Notes On Creating A Multi-user Feed Aggregator

Some time ago, I answered another user’s question on Stack Overflow about database design for a multi-user feed aggregator. I also received an email from a developer asking for additional input, which I shared. But I thought I should put my response here, as well, for posterity’s sake if nothing else. Note that my comments… Continue reading Notes On Creating A Multi-user Feed Aggregator

New York Times Home Page RSS Feed Driving Me Nuts

The New York Times is doing a lot of great things with its website and RSS feeds. But somewhere along the way, they’ve introduced a bug in their code that generates the RSS feed for the home page. The bug is that the channel title switches back and forth between “NYT > NYTimes.com” and “NYT… Continue reading New York Times Home Page RSS Feed Driving Me Nuts

What is a podcast?

Mike Arrington recently reignited some discussion about the definition of a blog. I have a related question: What is a podcast? I’m really only concerned with two technical questions: Does each feed item need an enclosure? If not, what ratio of items with enclosures to total items makes a feed a podcast? Does the enclosure… Continue reading What is a podcast?

Microsoft Outlook 2007 Supports OPML

Not that I’ll ever use it, but it looks like Microsoft is supporting the use of OPML subscription lists in Outlook 2007. I tried NewsGator’s Outlook extension, and I think Outlook is the worst conceivable way to consume the large volume of information I have in my modestly sized subscription list. But at least Microsoft… Continue reading Microsoft Outlook 2007 Supports OPML