blogwatcher

I've thought of a potential idea for BlogWatcher, and I want opinions on it. The "hot button" of all this "web 2.0" stuff is bringing social networking into the mix. Right now, the only thing about BlogWatcher that changes based on who subscribes is the view that non-subscribers see - they get the most recent 100 posts from the subscriptions of all active subscribers combined.

I've made a very tiny change to BlogWatcher as it relates to Xanga. The good folks at Xanga have finally decided to officially release the URL for their RSS feeds. Unfortunately, it's different than the one I've been using. The old one works, but there's no guarantee it will continue.

I haven't made many changes to BlogWatcher recently. Well, not changes that would be visible to a user, anway. So I was thinking about directions that I could go, and I wanted to get some feedback.

Here are some of the things I'm thinking about

Some of you may have noticed some rather severe performance problems with BlogWatcher over the past few days. Sorry about that.

It figures. The day I send out an email to everyone who has used BlogWatcher in the past, asking them to come check it out, I introduce some bugs into the code. Anyone who visited BlogWatcher between about 2PM and 8PM Central time probably saw some weird stuff going on.

The good thing is that it's fixed now, and no data was actually lost. It was just "missing in action" for a while. So the only thing I lost is my reputation. :(

Yet another enhancement to BlogWatcher. At least, I think it's an enhancement. ;)

In addition to the information you're used to on the view page, there's a new column running down the left hand side of the screen. Listed there will be all of your subscriptions which have any posts attached to them. The number in parenthesis shows how many posts. Clicking on one of the subscription links will filter the display, so that you'll only see the posts from that subscription.

I've added one more piece of functionality to BlogWatcher. It will now automatically load new posts as they are detected. It isn't necessary (or even desirable) to refresh the list to get new posts.

I also recommend that you delete old posts that you don't care about. The fewer active posts you have, the faster your page will load.

EDIT: I've realized that they way I worded this could lead to some confusion. The delete that I'm referring to isn't to delete the entire feed. You've always had that ability, from the "Manage my Subscriptions" page. This delete is for an individual post. It has no effect on the other posts from that feed. I'll be updating the layout of the page soon, to put the "Delete" link in a more logical place.

Original message: 

I'm starting to get a few BlogWatcher subscribers whom I don't know personally (yeah!) So I've made a few "tweaks."

I've added a minor enhancement to BlogWatcher. It's so minor, in fact, that most people probably won't even notice it. It has to do with handling dates that are way out of line.

In the old version, BlogWatcher trusted the publication date for each item. In most cases, its still does. But there are three cases where it does not any more