As with all of my software projects, I did this because I wanted something that didn't exist. Someone else has a dKos diary feed, but it wasn't what I was looking for.
Basically, this page pulls down a copy of the Daily Kos front page and collects a list of diaries from it. It then goes to each diary and gets the “above the fold” information so you can see what the diary is about, the better to make up your mind whether you are going to read it.
Kudos to JFisher for letting me know that Yahoo! will allow you to add RSS feeds to your “My Yahoo!” page.
To use the feed, enter this URL into your aggregator:
http://www.moosegrins.com/dailykos/diaries.rss
Clicking the link might work too; or it might just try to open the feed in your browser.
Technical notes: The feed software was written in Python. I'm not a Python guru – basically, I wrote this to get re-acquainted with Python after being away from it for a few years -- so there may be some glitches. I have not yet released the source code, but probably will when it's something more than a complete hack job. (It's as spaghetti code-ish right now as Python projects ever get, and I need to find a way to pull diary summaries that doesn't stress the server quite so much.) The feed updates every ten minutes so as to not put a strain on the dKos servers. If the entire list of front-page diaries turns over in ten minutes, I'm probably not going to be able to access the site to keep up anyway.
Suggestions for additions and corrections to this page gratefully encouraged. Please send them to me at gmail.com, where my user name is ourmaninredmond
Enjoy.
Bugs are as seen from the RSS aggregator I use (liferea), but I suspect they will be apparent in any aggregator with similar features.
Formatting is not completely preserved in diary entries because the aggregator doesn't know about dKos's style sheets. In particular the quote boxes will be missing.
If a diary is updated such that the title or the description above the fold changes, it will be seen as a new diary. This impacts diaries that make the recommended list and diaries such as social democrat's “17 Highest Rated Diaries” that change on a regular basis.
I am not in any way affiliated with Daily Kos or Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, except as a happy reader of dailykos.com. I am doing this as a public service to the dKos community, and for the challenge of creating the feed, entirely in the spirit of Kos' “Steal what you like” philosophy stated at the bottom of every page of dailykos. Nothing I do here should be interpreted as an attack on anyone's copyrights or trademarks. Close cover before striking. The management is not responsible.