While listening to a podcast about how RSS feed readership is measured, an idea for improving measurement of readership of feed and also web pages occurred to me. One of the things that makes it difficult to accurately measure traffic to any internet resource is that there may be proxy servers between the resource and...
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David Megginson posted today about The case against easier feed subscriptions, noting that if it's too easy to subscribe to a feed, it will also be too easy to sneak a subscription into someone's feed reader and use it for illegitimate purposes. The response I posted was as follows:

"Good point! The approach I'd favor...
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People have always tended to see the world in their own image. However advanced our powers of empathy may become, our own opinions and perceptions remain more prominent in our consciousness than those of others. Lately, I've noticed that the illusions in my world seem to be growing stronger--more completely crowding out the part of...
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A long time ago in an IETF working group not so far away, there was a big discussion over whether an Atom feed is really just an Atom entry that contains other entries. At the time, I wrote a long email on the subject, but kept putting off sending it, so it's been languishing in...
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Tim Bray sent a message to the Atom Working group mailing list today declaring that, other than changes to the last draft that consensus has already been reached on, the Atom format is, for all practical purposes, done. There are a few more steps to be completed before it's official, as Tim notes:

"Note that...
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Since I posted What's still wrong with Atom (and probably will be in 1.0), a few of the issues I mentioned have been resolved. Here's a quick overview of those issues, plus two more. The number of asterisks under each indicates how much I wish the issue would be resolved (1=no big deal, 5=very sad...
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Google AdSense for Feeds: "Google AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for feeds is a program that enables publishers to place relevant ads in the feeds they syndicate. Google technology understands the nuances of language, and places ads that are closely matched (or 'targeted') to the content next to which they appear. [...]

If [...] your feed...
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Two simple steps to higher search engine placement: "Search Engine Optimization doesn't have to mean paying gobs of money to self-proclaimed professionals with questionable qualifications. Nor does it have to mean hiring an army of copywriters to fill your site with content. Two simple steps will boost your search engine ranking and give visitors a...
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Chordata, my directory of RSS and Atom feeds has been growing quickly, and is soon to see some changes that should make it grow a lot faster. In preparation for that growth, I decided yesterday that it's about time to give it a URL that's more memorable and independent than "chordata.geckotribe.com". Unfortunately, "chordata.com" was alread...
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Sometimes having a lot of people working on Atom is great, because we get a much wider variety of experience and insight than a smaller group would have available to it. But all too often, it feels like trying to get the US government to move--too many checks and balances keep the status quo entrenched,...
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