So in an effort to make it easier for me to blog, I have been thinking about scripting some automation. Facebook allows you to easily 'share links'. FB's method of link sharing actually takes the content of the URL you are sharing and creates a preview or thumbnails of that content. This allows your friends to easily get an idea what the link is about without clicking on it and also allows you to quickly share things without too much work. Also the quick ability to add your comment on the link is great too. So after some researching, I found out that this method of gathering previews of the content is known as 'Scraping'.

I have been thinking about creating some sort of script to help me blog interesting Internet finds, by link scraping and saving myself some time and effort. While I know there are some other services out there that do this, I dont feel like migrating my blog. So I think some sort of Javascript scriptlet or bookmarklet might be able to do some generic job and integrate it into my blogging.

Now I havent found anything like that out there, so if someone knows of one, PLEASE do let me know. It can save me some effort.

As for creating my own, I've only gotten as far as pseudocode. Haven't had the chance to go any further.

Sort-of-Pseudocode:

link blogging with scrape:

get domain/type of link:
-input link

youtube/vimeo:
-take input link
-get view code
-take predetermined embed code, and insert view code
-paste into new blog entry inputbox

general link:
-extract excerpt of text from html
--only excerpt from body tag
--skip past menus etc, get to meaningful content (tricky)
--remove all other html tags
--concatenate remaining text up to specified character number
-scan thru html for img tags
-extract image urls for img tags
-display images for thumbnail selection, in small size
-take selected image and excerpt text
--insert into preformatted code for displaying a link

If someone else wants to have a go making one, be my guest!

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