This document discusses aggregating web feeds to create "planets", which are websites that compile multiple feeds into a single page. It introduces several tools for creating planets, including Planet, Plagger, and Perlanet. Perlanet is a simpler Perl version of Planet that the author created, which takes a list of web feeds and produces both a website and aggregated feed. The document encourages using Perlanet to build local planets for neighborhoods to help people feel more connected to their community. It provides tips for setting up planets and notes that testing more feeds helps improve the software by finding bugs.

1. The Planetarium Dave Cross [email_address]

2. Better living through feed aggregation

3. Web feeds make my life better

4. I no longer have to visit my favourite sites individually

5. I just visit Google Reader and all my favourite sites are there

6. I can consume data at least 10 times more efficiently

7. Which frees up a lot more of my time

8. To spend with family and friends

9. Or (more likely)

10. Gives me time to consume 10 times as much data

11. Lots of good information in web feeds

12. Blogs

13. News

14. Email

15. Twitter

16. Every site produces web feeds

17. (Well every site except Facebook)

18. Reading web feeds is easy

19. Let's do something more interesting

20. Let's aggregate web feeds

21. We'll need some software

22. Planet

24. Give it a list of web feeds

25. It produces a web site

26. And another aggregated web feed

28. Planet is written in Python

29. That's a problem for some people

30. Perl could do that too right?

31. Enter Plagger

33. Typically flashy Perl project web site

34. Plagger does everything that Planet does

36. But it does so much more as well

37. I wanted something simpler

38. Something closer to a Perl version of Planet

39. So I wrote Perlanet

40. Yes Terrible name I know

41. (Perlanet doesn't even have a web site yet)

42. But it does everything that Planet does

43. Give it a list of web feeds

44. It produces a web site

45. And another aggregated web feed

46. I use it to build planets

51. Planet Balham got me thinking

52. London is a big city

53. But many people have little connection to their neighbourhood

54. After reading Planet Balham for a few weeks I felt more connected

55. I built more local planets

56. Planet Tooting

57. Planet Clapham

58. Planet Streatham

59. Easy to set up and configure

60. YAML config file

61. Template Toolkit for output

62. Single program (crontab)

63. Many feed URLs can be calculated

64. http://news.google.com/ news/?q=balham &output=atom

65. http://news.google.com/ news/?q= balham &output=atom

66. Just the query string needs to change

67. Not a foolproof method

69. Chris Balham Nebraska

70. Can set up a planet in less than an hour

71. Good starting set of feeds

72. Google news search

73. Technorati blog search

74. Flickr tag search

75. Twitter

76. Other feeds need local knowledge

77. Local bloggers

78. Local twitterers

79. MPs, MEPs & Councillors

80. Local reviews

81. To do list

82. Perlanet uses XML::Feed

83. XML::Feed uses XML::RSS and XML::Atom

84. All four modules have bugs

85. Still tracking them down

86. Module bugs vs Broken feeds

87. The more feeds we test the more bugs we find

88. And (hopefully) fix

89. Please build planets

90. Please report issues

91. Please report successes

92. http://perlanet.mag-sol.com/