Freediving News, Blogs, and Forums

[trux]

I have added another feature on the APNEA.cz home page. Besides the site news in the right column, I added combined headline news feeds from several external sources, such as DeeperBlue.net, Shark-Freediving, Diver Wire, from diverse freediving blogs (Nitsch, Frolla, Kurra, Ryuzo, ...), and also from several important freediving forums (DB, Freedive Central, Esprit Apnée, Plongeur.com, ...).

The news are being pulled from about 50 external freediving websites around the world - there are news available in several languages (you can filter the list by a specific language). They are being update around the clock automatically every few minutes.

The news and forum posts are researchable, and in future I will also add the possibility of news alerts by email - any time there will be a new article or post about topic that you subscribe to, you will get a notification email (for example all messages about Dahab, about Sara Campbell, or matching any other keyword or combination of them).

Currently only RSS enabled news sources, blogs, and forums are included, but I plan adding others without the RSS interface too. It is just little bit more complicated and longer to code it, but unfortunately some important websites currently do not use RSS feeds (for example AIDA International) and it would be a pity to miss them.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or know about some RSS-enabled blogs, forums, or websites that you would like included in the global news feed, or if you own one, do not hesitate to post it here, or contact me by PM.

[trux]

I have fixed couple of smaller bugs in this news feed feature (i.e. in the search/filter function), and made some improvements. Besides the scrollable list of news headlines, I've added also more detailed abstracts popping up in a separate box left of the news feed column when you move your mouse cursor over the news items. In this way, it gives you more information about the news article or forum post, without the need of clicking the link.

I also made persistent the filter/search expression, language selection, and the choice of the number of headlines - so that your last selection remains active at your next visit too. In this way you can easily filter the news so that only those that match your keywords show up.

You can use also complex logical expressions for the search filter such as
nitsch OR sietas
record AND blue hole AND NOT dahab
NOT deeperblue.net
You can also use quotes for exact matches - so for example "STA" unlike STA will find all items including the abbreviation STA, but not those including only static or mustard. All searches are case insensitive.

[trux]

OK, although AIDA-International's website does not support RSS, I've added automated feeds from their newspage now too.

[trux]

Well, I improved the news even more - added parsing of some non-RSS sources, such as AIDA International, diverse national AIDA's websites, BFA, Stepanek, freediving on Google News, etc, and I will be adding more as tie allows. Additionally I added better filtering, modified the layout, added icons for websites and countries, ...

But that's not all - now you can take advantage of the work done, and include the same news on your own website too. All you need to do is adding the following code on the page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apnea.cz/feed.html></script>

There are also possibilities of changing the size and look, selecting the language, filtering by keywords or category, and more - see the details here: APNEA.cz - News Feeds

[trux]

Hmm, it looks like I am speaking just to myself here, but never mind, I am going on improving the News Feed function anyway, even if nobody cares . I've added some more sources of news, both from RSS and non-RSS enabled enabled websites. The full list with statistics is now available at APNEA.cz - News Feed Statistics. There are currently 67 sources listed.

Besides the possibility to embed combined and customizable freediving news on your web page with the above mentioned code, I added also XML/RSS output for both the global freediving news and new posts on several major freediving forums. The RSS feeds are customizable in the same way as the news box on the home page of APNEA.cz - if you enter keywords into the search box, select a language or number of new posts to display, the RSS feed will respect that choice too. Two RSS feeds are currently available either through clicking the RSS icons at the top of the news box, or (if you use a recent browser, such as MSIE 7, Opera, or Firefox), another RSS icon will appear in the menu toolbar of the browser.

Also, most of recent email programs support RSS streams, but my favorite RSS reader is the one available in MS Vista gadget bar - in this way, if you subscribe to a RSS feed such as the one at APNEA.cz: World Freediving News, the news will be always under your eyes. See the screen-shot below with the gadget RSS reader on the right pane of the screen:

The next step, if time allows, will be writing a program for parsing those forums that do not support RSS (like for example the one of AIDA International) - in this way I'll be able to solve the problem to stay informed about what's going on on several major freediving forums, without having to visit them permanently.

[Pastor]

Originally Posted by trux

Hmm, it looks like I am speaking just to myself here

You can talk to me if you want but I can't guarantee any sense

[William W]

Hey Trux,

Sounds pretty cool...not that I fully understand every detail but a nice way to connect several different sources for news and info. Great job!

