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Micro-banners / promo buttons

Several users have asked if we have any graphics available that they can use to link to us with. We do now!

FeedDigest button FeedDigest button FeedDigest button FeedDigest button
FeedDigest button FeedDigest button

These are also linked from our PromoButtons documentation page and will be kept updated there. We do prefer that you save these and use them by uploading them to your own Web space (or even put them on ImageShack.us!), but if you have no other choice but to directly pull them from this server, then I'm cool with that.

Now 5 digests for free

I've upgraded all free accounts from having a maximum of 3 digests to a maximum of 5 digests. Enjoy! Other upgrades include an increase from 10 max feeds per digest to 12 on the Basic package, and the Pro package moves up to 150 digests and 100 feeds per digest max.

I guess the next step is to move the automated upgrade system into place, and let you guys upgrade! Watch this space..

Autodiscovery; WAP support; Feed suggestions; more upgrades

Some upgrades to FeedDigest today.

Feed autodiscovery. If you put a regular Web page URL into any of the boxes on FeedDigest now, it'll try to work out if that page has an associated RSS or Atom feed with it, and if so, it'll let you know what the URLs for the feeds are. Makes life simpler!

Cellphone / WAP support (beta). On top of HTML, JavaScript, PHP, RSS, and Atom (hybrid 0.3/1.0) output, we now offer WML output. Just change your digest's URL to have .wml on the end, or find the WAP / WML link for your digest in your Control Panel. WML is the Wireless Markup Language and is used by almost all cellphones which can get Internet access. So, if you want to check out your feed or digest while you're on the move, you can now do so! It's in beta, so please, please, please let us know of any issues with it.

Feed suggestions (beta). Perhaps you're not a clued-up technogeek like some of our visitors and you want us to find some cool feeds for you. Our new suggestion feature (also in beta) lets you search for feeds that cover the subjects you're interested in. Give it a spin by looking for blogs related to Google, politics, or Boston. Again, it's in pretty early beta, so expect the unexpected. Work continues.

Expect a lot more upgrades over the next week including statistics and click tracking for your feeds (yes, for free). I also plan on tidying up the two aforementioned features, as well as add a facility for you to mark certain feeds as 'private' (currently there is no assumption of privacy of feeds or feed items - but your personal data are totally safe).

Feed integration goes mainstream

Mena Trott (Six Apart): "We're launching a solution for TypePad next week to inline RSS (i.e., subscrbe to RSS Feeds from your Blog) that won't require playing with script."

from Tony Gentile's buzzHit!

It seems that everyone is following on now. FeedBurner launched its BuzzBoost feature a couple of weeks ago, and now it seems TypePad is going to offer the same thing. WordPress has had similar functionality with a plugin for at least six months now. RSS Digest launched doing the same thing, though in a more advanced way, than any of these offerings, in mid 2004.

Thankfully FeedDigest has kicked everything up another notch, but perhaps we'll see more advanced digest features from everyone else in a year or so. It's going to be fun!

Atom 1.0 support

In all the hard work getting Feed Digest ready for launch, the early rumbles of Atom 1.0 passed me by somewhat. I've now begun work on making Feed Digest output Atom 1.0 feeds (currently 0.3), and particularly on getting Feed Digest to parse Atom 1.0 feeds. I've made a good start and Atom 1.0 feeds "should" work, if not fully. I will be doing some more tests later. I just thought I should let everyone know.. I'm on it :)

First blog mentions

I've deliberately kept Feed Digest on a slow burn in terms of promotion till now. Making sure everyone who signs up ends up with a working digest has been key, along with ironing out any last minute bugs that didn't appear during the beta testing phase. Today I changed the RSS Digest page to point here, have mentioned Feed Digest in a few blog comments, and so I guess the promo stage really starts off here! So far we're up to 43 links on del.icio.us which is a good start, so thanks to all of you.

Here are the first blog mentions I've seen of Feed Digest:

And some more (added July 30):

What I find really cool is that, no, the A-list bloggers are not ahead of the pack and, in fact, almost never are. It's the Long Tail who are the first to notice new things and comment on them. The only reason the A-list has a perception for being quick is because they're the most amplified.

From del.icio.us to your blog in two minutes

I've created a second video (and significantly improved the first). Now you can watch how to get your del.icio.us links onto your blog in 2 minutes. This was the reason I created Feed Digest's predecessor, RSS Digest, in the first place, so it made sense to make a video of how to do it here.

Soft launch

I've worked the last thirteen hours straight and finally, we have a soft launch. Effectively anyone can sign up now, but if you can not spread it around too much for the next few days that'd be good. I have to take today off with the girlfriend :-) Still, you won't believe how satisfied I am now that /something/ is up. About pages are missing, documentation is sparse, there's still so much to do, but.. things are starting to look up!

Live demonstration of a mixed digest

Here's a live demonstration of a feed I just created:

It mixes several del.icio.us RSS feeds into one.. feeds for "funny+movie", "funny+photo", "funny+picture", etc.

Format support

RSS Digest provides digests in HTML and JavaScript format. You can include the HTML format with a PHP include or IFRAME, or simply view it direct in your browser. The JavaScript format allows anyone to include a digest on any page using a <SCRIPT> JavaScript include. Feed Digest, on the other hand, supports HTML and JavaScript, as before, but has a few new output formats:

RSS! Yes, you can fetch a digest in RSS format. Your template won't apply, but each item in your digest will be in an RSS feed. This is particularly useful if your digest mixes multiple feeds together, as you can then subscribe to the new feed in your favorite aggregator. It means you can consolidate your feeds into one single "digest" feed, or use it like a Technorati Watchlist in conjunction with the "global search" feature discussed in the last post. No more need for RSSMix.com!

Atom. You might not be keen on RSS, so you can also fetch a digest in Atom format. This could also come in useful if you want to convert RSS to Atom, as you can supply an RSS feed as your digest's main source, and then pull an Atom feed back out again.. or vice versa!

WAP. Want to be able to read your digest from a mobile phone? You can do just that with Feed Digest's WAP output support. - Actually, this needs to be perfected, so will be available after a few weeks.

So, what other formats would you like?