Tag: rss

How to Translate RSS Feeds with Google Scripts and then subscribe in your preferred RSS Reader

Luke Johnson

After Google Reader was decommissioned, I was happy to find that inoreader was an excellent replacement. But one feature was missing: free and easy RSS Feed Translation. Did you know you can deploy your own Google Script to translate RSS feeds, and then subscribe to them in your preferred RSS Reader (like inoreader?)

Here are the steps, from labnol.org:

  1. Open the Google Script and choose File -> Make a copy to create a personal copy of that feed translation script into your Google Drive.
  2. Replace the source language (line #4), the target language (line #7) and the RSS feed URL (line #10) with your own values. (some language codes here)
  3. Go to File -> Manage Versions and choose Save a new version. You may leave the description field blank.
  4. Go to Publish -> Deploy as Web App, choose “Anyone, even Anonymous” under “Who can access the app” and click the Deploy button.

Google Script will now offer you a link to the web app. That’s actually the new URL of the translated RSS feed which you can directly subscribe in Google Reader or any other news reader app like Reeder, Flipboard, etc.

If you wish to translate another RSS feed, or offer the same feed but in another language, just go back to step #1.

via
How to Translate RSS Feeds with Google Scripts

Podcasts for BIM and the Built Environment

Luke Johnson

2015 may be remembered as ‘the year the BIM podcast became a reality’ (among other things, I’m sure 🙂

Here is a list of recently established but active podcasts related to BIM and the Built Environment. I have provided RSS links, and will update this list as more become available:

BIMThoughts – BIMThoughts is podcast about BIM technology and techniques.
RSS: http://bimthoughts.com/feed/podcast/

Podcast | Designalyze
RSS: http://www.designalyze.com/taxonomy/term/120/all/feed

Autodesk Launches Podcast Channel to Explore the Future of the Built Environment
RSS: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:149177069/sounds.rss
Episode with Adam Sheather: link
The Architech Show
RSS: http://www.thearchitechshow.com/feed/

How to make a New Default Notebook in OneNote to Fix me@onenote.com problems like "We couldn't save your email, please try again."

Luke Johnson

This is an extreme measure, but it will get everything fixed up and create a new Default Notebook for you. If you have some corruption or severe sync problems, it may break the me@onenote.com system for your account. Here’s how to fix it:

  1. Make sure you have copied or moved or backed up everything from your entire Default Notebook (the one where me@onenote emails usually go)
  2. Close the Notebook in the desktop app and close OneNote 2013. I would also recommend closing this notebook on any other devices that may have it open.
  3. Open OneDrive and navigate to your Documents folder
  4. Select the Default Notebook (usually “YourName’s Notebook“), rename it, and then delete it
  5. On you PC, go to the OneNote backup folder (something like C:UsersLuke JohnsonAppDataLocalMicrosoftOneNote15.0Backup) and move the folder relating to your now deleted Default Notebook somewhere else
  6. Everything is basically nice and clean now. How do we get a new Default Notebook?
  7. Go to your primary email alias for Microsoft (the one you just deleted the default notebook in) and send a test email to me@onenote.com – the content doesn’t really matter
  8. At this point, OneNote will create a new Default notebook for you, it will make a Quick Notes section, and it will place the email in as a new page. Everything should now be ‘back to normal’.
  9. Restart the desktop app and re-open the Notebook
  10. Open the Notebook on any other devices

 Here is the full message you might get if your OneNote to email service is broken:
“We couldn’t save your email, please try again.”

Oops! Something went wrong.


It looks like you tried to send an email with the subject line ‘…………..’ to your notebook, but we were unable to save it. Please send the message again and we’ll do our best to make sure the email gets into your notebook this time.


Still having problems? Go to our help forum to report a problem.


Thanks,
The OneNote Team


Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052
 
 
 
Related question:

Automatic and Free way to Add RSS Feed to OneNote Notebook (plus bulk forwarding from Gmail to OneNote)

Luke Johnson

OneNote is becoming a bit of an obsession lately. Its one tantalising step closer to a paperless life.

