It's barely 8:15 AM and I've cooked up something really cool. It's an OPML interface for Technorati. This is in response to an idea that Hil posted last Thursday. It's not exactly what she wanted, but it's a way of easily exploring the blogosphere. 
What does it do? Well, you feed it a URL. It works best with permalinks, but also works with the URL of your blog. It returns a list of blogs that are linking to that particular item.
You can then click on any of the returned items and the next level contains a "permalink" (the date and time of posting) which you can click on to go to that entry, a link to the blog, links to the RSS and/or Atom feed for that blog, and invitations to "See links to this item" and "See links to this blog". Those are include links for that particular permalink and blog.
I've tested it in Grazr and it works great. I've tested it in Optimal, and it has a small problem with some URL's. I'll try and fix that later. It should be simply mean rewriting a few characters to stop Optimal hiccuping on them.
Also, the API can be a little bit flakey at times, so occasionally you might get no results back. For that, I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do about it.
So, how do you use this? Simple, the OPML file is at:
http://tools.opiumfield.com/technorati/[URL]
Want to see a working example? Have a look at this file (I pulled the example from Technorati's yesterday). And here it is, rendered in Grazr (use the left hand button on the top right to switch between Slider and Outline view).
I'd love to hear your feedback, and any problems you are having with it. I'll fix them as quickly as I can, considering that the cistern of my toilet is leaking and has flooded the kitchen and I've got a dentist's appointment.
If you like this, then be prepared: I've got more of these up my sleeve. Next is YouTube.
