Label

This supplements the use of <link rel="alternate"> which is used to associate a feed with a page.

He's put a draft spec on GitHub.

I think this is a great idea and have created mine here. I already use /.well-known/avatar as suggested by Jim Nielsen.

A popular convention is to use /feeds but this is usually to point to a page. The difference with Dan's suggestion is that the feeds can be consumed directly from the opml file. Still, it can't hurt to have both and the more options for feed discovery the better.

I wasn't aware that there were so many .well-known URIs registered.

It makes me wonder what else we could do.

(Via Dave's Linkblog)

I had previously added markup to turn any text into a search link but haven't really used it. I think part of the problem is that the search takes you away from the post you're reading.

Dave Winer mentioned his tagging feature a couple of days ago and this seemed like a perfect fit. So I blatantly copied it. 😆

Now, if I include text within double square brackets it becomes clickable and opens a dialog listing all posts tagged with that text.

I already detect if the call to the content filters is coming from the files that build the RSS feeds so can ignore tags there to avoid any issues.

I'm not sure how this will sit alongside the existing 'post labels' but will see how it develops and how I use it. The advantage is that it's more flexible and I don't need to clog up other areas (like 'Start Here') with lots of labels. Tags aren't stored in the database like labels, they are checked when showing the dialog.

Note I have also removed tags on the homepage.

It's not live just yet as I'm working out any last kinks but I think it works pretty nicely.

Update It's now live, let me know if you spot any issues.

Mine differs in one key way: subscriptions are not removed after 25 hours. Instead you send a cancel request which I have since discovered is how WebSub operates.

I am planning on adding a feature to auto-remove a subscription after X failed notification attempts. I also need to set it up to remove older events from the log but haven't yet decided on a suitable retention period.

I have been testing it with a custom instance of PHP-MST and think I've worked out most of the kinks and catered for most eventualities. I may switch my main instance to use it.

It's been great fun to work on and only taken a few days to put together – it's actually a pretty simple app and could be even simpler if I didn't include forms for manual requests.

The code is available on GitHub. It requires a MySQL database and accounts, I've included the SQL statements to generate the necessary tables.

It's been great! It make a refreshing change to visit each person's site again and read their stuff in its home environment.

I'm still informed when someone has written something new (the automatic refresh is 6 hours) but it's not right there in front of me to scroll through (consumption by default.) Instead, I have to make the conscious decision to click out to another site.

Site by site, rather than post by post. It gives me a better feel for things.

I've been leaving a few more comments than I previously would have done, and I seem to take more time with each post when not consuming it in the river view. I also, obviously, get to see the comments left by other people.

The visual variety, rather than river homogeneity, keeps things interesting making me want to visit and read posts in situ. I highly recommend this approach if you're bored with your current consumption habits.