FeedBlendr.com

Due to the ongoing costs of operating FeedBlendr, I will be closing this site down at the end of this month (June). Your blends will no longer operate after that date, and all requests to this website will be directed to a single static page.

If you’d like a replacement, you might like one of these alternate providers:

• Hosted Services
  • Yahoo! Pipes
  • FeedRinse
  • xFruits
• Install on your own server
  • Big in Japan’s Frankenfeed
  • SimplePie
• Separate Server/Enterprise-oriented
  • RSSBus

Thanks to everyone who used FeedBlendr and who made it popular, and it’s a pity that I can’t keep it running.

I’ve just finished uploading and testing a new round of updates for FeedBlendr, please let me know if you spot anything funky!

• Added a “What Are Feeds?” page (link) to the homepage.
• Improved RSS output (stripped some unnecessary attributes, output <category> tags properly, and a couple others).
• Changed all the URLs that you use to request blends and subscribe pages etc. I’ve added redirects to handle all the old formats and redirect them to the new formats, but please take note of the new formats as outlined on a blend’s detail page. This change makes all the request URLs much more RESTful.
• Added the “Source” in the output for mobile reading.
• Got rid of the separate subscription buttons and added a single, “AddThis” button which links to all sorts of readers, both online and actual clients.
• Added caching to JavaScript and JSON output, so hopefully they’ll work a little faster. You may see slightly longer delays with updates of content, but actual page-loads should be a bit quicker for you now.
• Added the option to get headlines-only from JavaScript and JSON outputs. Read about it in the Developers section

You can email me using this address if you notice anything strange, or would like to suggest a new feature.

I was checking out Digg this morning and noticed this story over at Valleywag:

How To Get all the tech news you need (in 20 minutes a day)

A quick look told me there’s a better way, so here it is. The article suggests a number of news sources that you should scan on a daily basis to ensure you’re getting a good coverage of what’s going on. Checking multiple sites takes way too long, so why not blend those news sources into a single feed and then subscribe to it in your newsreader, or even view it online?

1. DailyTech: Top Sources
2. DailyTech: Commentary
3. DailyTech: Mainstream
4. DailyTech: Mainstays

The only news source I couldn’t include in there was Wired Magazine in “Mainstays”, but that’s much sexier to read in old-school hardcopy anyway, so go subscribe to it and read it on your commute or something.

These blends will all be upgraded with the new beta version of FeedBlendr soon, and then you’ll be able to access the contents of them online, on your cell-phone, wherever you want; care of some of the cool new features about to be released.