Posts in: July, 2005

Michael Koziarski has released Feed Your Reader version 1.2. This Firefox plugin for subscribing to feeds now supports subscribing to feeds in FeedLounge. Thanks Michael!

Our first four servers have arrived!

Andrew West has written an excellent review of FeedLounge.

I’ve added a couple of clarifications on my blog.

Chris Meller has written up a great review of FeedLounge.

I’ve added a couple of responses to a few of the points on my blog.

We placed the order for our first big database server. When this and the other servers we ordered come in, we’ll have the needed hardware to do our initial beta launch.

Unfortunately, it will also take time to configure all the servers and set up all the little features in the software that are needed for a hosted service, but we’ve avoided setting up for the alpha.

No time estimates - just a status report.

A few people e-mailed us or blogged¹ their extreme displeasure at our “Firefox-only-religious-zealot-Microsoft-hating-open-source-crazies” browser policy for the alpha.

We tried to clear this up once already², but we seem to have done a poor job of it.

So here it is one more time - I hope this is more clear:

1. When developing a web application, supporting only a single browser makes it much easier to test and support your application.
2. From experience, we know that it is easier to make a web application that already works in a Gecko browser (like Firefox) work in IE or Safari than vice versa.
3. Firefox has some great development tools (the Web Developer extension, JavaScript console, Venkman, etc.) which save us time and make development easier.

Once we have our core functionality working in Firefox, we will take the time to bridge whatever delta may exist between our Firefox tested code and what is needed to work on additional browsers.

Thanks for understanding.

1. Not picking on anyone, just a recent example. [back]
2. Twice actually. [back]

FeedLounge is now monitoring ~25,000 feeds. Would you be surprised if I told you that there is a 4:1 valid to invalid ratio in those feeds? I was.

I’ve sent out the invites to the 100 new alpha users.

I just sent out an e-mail to everyone who had signed up for the beta to let them know we were allowing another 100 people into the alpha release and asking if they’d like to take part.

Less than 10 minutes later, I already have more than 150 175 replies!!

We’ll be sending out the invites over the next couple days.

I’m thrilled to see that there is this kind of interest and also a bit surprised that so many people were sitting in front of their e-mail.

We’re working hard to get the everything ready for our beta release, thanks for your patience.

FeedLounge is now running on our Alpha 4 release. This release fixes a few bugs, but the mainly this release is about adding new features:

• 401 Authentication Support - you can now subscribe to your password protected feeds in FeedLounge.
• Private Feeds - if you mark a feed private, tags you apply to that feed and items from that feed will remain private. Note: all 401 authenticated feeds are automatically marked “private”.
• History Page - a simple interface for browsing items you’ve read in the last week by date.
• Tag and Search Subscriptions - we’ve added an easy interface (3rd tab in the Add window) for adding tag subscriptions from del.icio.us, Flickr and Technorati; and search subscriptions from DayPop, Feedster and Yahoo News.

Enjoy the new features and if you run into anything unexpected, let us know in the forums.