| My current employer is an executive search firm | | | | Delimited (.prn) document. |
| recruiting candidates for the real estate development | | | | 3) I reopen the document, choose "Delimited", click |
| and construction industries. I lead their internet | | | | "Next", and then click "Finish". |
| marketing efforts; I also am in charge of market | | | | 4) I then globally replace "space" with nothing, |
| research. If I can deliver competitive industry | | | | generating the list of long RSS URL´s. |
| intelligence to the recruiters in our office, they can | | | | The Solution: Part 2 |
| utilize it to match executive job candidates with | | | | (...catches breath...) |
| employers who need them but can´t find | | | | In each of the feed readers I´ve used, |
| them on their own. | | | | I´ve noticed that one can bulk import feeds |
| The Challenge | | | | into them if they are in OPML, something I admit to |
| There are a very large number of companies worthy | | | | not understanding too well. I realized that if I could |
| of being tracked by my company. ENR (Engineering | | | | convert my URL´s into OPML, I can then get |
| News & Record) creates different authoritative | | | | my entire list of company news RSS feeds into a |
| topic-specific lists containing names of the biggest | | | | feedreader. I found Feedshow Goodies ( through |
| commercial construction firms. Builder Online lists the | | | | Google, dropped my URL´s into the form |
| largest residential homebuilding firms. Between these | | | | located on this page, and clicked "Create OPML" |
| two sources, I´ve identified about 1,700 | | | | (note that it will process up to about 200 |
| companies where it would be valuable to track each | | | | URL´s at once). I then saved each OPML file |
| & every news story about them. Fortunately, | | | | to my hard drive. |
| on any given day, only a small percentage of these | | | | I then made the mistake of thinking that my trusty |
| companies will make noteworthy news...however, in | | | | Feedreader 3.07 would cleanly accept 1,700 new |
| order to make sure I catch all the valuable | | | | feeds. The first OPML import of 200 feeds ate up all |
| information, I need to monitor all of them. | | | | my internet bandwidth and slowed my computer to a |
| Most logically, I would have to implement some sort | | | | crawl. Google Reader was the only other feedreader |
| of RSS solution in order to track 1,700 companies. | | | | that I´ve used, so I signed into it and |
| Manual entry of 1,700 feeds into a feedreader | | | | uploaded 9 large OPML files. |
| isn´t an option; I don´t have any | | | | It worked. Google Reader allowed me to seamlessly |
| programming skills; and I don´t have a budget | | | | (if somewhat slowly) import 1,700 feeds and read |
| to find someone to program a solution. | | | | them all together, allowing me to get a real time |
| So what did I do? | | | | news update of all the commercial & residential |
| The Solution: Part 1 | | | | construction companies that I desired to track. |
| When I examined a typical Google News RSS URL, I | | | | My Public Feed ( (Note I configured it somewhat |
| can determine that the only variable information | | | | differently than in the sample above). |
| within each lengthy URL is the term being searched: | | | | Suggestions |
| From this information, I can quickly and simply | | | | 1) Even though the Google Reader is doing all the |
| reproduce a Google News RSS URL for each item in | | | | "heavy lifting", having it open tracking 1,700 feeds will |
| my list quickly and easily in Excel. | | | | hog your memory, especially in IE. I found that |
| I then do the following (which is more clearly | | | | opening Google Reader in Firefox or Opera instead |
| illustrated in the attached spreadsheet that I strongly | | | | cut significantly the amount of memory used. |
| encourage you to download by clicking this link): | | | | 2) The one drawback to this process is that the |
| 1) Once I open Excel, I place my entire list of | | | | "title" of each feed is the long ugly Google RSS URL |
| relevant companies into Column B. | | | | instead of something more descriptive. |
| 2) In Column A, I place the first portion of the | | | | 3) If you have a lot of stories in your Google |
| Google RSS URL (from http:// up to the variable | | | | Reader, go to Preferences and check "In Expanded |
| portion). | | | | View, Mark Items as Read as You Scroll Past Them". |
| 3) In Column C, I place the final portion of the URL | | | | This feature is a tremendous help in wading through |
| (&output=rss). | | | | voluminous amounts of data. |
| 4) I also know from experience that in order to | | | | 4) I found that creating Google News feeds for all |
| make my feed as relevant as possible, I want to use | | | | news created "in the past week" gave me the best |
| exact match wherever I can. "%22" is the symbol | | | | results. A Google News feed for all company news |
| used for "quote". I append "%22" as the last | | | | for each company led to too much information and |
| characters in Column A and the first characters in | | | | news feed covering just the past day´s news |
| Column C. | | | | seemed to miss stories. In this example, I used News |
| 5) I make sure that the code in Columns A & C | | | | RSS URL´s for all company news because |
| is copied onto every row containing a relevant | | | | they are the most user-friendly. To use this mashup |
| company in Column B. | | | | with "time-restricted" Google News, you will need to |
| I also need to perform the following global steps in | | | | click on "Advanced News Search", do a sample |
| Column B: | | | | search with a defined time period, generate the |
| 1) Replace "space" and "&" with "+" | | | | News RSS URL and copy the first portion of it into |
| 2) Replace "++" with "+" | | | | Column A of your spreadsheet before following the |
| 3) Delete all instances of "apostrophe". | | | | proscribed process. |
| Here comes the fun part: | | | | I now can track news from all 1,700 companies in my |
| 1) I widen the columns so that there is plenty of | | | | Google Reader. Kudos to those good folks at the |
| white space to the right of the text in each column. | | | | ´Plex. |
| 2) I save the document as a Formatted Text Space | | | | |