April 24, 2005

Assembling a list of local bloggers, spending several hours in the process

To see what Victoria bloggers are writing now, click here (old site). Then come on back for the why and how.

I wanted a complete list of bloggers in my city (Victoria BC). Not only that, I wanted a real-time display of what everybody in this town was writing. I found a great service called Blogdigger Groups that lets me combine several blogs into a single webpage. All I had to do now was to find all the bloggers in my city.

It took me several hours just to scratch the surface.

Some of the sources I used to find local blogs were: GeoURL, Blogger, and a good ol' fashioned Google search. And of course you have to check out the people on the blogrolls in case they live here too. Sigh. And I stopped short of adding Xanga blogs (456 Victoria blogs to plow through -- many by people in their early teens).

Anyway, the final result is here: a webpage combining the feeds of 109 Victoria bloggers. Also available as a feed, or if you want to import all 109 (!) blogs into your aggregator, an OPML file. Anyone is free to add or remove blogs using the Edit link.

I'm looking forward to connecting with the bloggers in my town!

posted by Jonathan at 4/24/2005 12:31:00 a.m.

29 Comments:

  • Very interesting Jon. I poked around for quite a while and will recheck the 'blog' again. I linked to the post here

    I have a question though. I checked the list after I posted at fm. The latest post was
    "3 hours, 55 minutes ago Scraping the Web" and the timer continued when I hit reload but my post didn't show up. What is the lists lead time? Should it be updated almost instantly or over a period of hours?

    By Blogger Leon, at 4/24/2005 4:08 a.m.  

  • Hi Leon - I responded a bit more at your blog -- looks like Blogdigger has a 1-2 hour delay.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/24/2005 9:24 a.m.  

  • I'm on geourl and a2b ... sorry you missed both my blogs ... check my profile. Will definitely visit you and the other sites when I have time. Have a great day, eh?

    By Blogger homercat, at 4/24/2005 7:08 p.m.  

  • Hi lovedonnaz -- I will add you right now! Hadn't heard of a2b -- I'll check it out.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/24/2005 7:15 p.m.  

  • Jon - yey I showed up. As somebody said we could just go to an aggregator but it is fun to experiment.

    My 'missing post' showed up in the right timeslot (between two other blogs) after I changed to 'short' feeds as opposed to complete ones. The length of feed may or may not have had a bearing on things. The time drag seems to be about 8 - 12 hours (?) but this may be due to the number of feeds the blog is trying to aggregate.

    Is there any way to compare post time to appearance on your blog?

    By Blogger Leon, at 4/24/2005 8:56 p.m.  

  • Hi Leon - You want times for my blog? Unfortunately I'm not sure of an easy way to do this, other than hitting refresh periodically for however many hours.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/24/2005 9:05 p.m.  

  • But I'm delighted to receive confirmation that your posts are making it in!!!

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/24/2005 9:05 p.m.  

  • Great idea, Jonathan. Found my way here via your comment on my site. I also read Firemind and the rest of you are meeting up for Victoria blogger gatherings. When and where is the next one?...I'd like to attend.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/25/2005 12:40 a.m.  

  • Hi Jeff - Good to hear from ya. Victoria Bloggerati gatherings happen on the 3rd Wednesday of each month. I've asked Todd (the organizer) if he would add you to the list of people to notify about the next meeting.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/25/2005 8:17 a.m.  

  • I've started to leave comments on some of these 109 Victoria blogs, telling each blogger about the other 108 bloggers, and I feel exhilarated.

    It's like I'm awaking a sleeping monster, a monster with 109 members, making it self-aware for the first time. Arise! ARISE!

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/25/2005 7:39 p.m.  

  • Hi Jonathan - Wow! This is pretty cool. Thanks for putting it together.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/25/2005 9:14 p.m.  

  • Hi Wil - You're most welcome! Blogdigger is unfortunately having some problems with your feed, which is strange because there's nothing wrong with it. Ah well.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/25/2005 9:16 p.m.  

