PiXELWiT » Feeds

RSS Feed Length, Partial or Full?

Pixelwit — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:26:46 +0000

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According to my FeedStats plugin, PixelWit.com’s RSS feeds are accessed an average of 194 times a day. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this translates to approximately 4 human readers and about 190 spambots.

If you happen to be one of my few human RSS subscribers you might have noticed a new change in my RSS feed’s format. This is due to a recent WordPress upgrade which forces RSS feed publishers to choose between either truncating all articles at a set number of words or publishing the entire article’s text. As you may guess, I’m not particularly fond of either option.

Truncating all feeds at a predetermined word count can lead to awkward line breaks which abruptly halt sentences before the reader even has a chance to...

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Feed Reading Options

Pixelwit — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:23:15 +0000

After reading my last article, you might think that I’ve abandoned reading RSS feeds altogether due to my concern with “shadowy librarian spies” but that’s definitely not the case. In fact I have quick, easy and anonymous access to a comprehensive list of Flash feeds ready to read the very moment I feel the urge to monitor the Flash-O-Sphere’s heartbeat. All I have to do is Read Somebody Else’s Feeds. That particular feed list happens to belong to Neil Webb and I have to admit, it covers just about everything I’m interested in and a good deal more.

One of the best aspects of reading other people’s feeds is that you don’t even have to lift a finger to create or maintain the list and the web interface is so simple all you have to do is point and click, no tagging, sorting, or signing-up is required… simple and easy, the way the web was meant to be.

Of course there is a downside...

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Feed Reader Paranoia

Pixelwit — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:22:54 +0000

In a previous article about PixelWit.com’s RSS feed list I mentioned the feed-readers BlogLines and GoogleReader but I failed to mention that I don’t use either of them due to concerns regarding privacy issues. If you’re industrious enough to actually read Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service you’ll notice a few key points.

They have the right to edit content.
They watch what you do.
They record what you do.
They share what you do.

How would you feel if you went to a public library to read about a topic and as soon as you entered the building the librarian started following you around with a pen and paper, constantly looking over your shoulder, crossing out all the naughty bits before you read them...

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RSS Feed List Added

Pixelwit — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:00:36 +0000

For those of you with RSS feed readers like BlogLines and Google Reader, I’ve added a list of all RSS feeds on PixelWit.com. The list will always be available as “RSS Feeds” in the “More Info” section found at the top right corner of this site.

I’m fairly new to the world of RSS, feeds, syndication, readers, and the like so please let me know if there’s anything I can do to improve the list.