Yay! I finally upgraded the feed features of this blog. I’m not sure why I put it off for so long but I’ve now made it easier for everyone to subscribe to this blog in your favorite feed reader or aggregator. (If you don’t know what an aggregator is, it’s a software or web service that let’s you subscribe to blogs and news sites and be informed of new or updated entries without having to visit the actual website.) Some popular online aggregators are Google Reader and Bloglines, and for desktop applications, nothing supposedly beats NetNewsWire for the Macintosh. Mozilla Firefox’s own Live Bookmarks feature is a rudimentary aggregator.

“What? You have a feed here?” some of you might say. Yes, I’ve offered a feed for this blog since from the very beginning, but I understand if you don’t know of it because the only way you can get at it before was to follow a small link at the bottom part of the sidebar.

Despite the near-invisibility of my feed, I’m really glad to know that there are around 20 people who are interested enough to read my blog to bother looking for my feed and subscribe to it. Thank you very much! I’d really appreciate much a shout-out from my readers by commenting on this entry so I’d know who you guys are.

So what has changed? Here’s a rundown:

• Atom 1.0. There are two widely popular formats for feeds. These are RSS and Atom. Before, I’ve been using version 0.3 of the Atom format and even though version 1.0 was standardized in December 2005, I’ve only now upgraded the format.

• Full-content feeds. There’s a raging debate whether to offer the full content or just a summary or snippet of the content in feeds. Previously I only offered a snippet and now I’m offering full-content feeds (there’s still a summary if you want that). I’m convinced by the arguments put forth by the people in favor of full-content feeds (e.g., Abe) and so I’ve decided to switch sides. However, I’m stripping out all images in the feed because I have a problem with people leeching off of my images. No need to make their jobs easier.

• Feed autodiscovery. As I mentioned above, the only way you could get at my feed before was if you noticed my “subscribe” link at the sidebar. Well, I’ve now implemented feed autodiscovery via the HTML LINK element. If you’re using Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Internet Explorer 7, or other modern browsers, you can see that the browser can now detect that my blog has a feed. Enter my blog’s URL into your aggregator of choice and it should be able to locate my feed as well.

• FeedBurner baby! And I finally jumped on the FeedBurner bandwagon. I’ve been trying FeedBurner for some time now and I found the features compelling enough to use it. So the new URL of my feed is now http://feeds.feedburner.com/vaes9. If you’re subscribed to my old feed, don’t worry, I’ve added an HTTP redirect so that everything is transparent and you don’t have to do anything at all. If you’re seeing this blog entry, then it worked!

If you’re still not subscribed, subscribe now!