Newsvine APIs: What Would You Like?

Nice to be on topic, then :)

Jason Coleman wrote: Ex. - In response to Buss's comment, Ryan Crimson copied his comment and then responded. That was very helpful of Ryan, but readers not interested in RSS/JSS could have skipped over this thread altogether as opposed to seeing it pop-up repeatedly. Allowing Ryan to create a comment on Buss's comment would have been great.

I agree. I run a site with nested comments, and I haven't seen anyone that supports it the way I do. Check out the comments on any story from my website. Below each comment is a link "reply to this comment." Upon clicking that link, a text box with a submit button shows up in place of the link, allowing one to respond to someone else's comments without having to scroll to the bottom of the page, and scroll back up to see what he said, etc. You need to be logged in to see that functionality, and since I'm not trying to troll for readership just login as l/p: test/password to see it do its magic. Please note that you can't add any content when logged in as "test."

Threaded comments really help increase discussion and it also increases the readability of the comments.

From all of us at aqua-soft.org:

Support for Avedesk 1.3 or 1.4, or AveScripter.

I would enjoy seeing Newsvine capitalize on the "vining" concept more. One of the most effective formats for learning and understanding complexities is through "mind mapping." Linking related articles is an excellent step forward but an application that allowed members to personally or publicly "vine" articles would be a very powerful tool toward quickly digesting news in the context of mind mapping.

Not trying to promote other products but here is an example of what I mean the focus being the Key Benefits.

More examples of Mind mapping

I just want the ability to have newsvine host pics I make to go with the windows tips and tricks articles I am writing.

Sorry, I'm new here but I have another non-API suggestion:

I'm not sure if this one really serves the purposes of Newsvine since its more of a social bookmarking issue, but I would like the ability to "copy" a friend's seeded story (like the "copy" button on del.icio.us) without having to actually go to the external link and seed it myself.

And on a somewhat related note, I was curious how Newsvine deals with multiple users seeding the same external link? Is there some kind of consolidation procedure or a policy to use the "search" before seeding? Again, I'm new here so I might just not be understanding how this all works. Thanks.

I agree with El Draper about the need for external posting via "some kind of XML-RPC interface" such as Mars, Ecto, Performancing etc. I rarely go near my blog posting interface, I use Marsedit and I think many bloggers prefer to use external editors to post. Also the JSS links are fine but I believe they simply link back to Newsvine which then requires log-in/registration. Even putting the RSS through Feedroll or Feeddigest still results in the links for individual articles going back to Newsvine. There is no point for me in sending my readers to an article via Newsvine when I can direct them straight there via my own RSS/JS links from (say) delicious, Blinklist etc - I can see the advantage to Newsvine though, but that's not the point! :-)
On a non API point: Nested Comments Please! As these comments demonstrate, nested comments would be extremely useful.

let me see, my dream api:

1. send in a tag/user/region/story
2. get rss/atom back of story, link, # comments, date, time, time of last comment
3. with the output, get related tags/users/regions/stories
4. be able to filter output by tag/user/region/stories

my $0.02

forgot something

SOAP and REST would be cool

It would be great that if I seeded my own blog entry that I could import comments or at the very least include a link at the end of my post that would show how many comments are sitting on this site.

Exampe: Seeded @ newsvine with (X) comments.

Might be off-topic but:
I would like to see a feature where I could have a list of my friends interesting topics. So somehow me as a user I would have a list of hot topics that I thought were cool or funny, and then if someone has me in their "friend's list" (or something like that), then the news elements from my list would appear there for them to read. Kind of like a

Miguel: Doesn't that happen now with the watch lists? If someone adds you to their watchlist they see all your posts / seeds?

I like what people have been saying as far how I get the data of these API's, anything along the lines of RSS, text, or JavaScript would be cool. All very easy to work with. :)

Looking forward to seeing these APIs! :D

It that MeFite Miguel?

Live Search would be cool. Like Mac Os X's spotlight.

