The B-Log Has Gone Into Syndication
For the two weeks prior to my most recent posting, the B-Log went underground. This isn’t unusual, among the blogs in my tribe, and it concerns me that our silences perhaps have a negative impact on our readership — who’s going to keep checking a blog every day for a month just to see it get updated four times?
Ladies, gentlemen, ruffians, and others: If you’re not already aware, I’d like to introduce you to a little technology called syndication. A syndicated Website produces an always-up-to-date feed (either in RSS, Atom, or some other less-widely-spread format) which another application (usually called a ‘news aggregator’, but sometimes [often incorrectly] referred to as an ‘RSS reader’) can follow. A growing number of Websites are becoming syndicated, including a great number of news sources (including the New York Times, the BBC, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle), and the vast majority of all blogs (including LiveJournal blogs but, unfortunately, not MySpace blogs).
This is, hands down, the most convenient way to keep up on the blogs you read, and is one of the easiest ways to stay up on current news. If you’re having trouble visualising what a news aggregator would do for you, take a look at my copy of NetNewsWire Lite:
In the column on the left is the list of all blogs and news sources I follow. On the top right is a list of all recent entries from the HijabMan blog. Below that is either the teaser for a blog entry, the beginning of an entry, or a full entry or article. HijabMan, like a lot of bloggers I read, doesn’t update on a daily basis. Before I subscribed to his RSS feed, I only checked his site once every couple of months. Now, I always know what he’s written on the day that he’s written it, and any comments I post won’t be out of date. I also don’t have to keep on checking up on a static site.
I’ve used a few news aggregators on the Mac, now, and, unfortunately, I still haven’t found the perfect application. I mostly use NetNewsWire Lite (the free version of the $24.95 NetNewsWire), but NNWL doesn’t yet support Atom feeds. I also use Feed, which supports both RSS and Atom, but has difficulty with some RSS (it can’t, for example, handle altmuslim.com). However, Feed is still in version 0.6.8, and NetNewsWire promises to support Atom feeds very soon. I expect good things from both apps. In addition, the new Tiger version of Apple’s Safari Web browser has built-in news aggregator support. I’ve not yet had a chance to try this out.
Windows- and other non-Mac-users: Sorry. I don’t have any recommendations. Nevertheless, you have a multitude of options.
If you’re not convinced by now that you need a news aggregator, it’s because you’re wrong-headed. Stop it. Download yourself a free feed-reader, and subscribe to http://www.pathawi.net/b-log/feed/. I promise I won’t regret it.
26 November 2005 at 09:17
subscribe ??
You are shilling for dollars ??
Never
I will defend and frequent only free content on the net.
it is a principle for me
and if I was going spend dollars on the net … there are these russians who have great pix of nekkid chicks … who are all 18 and all
26 November 2005 at 11:07
That’s so bogus.
I have it on good authority that they’re mostly Ukrainians.
Écoute-moi, bro: Subscriptions cost nothing. I’m all about the free information, free communication. It’s just an easy way to get updates as they’re posted, rather than visiting the site every couple of days/weeks/months.
6 December 2005 at 06:54
okie
Cost nothing is something I can easily afford.
As someone asked elsewhere (somewhere here) How does it work? I’d have to know that before I tried it. There are too many internet things that have unforseen implications for me to jump into it before I understood it. Safety, security, damming the flow of future spam from Nigerians insisting on sharing their $50,000,000 inheritance with me … and all that.
If you want people to buy into it (even when the buy-in is $0.00), people have to have a more detailed explanation
… and it has long been the way: for Ukrainians to get ahead in the world, they have to learn to pretent to be Russian.
The new, free, Westernized, capitalist, non-Soviet, non-socialist, economy has brought you: even poorer housing, organized crime, no heat, corruption that is no long limited to government functionaries AND your chance to appear nekkid on the internet performing sex acts