There...

Having said that I doubted if I had time to update this blog often enough - I seem to be writing another entry.

I've sorted out the atom.xml feed. It's being published to ARHG Net correctly now. Phew.

Atom is an interesting one. It's there because RSS is too 'owned'. Atom's certainly more powerful but it's also a faff. Even when Google seemed so reluctant to go down the RSS route, RSS feeds were clearly the syndication option worth recommending. Yahoo had embraced RSS and most of the traffic driving syndication software had too. Further more, RSS is easier for affiliates to get their head around and therefore easier for them to hook into and use. Now Google seems to have some more time for RSS; you can add it to your version of the Google home page and you can get RSS content out of Google via Google News. The .rss file extension is still shown as unrecognized though and that's just Google being slow on purpose.

Although RSS is ahead of Atom in popularity this position is not sacrosanct. If RSS's 'owners' do try and through their weight around then I suspect Atom would simply scoop defectors up by the bucket load. I remember how many webmasters dumped their .gifs in favour of .jpg when the courts ruled .gif was patented.

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