Sorry about a double post, but an edit feature on comments posted would be nice. It would also solve problems with double posting like this now.

MonkeyWork: No, that's not what I mean. I mean a list where people would see the posts and seeds that I find interesting, not necessarly the seeds that I have seeded.

For example, a quick scenario that seems to happen just too often now is that I read news on newsvine and find something really cool. Than I want to share it with a friend, but I find it annoying to open my e-maill app and send an email to that friend so I can share the news I found.... It would be nice to have a "favorite stories" list where I can just add the story to it. Then my friends can have access to this list somehow (maybe a JSS) or whatever it has to be.

The main thing is that the list is not the list of my own seeds. It's just a "favorite story" list. Just a thought that I would really like to see implemented.

Folktrash:: What's MeFite ?

Another off-topic thing: it would be nice to be able to limit your searches to only you and your watched list members. For example, I could search my immediate friends for "google" and it would display only stories that I've personally -- or those I watch -- seeded and tagged as "google." This search would work for full-text, tags, and users just like the main search on the front page.

Great job so far, though. I've only been using Newsvine for a few days now and I really like it.

Some API thoughts (that could also be new page thoughts)

* Maybe obvious, but an "is this posted" query so that other applications can have the same functionality and warning that the seed UI has now

* A "my seeds/posts by tag" query so someone can be specific with what they include elsewhere (may have been covered already above )

* Access to news photos in the same way that comments above are talking about posts and seeds.

* Some statistic or zeitgeist related queries such as most used tag, hot posts (by comment or rating) etc.

* A query on other fields -- specifically URL or Source -- so that sites elsewhere can patch in and do a "what the vine is saying about this story" (taking a page from technorati cosmos)

* A query for tags I've used to help facilite smarter input apps (i do a lot of seeding of NHL stories so my tag use becomes highly repetitve)

Which brings me to my only non-API suggestion and that is one to spend some more time on the site getting tags easy to use and so their use is cleaner... what I find from my use of the site in the last month or so is that the biggest gap (outside of pure volume of users) in this site being great is the unpredictability and inconsistancy of tag use. be it typos, bad tags generated by the AP feeds - but more commonly that everyone has their own taxonomy or level of detail they follow. It would be great to have the site reflect this and hint at related tags (NHL and hockey, george-bush + president) get smart about synonomous tags (scotus + supreme-court, ny-rangers and new-york-rangers and new-york-rangers', ) so that (a) its easier for posters to do a good job and initially selecting tags and more importantly (b) its more seemless to a reader and makes you more confident that you're going to see the news stories you want to see

Integrated support for JSON would be excellent. Having just recently started using JSON in a couple of my web applications—and finding it extremely easy to implement and work with—I think it would make a great addition to the Newsvine API.

Just a rant, but the LiveChat thing's awareness needs to be raised. I have never seen it used. Dont get rid of it, just raise awareness about it.

I'd like to see integration into my Flickr account. Not sure about copyright issue but it would be cool to able to click an image and tag it into Flickr.

One idea for the API, that also goes for a site suggestion feature, is to make USER_COMMENTS (or whatever you want to call it) available for hooks. I'd love to be able to view a record of my comments within my "user" area on Newsvine, and I'd also like to be able to utilize that data via the API.

I think that elevating comments to the level of posts and seeds like this will help to create accountability and encourage overall comment quality.

One other idea- I assume you're already planning to output the basics per user, such as posts and links. But what about adding two other per-user variables: USER_VOTES, and USER_TAGS.

I'd like to see a list of the stories I've voted on as a sort of analagous "bookmarks" or "reading list" stream. Meanwhile, I'd like to have a list of my tags available (perhaps with weight?) so that, eventually, I can begin thinking of ways to combine my tag schemes from the seemingly millions of personal sites that I'm tagging my content at.

I'd like to see a Podcast feature, allowing people to record a 15 minute (or thereabouts) audio track in .mp3 format that it can also be RSS-enabled.