  • Great work there, Jon --- there are more bloggers in Victoria than I imagined. Pretty cool.

    By Blogger Tim Bailey, at 4/26/2005 2:34 a.m.  

  • No worries about my feed. The site looks great. It reminds me of Orblogs - http://www.orblogs.com/.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/26/2005 9:24 a.m.  

  • Hi Wil - I had a look at Orblogs (the Oregon blogger page). Pretty slick!

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/26/2005 7:21 p.m.  

  • Tim - Yeah, 109 Victoria bloggers isn't it amazing! And I just learned that there are a lot more -- 200 in the Victoria LiveJournal community, and 400 in the Vicoria Xanga community.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/26/2005 7:25 p.m.  

  • Hmm. flickr photos too http://www.allthegoodness.com/projects/map/firefox/index.php?lat=48.4678&long=-123.3729

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/27/2005 5:39 a.m.  

  • Thanks Anonymous - I'll check out that link when I get home tonight.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/27/2005 9:25 a.m.  

  • Hi Jon. Neat idea! I saw your comment on my friend Grant's blog. My also-in-Victoria blog is at http://scwink.squarespace.com - even if you don't want to link to me, I'd love to hear more about the Victoria Bloggerati!

    Keep on Bloggin'

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/27/2005 5:39 p.m.  

  • Hi scwink -- Of course I'll link ya ... as soon as Blogdigger comes back up. The Victoria Bloggerati is organized by Todd Brill, and it happens on the third Wednesday of each month. Send me your email and I will give you his!

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/28/2005 12:24 a.m.  

  • Sigh - both sites disappeared today -- yes on the same day, coincidentally -- and I had to re-enter the 109 feed URL's by hand. Good thing I'd saved them.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 4/28/2005 8:26 p.m.  

  • Hey Jonathan, I can't seem to add feeds to the list myself, so here's a few friends of mine that I don't think are on the list yet:

    Jen's Journal - http://jenmclean.com/index.rdf

    Carolyn Gebbie: Personal Trainer / Triathlon Coach - http://carolyngebbie.com/index.xml

    Crabs in Vegas - http://crabsinvegas.ca/index.xml

    Non Zero - http://www.nonzero.ca/index.rdf
    (does it count if he's from Victoria but currently going to school in Montreal?)

    Lisa Sweeney - http://nonzero.ca/lisa/index.rdf

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5/10/2005 12:02 a.m.  

  • Oh wait, scratch the Lisa Sweeney link...she was a student in Victoria, but it is back home in Vancouver indefinitely. Oh, and like Non Zero, Crabs in Vegas is friend born and raised in Victoria, but now studying in Las Vegas as well as Bamfield, so not sure if that fits the Victoria Blogger description.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5/10/2005 12:05 a.m.  

  • Jeff - Thanks for the names!! I will add Jen and Carolyn. Yeah - let's keep it to people currently residing in Victoria, to keep the numbers reasonable.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 5/10/2005 12:17 p.m.  

  • If you're still adding local bloggers to a list, could you add my site?

    http://mikedewolfe.blogspot.com

    ... or not... :)

    By Blogger Shawn DeWolfe, at 11/14/2005 10:53 p.m.  

  • Mike - done!

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 11/14/2005 11:48 p.m.  

  • Cool stuff Jon. I'm one of your Victoria 'neighbours' and I have a couple of blogs: Restructuring Business and Sustained Living

    By Blogger Sustained Living, at 12/27/2005 2:48 a.m.  

  • Hi Sustained - Great to hear from you! I've added your blogs to http://www.superblog.org/planet/VictoriaBCBloggers

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 12/27/2005 2:44 p.m.  

  • Hi there.

    Blog Bloke is also a local blogger. You can add me too if you like. The links you provided aren't working.

    Any possibility for organizing a meetup sometime?

    Cheers,

    ...BB

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7/28/2008 4:44 p.m.  

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