My latest project was to feed a large RSS reading list from Inoreader into OneNote (for offline use, archiving, searching etc). Inoreader has a paid version that can do this, but I’m always search for the free option…

The short version:

  1. Subscribe to an RSS feed with your Microsoft account
  2. Set up a rule to forward to me@onenote.com

    The longer and more powerful way:

    1. Set up a new Microsoft account (so we can use Quick Notes default notebook freely)
    2. Make a Google account (if you don’t already have one)
    3. Make the Google account an alias of the Microsoft account, and enable it for OneNote
    4. Burn the RSS feed you want with Feedburner (I am using a large list from Inoreader, so I take that folder and burn it so I can use Email Subscription)
    5. Subscribe to it via email with the Google account
    6. Set up forwarding from the Google account to the Microsoft one. (I use the Google account so that I can do another thing later…)
    7. Forward emails matching Subject line of subscribed RSS feed to the Microsoft email address
    8. Make sure the Microsoft account is an approved alias for OneNote (step 3)
    9. In Outlook email rules, forward emails matching the FROM address of the Google account to me@onenote.com
    10. Share the default notebook from this newly created Microsoft account to your ‘real’ one.

    Now, why do we use the Google account (step 6)? So that we can use this Google script to grab lots of stuff (from that Google account) and forward it to the OneNote Notebook and populate it with lots of interesting data. In my case, I had a few years worth of these daily RSS digest emails, and I applied a label to them in Gmail and then used the script to forward them to the Microsoft account. As the rule was set up in step 9 above, these are automatically forwarded to me@onenote.com and then added to the OneNote Notebook.

    Slowly but surely, this Notebook is filling up with thousands of pages of research that can be searched, taken offline and shared.

      Google Reader is gone, but here is a new Aggregated Revit Info and News RSS Feed

      Luke Johnson

      Plug this into your RSS reader:
      http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/56667/tag/REVIT_FEEDS_RSS

      I also burnt this feed to allow for easy subscribing (via email etc):
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/Revit_feeds_rssInoreader

      I previously had used a shared folder on Google Reader to aggregate all of this into one RSS via Feedburner (and then into PDF), but obviously that method is broken now.

      Dare I say that I think that InoReader is going to be my Google Reader replacement…

      Some other notes
      Another way to view the Revit Feed reading list, check out:
      http://www.feedspot.com/folder/4RTJsGUe
      (this one will not be updated, as I think I’m going to go with InoReader, not Feedspot)

      Another idea
      I thought I had found a way to aggregate my Revit Feeds into one RSS for easy reading / viewing.  Without getting into all the details, it uses a Yahoo Pipe to turn an OPML (containing many feeds) into one RSS feed, sorted by date.  Here it is:
      http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=70129693f6803988c7fe858f4fb9822b&_render=rss&opml=http%3A%2F%2Fanonanon.p4o.net%2Fpipelist.xml

      In the end, the result is not very predictable or reliable…

      This is the pipe:
      http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=70129693f6803988c7fe858f4fb9822b

      Google Reader and Why I Don't Trust the Cloud

      Luke Johnson

      Because at any point, it can get turned off.

      My problem – I use Google Reader, and I have a folder called Revit Feeds.  This folder has been shared, and then the resulting feed has been burnt with FeedBurner. 

      This is the Revit feed:
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/revitFeedsRssInGoogleReader

      This is the BIM feed:
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/bimFeedsRssInGoogleReader

      I’m expecting all of this to turn off tomorrow, or soon after.  This is how I view and archive Revit news to PDF, using this method.  Now, what can I replace this with?

      The answer?  Nothing.  Easy.  Yet.

      I have tried numerous so called ‘replacements’ and nothing comes close.  I don’t want a flipboard or some artsy style, I just want to be able to fast scroll until I find some really fresh Revit information. Here are a few that I’ve tried:

      • Spundge
      • Curata
      • Feedly
      • The Old Reader
      •  SwarmIQ

      These are the main things I want:

      • fast, clean reading
      • ability to create a curated list of blogs and generate a new RSS from that
      • ability to archive feeds (including all images) to local filesystem for easy indexing and searching

      Now, I’m hoping one of you has the answer for me 🙂

      In the meantime, I am going to use The Old Reader for pure reading.  For archiving…I’m not sure yet.

