What I would like to see is one centralized index of all Harvard blogs. There are now enough places where Harvard students are getting their views out, but we're all scattered to the winds. We don't need more hosting services after this, but we do need a place to keep track of everyone regardless of what service we're using.
The last (and only, as far as I know) attempt to do something like this is Adam Roben's Planet Harvard (now defunct; Google cache). It will be really simple to hack an online RSS aggregator (like Gregarius or Planet Planet), manually add the most notable Harvard blogs, add an online form for other Harvard people to add themselves, and set up a page where one could view posts from multiple Harvard blogs on one website. I would do this now, except I have to study for final exams so I can graduate in 3 weeks.
The next version of Gregarius should have multi-user support, which would make this easier.
# At 0:42 on May 19, 2006, ben white wrote:
I was thinking along the same lines as well. I was considering setting it up over the summer (because I have an Orgo final to fail). I didn't know about Gregarius--nice. No matter who does it, I think it'd be a great service. Especially with the CampusTap/Law School/Everything else split we have going. I agree with your views on campustap as well, I'm not a huge fan. I originally emailed the guys to see if they would perform the service of aggregating the harvard blogs, but I never got a response. I figured if they were really into making a community, they'd want to include people that have been blogging longer and didn't want to move their entire site over to a template driven nightmare. It's bad enough that I'm on blogger as it is, and not using WP.
I did a Harvard blogs widget a while back, but that's already out of date (besides, I had to create feedburner feeds for the campustap sites because they use Atom instead of RSS 2.0). I'll have to put out a couple of new versions by the fall. For those of us who want to expand this dialogue on campus (and for the rest of the world as well, which is why I'd never move to campustap), the index is something that's worth pursuing.
# At 16:13 on May 19, 2006, Sameer wrote:
I have been thinking of making a Gregarius planet theme for a long time. However, I never really got around to it. It would be cool it you could make a theme and put it on the repository.
# At 10:31 on July 5, 2006, Adam Roben wrote:
Planet Harvard is now back online at http://planetharvard.roben.org/. As Martey suggests, I plan to add a form for bloggers to submit their feeds for inclusion on the Planet.
# At 14:51 on August 20, 2006, Adam Roben wrote:
FYI, you can now submit your blog to Planet Harvard using the form in the sidebar.