Timezone Support for Digest Output
When you edit digests or create new digests there is now a simple "Timezone" field that lets you enter an hour offset (such as -5 for EST, 1 for CET, etc..) so that times output by %HOUR% %TIME24%, etc, and other Feed Digest tags, will show the time adjusted by a certain number of hours.
Feel free to discuss this feature and ask questions here.
Public OPML outlines available for each digest
Several users have recently demanded the availability of publicly accessible OPML outlines of their digests' sources for a while now. While OPML has been available in Feed Digest for months, it’s been accessible to logged in users only. Now it’s available to access from anywhere. The URLs aren't guessable, so as long as you keep your URL for your own use only, you're good to go. To get the URLs, log in to your Feed Digest control panel and there’s an OPML link alongside each digest.
Re-publishing del.icio.us items using Feed Digest
Prisca has written a cool blog post about how to republish your del.icio.us items using Feed Digest. Thanks Prisca!
Warning: Feed Digest moving servers now!
Yes, it’s true. Feed Digest is moving to significantly faster servers, and it’s all starting in the next 30 minutes. The moving plan has been designed so that service is not interrupted at all during the move except for:
1) The Feed Digest control panel will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes.
2) Updates on feeds will probably stop for up to 30 minutes.
Actual serving of digests, etc, should be unaffected as we're keeping both systems running as they switch over. Report any problems here or in the forum ASAP though!
New look for FeedDigest.com
It’s still in the middle of being rolled out, so excuse any minor flaws for the next week or two, but I'm working really hard on the roll out of the all new FeedDigest.com. I hope you like it!
We make the net “super awesome”
According to the guys over at TalkingApe.com, FeedDigest.com is one of six sites making the net "super awesome." Awesome!
(Update - Feb 2007: It’s just a shame that post no longer exists :()
The upcoming new template system!
In my work with Feed Digest, one of the constant limitations is the template system. I want users to have as much control as possible over their digests, and while the existing template system hasn't been bad, it’s far from ideal.
Currently users can give an optional header and footer template and a 'per item' template. So their per-item template might look something like this:
<p><a href="%URL%">%TITLE,40%</a>.. %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%</p>
Quite simple. A paragraph for each item in the digest with a link using a truncated title (to 40 characters) followed by a HTML-stripped description. But.. for anything more complex than this, it begins to suck. So, I've invented a language called MoFo. It stands for "Markup Output Format" but the name is as much humorous as practical. It is markup itself, so doesn't have the best name. It'll do for now though. With MoFo you can do things like this:
<% foreach source in sources %>
<p><b><%= source->title %></b></p>
<ul>
<% foreach entry in source.entries %>
<li><a href="<%= entry->url %>"><%= entry->title %></a></li>
<% end %>
</ul>
<% end %>
It’s basically a more extensive language which will allow me (as well as advanced FeedDigest users) to develop more templates for FeedDigest users in a quicker time. I'll also be able to use it to develop RSS and Atom templates in varying formats, as opposed to the two 'fixed' RSS and Atom templates now. Users will be able to create their own WML/WAP templates, OPML templates, and, well, anything they want on each digest.
MoFo doesn't have much logic in it yet, but this is all being developed right now. Eventually if it has anything to do with feeds and content redistribution in the vaguest, Feed Digest will be the #1 API and developer platform to use. The easy stuff will be even easier, and the complex stuff will now be possible.
More news to come as this stuff begins to roll out..
Several cool new features
New URL friendly name for all digests. All digests must now have a URL friendly name. This is so that we can roll out our next set of services, part of which will involve cute URLs like: http://feeds.feeddigest.com/yourdigest .. Actually, that style of URL already works! Try http://feeds.feeddigest.com/wrestlingnews! If you edit your digest, please note FeedDigest will complain unless you give your digest a unique name for this feature.
Improved search. The search query system has been improved a little. Now you can use phrases in your queries, so a query of "international space station" will match posts that contain that phrase rather than each of the individual words. You can also use a wildcard on the end of individual words (not in phrases), so nano* will match 'nanotechnology', 'nanobots', and so forth.
Cross domain support for Flash developers. All techie stuff, but we now support this with a crossdomain.xml file on app.feeddigest.com.
Meta URLs (in beta). If you want to create some digests in a hurry based on popular feeds, you can now skip the complex URLs and specify things like.. googleblog:whatever , delicioustag:whatever , delicioususer:whoever , blogdigger:whatever , and so forth. We talk more about it here. It’s only in beta though, so any problems.. post them to that forum post 
OPML export. It’s only a minor addition, but you can now get an OPML file of all the feeds in a certain digest from your control panel. Please alert us to any quirks with this.
To come..? A beta of "e-mail to digest" is rolling out to all users in the next few days.
Slow feed updates
After working with several users who were reporting poorly crawled feeds, we've discovered the latest version of MySQL (our database server of choice) has a bug in a certain area of its operation, and this bug tripped in when we did our database upgrade just over a week ago. This caused some feeds not to get updated when they needed to be. We've now 'fixed the glitch', as it were, and lots of feeds are getting added to the crawlers it seems. Things will start returning to normal gradually over the next 24 hours, as that'll probably be the biggest glut of feeds to be processed due to this bug. We apologize for the inconvenience!