      Here is some further reading:
      Google Reader Is Shutting Down; Here Are the Best Alternatives

      The Old Reader

      How to Transition From Google Reader to Feedly: Plus Other RSS Reader Alternatives | Social Media Today

      Priorities: Keeping the site up, listening and adding new features. | Building Feedly

      WP8:
      How to Transfer Your Google Reader Feeds to One of These Better RSS Apps for Mac, PC, Web, & Mobile « Internet 

      Add the RevitHelp Twitter Feed to your Revit Communications Center

      Luke Johnson

      Click on the little satellite dish, then InfoCenter settings:

      Go to RSS Feeds and click Add, then copy and paste the following string:
      http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=RevitHelp

      Done!

      While you are at it, why not add What Revit Wants:
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/WhatRevitWants

      Notes:
      Twitter RSS that doesn’t work in Communications Centre:
      https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=RevitHelp

      Read more:
      Is there any way to display my tweets via an rss url? | Twitter Developers:

      Free Email to RSS Forwarding

      Luke Johnson

      The problem – you want to subscribe to an online newsletter, but they don’t offer an RSS or Atom feed.  You don’t want to disclose your personal email address.

      You can use the following service to set up a ‘bridge’ between a nominated email address and an RSS feed.  Then you can simply subscribe to the RSS link that the you are provided with:
      Emails to RSS Forwarding

      It takes a little bit of setting up, but it does solve the specific problem described above.

      Free RSS to PDF automation

      Luke Johnson

      I previously posted about my large library of archived Revit blog posts.  I then got a request from Mr Stewart to shed some light on how I automate the RSS to PDF process.  It is a lengthy process, and I’m sure there are easier and better ways, but here is how I did it:

      1. Set up a dedicated Google alias, for Reader and Gmail
      2. Make a big RSS list in a specific folder in Reader.  Mine is shared here.  Share that feed folder from Reader.
      3. I then burnt this shared feed in Feedburner:
      4. Then, I subscribed to my own burnt feed via email (Gmail address from step 1), by using the Feedburner page here:
        http://feeds.feedburner.com/revitFeedsRssInGoogleReader
      5. I then installed and set up a portable Thunderbird profile, using my Gmail alias from step 1
      6. So now, Thunderbird was receiving daily email summaries of all Revit related blogs – I just had to get this info into a PDF somehow.  I used PDFCreator, due to its autonaming functionality.
      7. Install PDFCreator
      8. In Thunderbird options (Tools – Options – Config Editor), set PDFCreator as the default printer using print.print_printer.  Here are my printer settings in Thunderbird:

      9. Go into PDFCreator to set the Auto-save options:

      10. Now, back to Thunderbird.  Set up a filter like this

      11.  To auto-create the PDFs, just – Open Thunderbird, Get Mail, Tools – Run Filters on folder.  Once it is set up, it is very easy to use.

      Here is an example of the kind of PDF output I get – link here.  The formatting is perhaps suboptimal, but most images are retained and the text can be indexed by a search program like Google Desktop.

      Graham’s message:
      Graham H Stewart BIM Associate at Ramboll UK
      To: Luke Johnson
      Date: July 11, 2012
       
      Hi luke
      Seen you blog regarding automation of rss feed via PDF
      . Can you shed some light on this as I would like to know more

      Cheers
      G
      #livefromitaly
      Sent from LinkedIn for iPad

      Another request I received was about how I sort and organise all the info I collect.  I will add some info on this later:

      Plessey Mathews
      Wow. Please share how you categorize the videos, the pdfs’s – by expertise level, by workflows… ? And what about videos for older versions PRE ribbon interface. Do you still keep them or weed them out. What front end do you use to access this information. Windows explorer would be overwhelming. Thank you. Now I am going to beg IT a NAS box for training videos.