New Beta Version Available For Testing
Rather than do the trendy, Web 2.0 thing and make FeedBlendr perpertually beta, I’m going to have a limited-time version up at http://beta.feedblendr.com to test out a new version of the core engine that I’ve been working on over the past few months. This is live right now, so please check it out. New features you may (or may not) notice are:
- Updated funky design (thanks again Ray Hernandez!)
- Supports podcasts/video blogs now!
- Fancy online reader for viewing the contents of your blend, including embedded audio/video
- Mobile reader – allows you to view a blend in a lightweight format specially designed for phones/PDAs etc.
- JavaScript “export” to allow you to drop the contents of a blend into your own page and style it to suit your layout using simple CSS.
- Supports custom XML-extensions (like MediaRSS, GeoRSS etc) on the specific entries sourced from feeds which contained them
- Default output format is now Atom
- Much-improved OPML/bulk feed blending operations
- Fancy AJAX feed checking that actually works
- Much better caching/crawling engine (hopefully) to improve response times and server performance
- Whiz-bang REST/OPML/XML-based API that will allow developers to build some cool stuff with Blendr as part of it (if you’re into that sort of thing)
I’d really love it if people could try out some blends on the beta version, and let me know how it goes. Specifically I want to know about any problems you have, but feel free to lavish me with praise as well 🙂 No need to tell me that the “about”, “blog”, “tips” and “contact” links don’t work either – they will when it goes live!
WARNING: Blends created on beta.feedblendr.com will NOT be transferred over to the live version once the beta phase is complete (within a few weeks), so please only use it for testing!
January 7th, 2007 at 4:28 am
There’s some problem with chronology, look at my comment here: http://www.feedblendr.com/blog/2006/06/30/improving-feed-formats-support/#comment-1427
I input the same rss in beta and normal release, the normal release sorts the post descending, I think the beta sorts them by feed… e.g. 10 post from feed 1 and then 10 post from feed 2.
January 7th, 2007 at 10:49 am
The new beta is awesome. I love all the new features. And, wow, it’s the first mobile version I can use with Atom and load in my old mobile.
Currently I plan to use it in an user blogs’ headlines page for a literary community. I would like a different script to load raw titles and permalinks only, as loading the contents and html would slow the page loading and uses unneeded bandwith from your host. I will pick the data with js and display it as requested by the navigation controls. The (big, and thanks again for the service) link to FeedBlendr would go in the page layout itself.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:55 am
I think you’ve got something here. Very good work! The site is esthetically pleasing and it actually works which is an anomaly now-a-days.
I’ve been looking for an online app that does exactly what feedblendr does for a while. I couldn’t really find anything so I actually started coding my own app but kinda let it fall by the wayside.
I found your site here http://www.go2web20.net/.
Keep up the great work.
March 4th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
[…] After many months of development (the complete engine was re-written from the ground up!), I’m very happy to announce that FeedBlendr 2.0 is now officially launched and available for use. I’ve mentioned in previous posts all the new features in this version, so I won’t repeat myself, but needless to say it’s a major upgrade. […]