I have a random question to also post. Is there a way to have all edubloggers add their RSS feed to this group and create a monster aggregator of the blog posts and even more specifically a tag cloud representative of just the edublogosphere.

I believe that together we would have a great voice and such a tag cloud would be useful. Of course, by having a group here with edubloggers, and aggregating from here, we could remove the spammers from the cloud and the stats. Suggestions?

The group areas don't have the same customization possibilities as your profile does. This is my major disappointment with these spaces. I think that they have real potential, but without customization, it's not going to go very far. Really, it only offers shared picts, videos, forum, and wall. Not really the wow factor that I have for my profile.

In your profile you can pull in a feed using one of the RSS readers available. One of the services like Yahoo! Tubes could be used to pull all of the feeds together and deliver them as 1.

If anyone has other insights, I'd love to hear them too. I've started a couple groups for family members and would love to customize them more. Not to mention, that I'm still looking into the potential of this space for classroom use.

So, does yahoo tubes give the ability to aggregate it and pull together all of the feeds and then perhaps create a edublogosphere tag cloud?

If so, then we could share in the links area the Links to our RSS feed, or we could just create a delicious tag that everyone could put their blog RSS feed into and then some of us could put those into Yahoo Tubes?

Hmmm -- this is something to consider. Even if we can't do it in here, perhaps we could use this as a place to coordinate something like this.

Hi Vicki,

I'm sure you could do a tag cloud with Tubes, but I'm not sure how to do it. I'm very much a novice in there. There are many possibilities with services like that.

If any knows of a service that can pull all the feeds in AND deliver a tag cloud, that would be better.

I have a "Blog Friends" app on my profile page. It pulls the RSS from my blog and from the blogs of my friends on Facebook - it must look for the friends who have included their blog as part of their profile. I don't know if there is a way to put something like this onto a network page, but it is a great idea!

This would be a really great way to find new blogs as well.

OK, I think that this is our answer, and I'm going to try it!

In Scotland we have http://www.scotedublogs.org.uk which does what you are talking about and a whole lot more. The application was written by me and Peter Liddle, and is Open Source, so it would be easy enough to set up a global equivalent, given a wee bit of funding :)

How did you do it? Funding? (I have none, but what would it take?)

I'm working with pipes and struggling to get a good tag cloud out of the thing, although I can aggregate.

Hi Vicki. The software runs on a web server, and the crawling of all the blog feeds is quite demanding, so you need a dedicated server package, which costs around $50 a month. Apart from that, it would just be a question of tweaking the code and design, and getting a sensible domain name! Actually, as I'm thinking about this, I might be able to get hosting for this, if I could demonstrate enough interest globally. Maybe you could help with that Vicki?

So, we're talking about creating a tag cloud out of a certain number of edublogs to create tag clouds or word clouds? Perhaps it could start with one day and then maybe move back to 7 days. It sounds like you know about the programming.

And sure, I can write about it, but would hate to get hopes up. I'd love to clarify exactly what you think can be done.

Vicki,<br /><br />This is a fantastic idea! Keep us posted via facebook, Twitter, and your blog.<br /><br />Wish I could offer more expert advice, but surely some of our Twitterverse have suggestions.<br /><br />

This might work:
http://www.fwicki.com/

It would be possible to combine WordPress with Charles Johnson's FeedWordPress and any of several plugins that create tag clouds. One has to have a place to host the basic blog, but then people can add their own blogs to the aggregator. Links follow

http://wordpress.org/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=tag+cloud

So it would allow people to add their own stuff to the aggregator? Wow! That is great. I wonder what the maximum number of blog feeds would be?

OK, I'm going in!!!

Is it cold in there?

Did you mean you were going to test Fwicki?

Here's an example of a blog that's aggregating using the method I mentioned:

http://www.cvilleblogs.com/

In the case of the Cvilleblogs implementation, the owner manually adds new entries to the aggregator upon request from the owner of the blog-to-be-added.

You can see my test, though it's not ready for prime time, at

http://SpecialEducationToday.com/

So, where is the tag cloud? The problem isn't aggregating its teasing a tag cloud or word cloud out of the blogs over the last time period. So, how do we do that?

lol. Yes, I've started playing with fwiki and it looks like it might be able to do it. The problem is in letting people add themselves and how to automate that and make it simple. I wish we could do it with delicious or something.

WordPress has lots of plugins that are 'sposed to produce tag clouds. I've not investigated them, but perhaps someone else has. In the meanwhile, here's a link to one:

http://leekelleher.com/wordpress/plugins/category-cloud-widget/

Blogger does category clouds. Really I'd like to take Technorati tags and aggregate a cloud of them for the blog posts in the last seven days in the edublogosphere.