RSS Feed

I can’t say that I understand just what they do, but this little web site now has an “RSS Feed,” with a button located conveniently the left column of the site next to “Blog Archives.” I’ll try to educate myself about what it all means, by visiting these web sites: A, B, C, D. (I’ve skimmed them all and I still don’t understand what it is, but I’ll just have to try again.)



7 Responses to “RSS Feed”

  1. Think of it this way Tom – an RSS feed makes the blog entries come to you rather than you going to them. It essentially “broadcasts” your blog to anyone wishing to tune in the channel. It enables you, using an RSS Reader, to aggregate all your blogs in one place and each time a new entry is posted, it shows up on your desktop. It’s blogs meet email, and if you read lots of blogs regularly, it’s the most efficient way to do it. Users of the Firefox browser have it built into the browser, but there is other good software out there to do the trick.

  2. Actually your site has had an RSS feed for a while now, though it might not have had a convenient button for it. I’ve subscribed to your feed for months with an RSS reading service called Bloglines (www.bloglines.com — it’s free and I highly recommend it if you read many blogs).

    There’s a lot you can do with RSS. Here’s a list of 15 things you might want to try out:
    http://timyang.com/comments.php?id=630_0_1_0_C

  3. I, too, have been subscribed to this blog’s RSS feed for several months now. I use the Firefox web browser. With the Sage plugin (Sage is an RSS reader for Firefox) installed, pages with an RSS feed cause an icon to appear in the lower right hand corner. By clicking on the icon, one can subscribe to the feed.

  4. Like one commenter said, it’s like getting updates on the TomGPalmer.com-ness without opening the site. I personally don’t bother with RSS for blogs because it makes more sense to open them. But for things like news updates it works wonders. (The Christian Science Monitor and the London Financial Times I know for sure have it.) Firefox has it built in to its browser and you’ve had it for some time now.

    However, unless you want to sound incredibly tech smart over otherwise trivial knowledge (whether this is a good worth preserving is up to debate I’m sure) just consider it another perk for your readers.

  5. Yes, you’ve had one for some time – if you hadn’t I wouldn’t be reading you.

    However… one request. Could you make it so that your RSS feed includes the full text of your posts rather than just an extract. It’s very frustrating.

  6. ditto on the above comment. Particularly the request for full text feeds. They quickly make apparent the many transaction costs that can be avoided while waiting for pages to load. Especially in foreign countries with slow internet connections.