RSS Feeds, like favicon’s, are one of those nifty little features that have grown to become a very useful tool for people. It most common usage in my world is for “live bookmarks”, a feature in Firefox and IE7 that allow you to see the latest headlines from your favorite websites. These live bookmarks keep me going back to sites time and time again.
So it really irks me, when a blog doesn’t have one. Or more so, it irks me when they don’t have it referenced in their XHTML such that you don’t have to go hunting for the RSS feed itself. There’s no reason not to have an RSS feed, except that it can use a slightly more bandwidth on your server.
It would seem I’m not the only one out there that gets upset at this particular issue. In fact, quite a few other site have sprung up because of it:
These tools are just great for getting RSS to where it isn’t… but heck, take it a step further… I read 4 or 5 personal blogs, 4 or 5 designer blogs, and 4 or 5 technology news blogs. For quite awhile, I would check all 15 live bookmarks… Well, I figured out a way to make it simpler using yet another online tool: LinkRSS. This nifty little tool combines RSS feeds so you only need 1 (or in my case 3).
With all these tools for RSS already out there, it’s hard to imagine anything that could improve the feeds themselves anymore. I mean, I’ve seen awesome readers that are screensavers or scrollers for your start bar… But I mean seriously, how many other tools can you make for for RSS feeds? Are there really any other ways to Create, Edit, and Delete feeds? Just something to think about.
Stay tuned for my next post… I’m hoping to put together a fun little list of things that every site should have.
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There's another idea for when I get the site up and running again.