While almost everyone publishes an RSS feed now, there are still a few holdouts from the the old days of Blogger who are too lazy or too curmodgeonly to turn theirs on. A few of these I’ve bookmarked and check periodically, but usually if someone doesn’t publish a feed I just don’t bother reading him.
No more. Ponyfish is a service that creates RSS feeds for sites that don’t have them. It’s very easy to use: just input the URL, click on typical links of new entries, and Ponyfish learns what new content looks like. It’s not quite as good as a real RSS feed, since the free version only updates once every four hours and on the site I tried doesn’t display content, but it’s a lot better than manually checking a bookmark every day. Try it out.
It will work for sites other than weblogs, too, as long as there’s some kind of pattern to new content links.
[Via Lifehacker.]
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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Great find, Jacob! I’ve always been wondering if this is possible but never got around to asking anyone. Now I can have an easy way to catch up on the Daily Brickbats on the Reason site.
Didn’t know I was a tyrant, but it’s always nice to find out.
I know little to nothing about RSS feeds (I’ve never, for example, actually used one), but if you insist, perhaps I’ll spend some of my free time researching them and implementing one. When I’m not goofing off at work like now, of course.
Your site already has one, Mike. Jeff on the other hand…
I highly recommend trying out Bloglines or some other feed reader. If you read more than a few blogs, it makes life a whole lot easier.
Yay, tyranny!
Even though I do computer simulations, I’m not a computer person… so all I want to do with a blog is write crap and have people read it. Honestly, Blogger’s good enough for me.
Blogger offers RSS. It’s just a matter of the site owner switching it on. I’m pretty sure it works with all the Blogger templates, even the older ones.
Hence the reason I had an RSS feed without even knowing it — I just clicked the “yes” box. I rule!