Cheers,

William

[trux]

Lately, I wrote parsers allowing me to pull information about new posts from several types of forums including vBulletin (used for example by DB and AIDA), phpBB (another major brand used by many websites), and also some less common ones. This allowed me to include many important sources to the news feed that were not available in RSS format until now.

That includes the forum of AIDA International, the World Freediving Medical Association, major national forums like the French Esprit Apnée, Apnée Sportive, Le Plongeur, German Apnoe Tauchen, and many other national freediving forums. I am still waiting to get approved my access to the forums of Freediving.at and Freediving.ru and will add them as soon as I can log into them.

The complete list of almost 90 freediving sites and forums available through the RSS feeds is available here.

I also swapped from the RSS feed DeeperBlue offers to one generated by my parser. The original RSS channel offered by DB included only newly created threads, so you did not get any information about new posts in old threads, which often bring quite interesting information. The new RSS feed now includes new posts too.

You can either add the entire feed(s) to your RSS reader, or if you want to get informed only about some websites, you can add filtered feeds instead: simply go to the home page, enter a keyword, domain name of the source, category, or select a language, click OK, and then add the resulting RSS feed by clicking the RSS icon in the news box header. So you can selectively add RSS feeds for example for only AIDA websites (national and international - http://rss.apnea.cz/?search=site:aida), only the forum of AIDA International (http://rss.apnea.cz/?cat=forum&search=site:aida-fm), DB forum (http://rss.apnea.cz/?cat=forum&search=site:db), for the World Freediving Medical Association (http://rss.apnea.cz/?cat=forum&search=site:wfma), or only forums in English language (http://rss.apnea.cz/?cat=forum&lng=EN), etc, etc.

If you know about any other forum or source of information that you would like to add to the RSS feed, post it here, or send me a PM.

[dorowa]

Ok, my question to TRUX, well I have fresh news on my web-site, I mean freediving.org.ua, but they are not listed at apnea.cz, but you can see rather old news from yoga-free... why is that? is there an algorithm which determines that? Anyway, I really think that you doing great job with your site! Thanx!

[trux]

Originally Posted by dorowa

Ok, my question to TRUX, well I have fresh news on my web-site, I mean freediving.org.ua, but they are not listed at apnea.cz, but you can see rather old news from yoga-free... why is that? is there an algorithm which determines that? Anyway, I really think that you doing great job with your site! Thanx!

Hi Dorowa,

You have apparently some problem on your server. The URL of your RSS feed shows this error:

Warning: fopen(/home/pub/site/www1/cache/rss20.xml) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/pub/site/www1/includes/feedcreator.class.php on line 600

Ошибка создания файла ленты, проверьте доступ на запись на папку кэша!

It must be a relatively recent problem, because the RSS worked fine at the time I added it to the global news feed.

BTW, people who are not familiar with RSS, but wish to be informed about new posts on diverse freediving forums, and about freediving news, or about new freediving medical and physiological documents, can now also very simply add the news to their Google home page, by clicking the +Google button on my home page. Of course, you can modify the filtering as needed before doing so - for example if you wish receiving news from only certain sources, in a specific language, or filtered by a keyword or a category. There are many pre-configured feeds listed, together with their RSS and Google equivalents on this page: APNEA.cz - Common RSS News Feeds, but you can create your custom filter as well. You can also combine multiple feeds (for example adding two or more specific languages, or sources).

[hteas]

Trux,
many thanks for all the work. I haven't ahd time to much more than check out the layout, but will as I ahve free time (and I get over my cold).

I passed the test (I think), but it still won't let me into the inner sanctum. otherwise I'm still missing something, but really can't imagine what. Are you sure there really is a correct answer???

Howard

[francois]

Trux,

I've been trying to enter apnea.cz but couldn't so far...
Get the message :

Access Denied

Automated system detected illegal or suspicious activity and blocked this access channel.

A=0#1 I=1#1049


Am I that suspicious ?

[trux]

The system may automatically block some IP addresses, spam agents, hacker bots, or bots disobeying RFC specifications. If you send me by a PM the IP address and browser type you used, I can look up what the problem in your case is.

[francois]

I am using Safari and Firefox.
For the IP adress...where will I ind it ?

[trux]

Originally Posted by francois

I am using Safari and Firefox.
For the IP adress...where will I ind it ?

Either in your network properties, or even simpler for example here: WhatIsMyIP.com