It took me hours to find, but the easiest way I found to build a slideshow from a MediaRSS feed and add it to a WordPress blog was using the Google Ajax Feed API.

There are a few plug-ins that are supposed to work with WordPress, but I didn’t like them because they were really limited, or didn’t work on an IIS hosted blog. Good old Javascript, although it’s verbose, works fine.

That’s what I’ve used on this blog. Have a look at the slideshow on the lower right. It’s generated by the Google Ajax Feeds API.

If you don’t like getting your hands dirty with JavaScript, the best Flash based slideshow generator I know of is at VuVox.com. That’s what I use for some of the ObSrv examples of slideshows here.

The beauty of building a slideshow from an RSS Feed is that you don’t need to have the images on your own site, and the content updates continually as more items are added to the feed.

Of course, sometimes it’s hard to find a good feed. That’s where ObSrv.com comes in, because it can generate a feed from a google images search.

So when you use the Google Ajax Feed API and ObSrv.com you can make a slideshow of any topic you’d like. The one on this site is for “Information Technology”.

And just to make this post pretty, I thought I’d include a slideshow of the most recent ten pictures from the Creative Commons group on Flickr

The old blog was at http://techmusings.blogspot.com

I’m still trying to come to grips with WordPress.  Somethings in Blogger were much easier (such as slideshows), but I think WordPress looks much nicer.

Please let me know what you think, and if you’ve got some suggestions, I’d really like to hear them.

So it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Which is fine by me. My attention gets pulled all over the place, and I get interested in lots of different things. A bit like Homer Simpson walking through a shopping mall

But it could make life hard for my readers, so I recently added a little Javascript widget that makes the blog change its appearance depending on what interests you. Coupled with judicious use of blogger labels, it works wonders.

It’s the same blog, but it changes shape depending on how you get to it.

Have a look at these two different links to see what I mean.

First if you’re interested in Postcards go to the blog via the URL: http://neilius.blogspot.com/search/label/Postcards?pcd=1.

Second if you’re interested in Ten Pound Poms go to the blog via the URL: http://neilius.blogspot.com/search/label/Ten%20Pound%20Poms?tpp=1.

(Hint for the uninitiated “Ten Pound Poms” were migrants who came to Australia from Britain between 1950 and 1971).

There are two cool bits to this.

The first is that you get a totally different set of links at the top of the blog depending on how you view it. I do this by adding some query string parameters to the URL. (The “?pcd=1″ or “?tpp=1″ parts of the URL).

Secondly, using labels in the URL lets me control what articles appear when you visit. (That’s what the “/search/label/…” bit of the URL is all about).

You might think using query strings on your URL is a messy way to get to your blog. But it’s really easy to set up a domain and (using something like ZoneEdit’s “webforward”) point that domain to a more complex URL.

For example, http://TenPoundPoms.com and http://Postcards.NeilEnnis.com both point to the same blog, but I’ve used ZoneEdit to add different parameters to the URL query string.

A small Javascript widget at the top of the blog looks at the query string, and decides what sort of links to display. Basically it’s saying “If you’ve come here to look at postcards, I’ll show you some postcard links. But if you’re interested in Ten Pound Poms, then I’ll show you some different links instead.

Here’s the code. The Orange section is a javascript function to pull the query parameter out of a url. The Green section controls what gets displayed when people are interested in “Ten Pound Poms”. The Blue section is what gets displayed when people are interested in “Postcards”.

<script>
function gup( name ){ name = name.replace(/[\[]/,”\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,”\\\]”); var regexS = “[\\?&]“+name+”=([^&#]*)”; var regex = new RegExp( regexS ); var results = regex.exec( window.location.href ); if( results == null ) return “”; else return results[1];}
</script>
<script>
var tpp_param = gup( ‘tpp’ );
var pcd_param = gup( ‘pcd’ );
if(window.location.href == ‘http://neilius.blogspot.com/search/label/Ten%20Pound%20Poms’)
      tpp_param = ’1′;
if(window.location.href == ‘http://neilius.blogspot.com/search/label/Postcards’)
      pcd_param = ’1′;
if(tpp_param == ’1′)
{
      document.write(‘<div id=”tpp-info” class=”sidebar section”>’);
      document.write(‘<h2 class=”title”>Ten Pound Poms</h2>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com/search/label/Ten%20Pound%20Poms?tpp=1″>Home</a> Ten Pound Poms | ‘);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com/2008/07/about-tenpoundpomscom.html?tpp=1″>About</a> Ten Pound Poms | ‘);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com/2008/08/links-for-ten-pound-poms.html?tpp=1″>Links</a> for Ten Pound Poms<br/>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com/2008/08/migrant-ships.html?tpp=1″>Migrant Ships</a> – How we got here<br/>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com”>Musings</a> – Back to the main blog’);
      document.write(‘</div>’);
}
else if(pcd_param == ’1′)
{
      document.write(‘<div id=”pcd-info” class=”sidebar section”>’);
      document.write(‘<h2 class=”title”>My Postcards</h2>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com/search/label/Postcards?pcd=1″>Home</a> – My Postcard Blog | ‘);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com/2008/05/about-my-postcards.html?pcd=1″>About</a> My Postcards | ‘);
      document.write(‘My Postcrossing <a href=”http://www.postcrossing.com/user/Neilius” target=”_blank”>Profile</a><br/>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://postcrossing.com” target=”_blank”>Postcrossing</a> – A great way to send and receive postcards<br/>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://flickr.com/photos/magictyger/sets/72157604961465429/” target=”_blank”>Postcard Collection</a> at Flickr<br/>’);
      document.write(‘<a href=”http://neilius.blogspot.com”>Musings</a> – Back to the main blog’);
      document.write(‘</div>’);
}
</script>

What was also nice was the BlogThis! facility that let you convert the new BuzzNet entry into a Blog Entry here at Blogger.

After I upgraded to Blogger’s new gmail accounts, I was unable to use the BlogThis! facility at BuzzNet.

I’ve been stuffing around with this for ages, and every time I tried to get BuzzNet to talk to Blogger I got errors, and it wouldn’t retrieve a list of Blogs.

Eventually I gave up in disgust and tried Flickr.Com.

It works! Perfectly! Easily!

I created a new Flickr account, told it that I had a Blogger account, and it directed me to a page at Google which let me authorize Flickr to update my blog.

Now I can email a photo to a Flickr address, and it automatically creates a new Blog entry for me.

Next time I go on a cruise, I’m all set to upload my new photos every day without spending hours trying to figure out all the HTML references.

I am a very happy camper. If anyone else has this problem with Buzznet – forget them – just upgrade to Flickr and make your life easier.