Archive for the 'RSS' Category

Site owner blocks Firefox users!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/8/2007
in Blogging, RSS and blogs
. 12 Comments

I saw this story on Techmeme this morning and I simply couldn’t believe it - but it is true!

A guy called Danny Carlton has decided to block ALL Firefox users from his site because:

The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing. Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software

Now, you will be aware that not all Firefox owners have installed Adblock but no matter, Danny is blocking them too. As he says himself:

If you are offended by the Mozilla Corporation’s endorsement of dishonesty please contact the Mozilla Foundation and ask them to stop empowering internet theft.

This is so silly as to be laughable. Either the guy is trolling looking for links (you won’t find any here Danny) or he really is a tad challenged!

In the first place, as Mike Arrington notes

I wonder why he continues to provide a full content feed, sans ads, at jacklewis.net/weblog/atom.xml (and it has been reposted here). Those users are “stealing” his content, too. What about them? Perhaps he’ll now turn his attention to the evils of RSS.

and in the second place, there are adblocking plugins available for Internet Explorer, as well as Firefox.

Will Danny now block Internet Explorer users from accessing his site too?

Problems with Google Reader

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/8/2007
in RSS
. 2 Comments

One of the advantages of Google Reader is that you can view it on multiple devices and it is always in sync. At least that’s the theory anyway!

However, it has been annoying me that whenever I view my feeds on my phone (Nokia E65) the list of unread posts looks very different.

I took a screenshot of Google Reader this morning on my Mac and on my phone so you can see what I am talking about. Both devices had their cache cleared before I loaded Google Reader and took the screenshots.

First off, the phone
Google Reader on Nokia E65

Now the Mac
Google Reader on Mac

As you can see, there are lots of feeds missing from the version on the phone.

I deleted all the folders on Google Reader so that all my feeds are at the top level (in case the phone was only seeing one particular folder) but this didn’t help.

Is anyone else having this issue and is their a way to get around it?

Google Reader quick comments

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/8/2007
in Blogging, RSS, Web 2.0 and blogs
. 4 Comments

I have now completely moved over to using Google Reader as my primary RSS reader. And it appears I am in good company!

I started using it regularly while on holidays on my phone and I grew to like it - particularly the ability to Star and Share posts.

Now I’m using it full-time, not only for these features, but also because I can use it on my Vaio, my MacBook Pro and my mobile phone (I still read and Share many items on the phone at home).

There is really cool trending software in Google Reader as well to help you figure out which blogs update regularly (with a one-click option to unsubscribe from ones which don’t), which blogs you Star and/or Share and it charts your reading activity by day (and by time of day).

The only thing which annoys me about it is that the list of unread items my phone displays differs from the list my computers display. I don’t know why this is, they are running from the same account, reading the same subscription list. Has anyone else noticed this?

If you’d like to follow the items I’m Sharing from my subscription list (i.e. follow what I am recommending) you can:

Full feeds lead to more page views

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 14/8/2007
in Blogging, RSS and blogs
. 6 Comments

TechDirt has an article explaining why full feeds lead to more page views on your site than partial feeds.

From the article:

Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it’s that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what’s being said — which makes it much, much, much more likely that they’ll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing — and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers, who we hope subscribe to the RSS feed and become regular readers as well. The whole idea is that by making it easier and easier for anyone to read and fully grasp our content, the more likely they are to spread it via word of mouth, and that tends to lead to much greater adoption than by limiting what we give to our readers and begging them to come to our site if they want to read more than a sentence or two.

I have long had full feeds on this site and have written numerous times about the merit of full feeds.

Further, I don’t subscribe to any sites which only publish partial feeds - it is a waste of my time having to click through to read the full article on the original site.

You can be sure I am not the only one who thinks this way!

Google Reader becoming my primary RSS reader

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 13/8/2007
in RSS
. 11 Comments

I’m really growing to love Google Reader!

The interface is fantastic. The keyboard shortcuts make using it a joy (not to mention, really fast).

Normally one of the main drawbacks of an online RSS Reader is that you can’t use it when you are offline (on a train, plane, whatever), however Google Reader overcame this shortcoming by launching Offline functionality in Google Reader. You can now read the last 2,000 posts while not connected, if you need to!

The ability to Star and more importantly Share your posts is an incredible boon. I then use Mario Romero’s Reader application to embed my shared items into my Facebook profile.

As I mentioned previously, the mobile version works really well (except on my Nokia E65 the numeric shortcuts don’t work) and as it is online, it is always in synch with the desktop version.

What other features of Google Reader are there which I neglected to mention?

My first video podcast

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 21/5/2007
in Microformats, PodLeaders, Podcast, Podcasting, RSS and video
. 14 Comments

I published my first video podcast this evening over on PodLeaders.com. As it is the first one, I am re-publishing it here too.

The podcast is an interview with LouderVoice’s Conor O’Neill. Conor discusses how the site is based on Microformats (making the data fully portable), how the sites makes extensive use of tagging and how you can subscribe to RSS feeds for almost every aspect of the site.



Click To Play

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!