I've gotten a few comments and emails in regards to yesterday's post about the Corante blogs lack of RSS feeds. First up was Kevin Marks, who I must have been channeling because he posted very similar thoughts on Sunday.

"However, Corante hasn't yet managed to generate RSS feeds for them all, so I have to remember to check them manually. This means I read them less often than I otherwise would - that's why they're in the 'weekly' rather than 'daily' section of my blogroll."

Then John Robb suggested I use RssDistiller to scrape the feeds myself. Unfortunately, I tried this last year without success, and I tried to scrape Copyfight using Stapler last month. Both attempts failed, mostly due to the fact that I'm too much of a newbie at this, but also because we need some step-by-step documentation for both of these tools. Consider me the equivalent of a 1998 AOL subscriber on Usenet when it comes to creating RSS feeds and you'll understand the level at which these tools need to be explained for them to be used by an average Jane.

Actually, I had stopped trying to scrape the Corante sites myself after Yale's Revenge of the Blog conference last November, because I thought Hylton might realize they were going to be assimilated anyway, so he might as well control the RSS feeds for the sites himself, rather than ceding them to an unknown third party. But every time they launch a new blog without an accompanying RSS feed, I'm disappointed that I won't be reading it, hence the latest call for help.

Andrew Wooldridge pointed me towards MyRSS.com in case I wanted to scrape it myself using a third party service. If I've seen this site before I don't remember it, but before I could even get home to look at it, he wrote to tell me that he's saved me (and you!) the trouble. And the heavens parted and welcomed Copyfight into the RSS fold and it was good.

There's an RSS version 0.91 feed, a version 1.0 feed, a Javascript include, and even a Microsoft SharePoint Web Part! Thanks, Andrew!

The caveats are that item links go to a page on the myRSS site for 20 seconds, and the channel is updated only once a day. Both of these settings can be changed if someone "sponsors" the channel, so that's how myRSS is staying afloat financially. Sponsoring will run $10, $25, and/or $40 per year, depending on which options are chosen. I suppose if Corante doesn't want to run their own RSS feeds, I could sponsor Copyfight and make y'all worship librarians, but I have a feeling Hylton will have a change of heart.  :-)