I'm excited to announce the launch of my new project, Topicala! It's a topical search aggregator where you enter a topic and discover all the related information. It's almost complete, just needs a few bug fixes and OPML output. Try it out with some example searches and give me your feedback!
Google's new data protocol, GData, has me wondering about the future of Blogger. Will Blogger integrate with GData? Blogger already uses Atom, so will that make integration easier? Or will Blogger's slow pace of development prevent them from adopting GData anytime soon? I'm skeptical.
I'm considering adding an email subscription option for blog updates, as an alternative to RSS/ATOM feeds. Would you subscribe to email updates if offered?
I just discovered that Latricia updated the XML::Feed CPAN module to merge RSS/ATOM feeds into one ATOM feed. This is awesome! I had a similar idea for AJAX Tagger 2.0, where I wanted to offer a combined feed of all tagged results. If this module works as advertised, I can use it directly instead of building my own tool. This might be a better solution than my initial plan of using OPML.
I encountered an issue where my FeedBurner RSS feed wasn't displaying any article content. I've implemented a fix, and you should now be able to access the feed through the FeedBurner icon at the top left of the title. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the ATOM feed at http://www.kinlan.co.uk/atom.xml.
My site's bandwidth usage spiked mid-month, and I discovered the culprit was MSN Bot repeatedly accessing my Atom.xml feed. It was hitting my feed every minute, consuming a significant portion of my bandwidth. The bot is apparently part of a syndication search engine, constantly checking for new content. I added a robots.txt file to throttle the bot's access frequency, which solved the issue.
IE7 Beta 1 now has a feed auto-discovery feature, but it's a bit picky. It only recognizes RSS feeds (no Atom yet) and requires a specific HTML snippet with the correct rel, type, and title attributes. Direct feed links won't trigger the notification, and using text/xml instead of application/rss+xml won't work either. I've updated my blog to comply, but the feed, converted by 2RSS.com and containing ads, still isn't displaying correctly in IE7.
I've been trying out IE7 Beta 1 and have some mixed feelings. While I like the tabbed browsing and the new tab placement, I'm not sure it's the ideal UI. It makes it difficult to compare sites side-by-side and to see open pages in the taskbar like I could with separate windows. A hybrid approach, like Office's per-document window or better taskbar tooltips, might be a good compromise. Also, my ATOM feed isn't being auto-discovered, and I'd like to know how IE7 handles feed discovery in general. I'm looking forward to the improved CSS support in Beta 2, although some rendering bugs are already fixed in this build.