OPML Rumblings
Dave Winer says UserLand solved the secure feeds problem in Radio by simply not exporting them. Which makes sense as far as public subscriptions but is really no solution at all when you have to expose the OPML, as every aggregator should. The NewsGator API does this so other aggregators can synchronize against your subscription list. The reason I did this was Aggie, the 2nd aggregator I ever used. I used Radio at home to read news, and Aggie at work. Aggie had an option to give a URL for your subscription list - viola, instant, albeit primitive, synchronization. I've always been impressed by that feature, years after I stopped using Aggie, that's the one thing that stuck with me. Now the problem with the NG API is that it isn't that simple, being that you have to make a SOAP request to get the subscription list, but I do plan on correcting that. Your subscription list should be as simple as a GET.
I've been somewhat interested in all the work going on with OPML. The 2 salient examples of converting blog text to OPML,
Steve Lacey and the DaveNet essays, are using slightly different formats, Steve is using a created attribute while Dave is using a postTime attribute. Maybe that's the difference between version 1.0 and 1.1 - though the way I read this note, there is no effective difference. It's too bad, because I've reached the conclusion that I would like to expose a hierarchical syndication format, and the consensus from the aggregator developers I've polled is that XOXO isn't a format they can use, and RSS isn't hierarchical. I don't know if OPML is the right format for this application.