j's scratchpad

The Winter 2004 issue of News Library News (pdf) with the feature article I wrote about RSS is now online. Not only does it include comments from two well-known bloggers, but it also has sidebars about aggregators (including what to consider when choosing an aggregator), how to find RSS feeds, third-party services that make feeds for sites lacking them, and selected resources for more information.

Thanks again to those of you who helped me with the article by suggesting aggregators or letting me pick your brain.

Don’t stop with the RSS article, though. Page 10 has an article about the blog used in the newsroom at The Oregonian and how it got started.

Addendum: I actually got to talk about the article at Thursday’s blog group. Dave even pulled the file up on the screen and joked about how the first paragraphs of RSS articles always begin the same. I didn’t expect to be able to talk about it, let alone have it up on the screen.

Addenda 2/14: I figured Michael would appreciate the list of aggregators. Had I more space, I would have elaborated on each of them. I agree with him that his dream list of aggregators with information about their special features and what makes them good or bad would be very useful. (Why do I get the feeling that I’m going to an e-mail from someone about doing this list …)

Jay’s comments:

Jessica Baumgart links to her RSS article. (PDF.) (I am mentioned… weeee.)

This article will be the article for introductions to RSS in the future.

I wonder if he’s read the article yet … (ha ha ha)

Dave Winer also pointed to the article. (Today is the first time I’ve gotten over 100 hits from Scripting News (132 as of 11:44 pm). Some people get flooded when Dave points to them. I thought it was for this article, but it must be the post about encyclopedias on CD-ROM versus the Internet instead.)

I noticed a few days ago that the ResourceShelf feed has changed and now looks very different in my aggregator. It’s just the headlines of the posts now with no additional text. The screenshots in the article show how the feed appeared before this change.

Addendum 2/19: The first negative comment about my article drifted back to me today. One of my colleagues wanted a more explicit explanation of how to get an aggregator and subscribe to feeds. Well, it’s different for each aggregator and I was already way over my word limit, so I didn’t go into that very well at all.

Addendum 2/21: Critt pointed to the article on Friday. (I hope people I know point to it because they think it’s worth pointing to and are not just pointing to it as a gesture of courtesy to me, though I do appreciate the publicity.)

Also, Gary’s been experimenting with the ResourceShelf feed during the past few days. It keeps changing. The screenshots in the article represent how it looked, which was pretty constant, for a while. Gary confirmed via e-mail over the weekend that he is experimenting with the feed and is currently sending the full-text as each entry is published.

Addendum 2/23: Garrett, who just pointed to the article, let me know that Be Spacific posted about it earlier this month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2004 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Feeds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.