Sunday, November 2, 2008

Tracking free fiction (part 3 of 3): Link aggregators, commentators, & miscellaneous sources

Series: Part 1 - original fiction; part 2 - reprints; part 3 - link aggregators, commentators, & miscellaneous sources (this document).

This bot is intended to automatically & continuously track a lot of miscellaneous online sources that discuss free fiction with fiction URLs: link aggregators, commentators, search engine top 10 entries in response to certain queries, social networks, & more. Output of the bot is available via this feed (this feed is automatically included in Bot SF master feed).

This is still a very early version. A lot more sources will get added.

Also see opening remarks of part 1 - original free fiction bot.

Alphabetical list of sources tracked.

  1. Bookspotcentral. Occasional links to online free fiction. I gather them under "[links roundup]".

    Note they're not very consistent in setting Topic to "Free Books", the only attribute I apparently can reliably depend on. So, in addition to this attribute, I also watch for either of following in title from main feed: "FREE", "free", & "Free". I mark later cases as "[often free]".
  2. Free Speculative Fiction Online: Links (without commentary) to online fiction, usually delivered in spurts at unpredictable times.
  3. My free fiction posts at Variety SF. They are marked "[Variety SF]".
  4. QuasarDragon: Goes under "[links roundup]". I'm picking up posts that have any of these labels: "sci-fi", "fantasy", "science fiction", "horror".

    Dave: Is there a better way of identifying all links roundup posts (but not vacation notices)?
  5. Suvudu: While their free fiction feed is buggy, I can somewhat unreliably extract free fiction posts from title. I mark these "[often free]" (because I may occasionally pick up some non-free-fiction posts). These are marked "[review & link]".

Related.

Bot SF magazine feed that combines this misc feed with original free fiction feed, reprints free fiction feed, & featured posts feed - so picks up much more fiction.

0 comments: