Burningbird

Wait, do they use hand lotion and have nice manicures? Because if so, don't be so hasty there.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who is concerned about privacy. I am perhaps a bit more paranoid than you: I block javascript, cookies, the referer header, and refuse to use almost all of the web 2.0ey apps out there. If I can't host it, I don't use it.

I, too, am having problems with sites that suck up RSS feeds and then attach ads to the feed, as if somehow they're adding something of value.

Let us know how to limit feeds, or, at the very least, leave out photos.

Partial feeds - yay! I much prefer to just use the feed for a heads-up on something being published, then look properly in a browser.

I too am fairly paranoid about Google. The problem with Microsoft is not (just) Microsoft as such, it's that it's dreadfully unhealthy for any industry to be dominated by just one player. Let's not repeat that mistake. Also the huge amount of semi-personal (almost but not quite identified) data Google're collecting, of course. Sometimes I use Google, sometimes I use Yahoo - anything to mix things up a bit, it's the only way I can think of to fight back at least slightly. Well, and not allowing them to save cookies between sessions though I expect they have a good idea who has static IP addresses.

Today I searched for a couple of "naughty" phrases as part of investigating some spam on a forum I help moderate. It bothers me a (tiny) bit that they'll be part of my Google profile for a while.

I suppose the only alternative would be to pay for access to neutral search engines as part of ones ISP costs.

Partial feeds – nooooo. :( I much prefer to read in my feed reader. Sending the link to the browser or opening a tab in the aggregator or whatnot is a hassle.

I guess I’ll stay around, having followed from Burningbird to the BBGun to The Era Of 7 Feeds to Planet Shelley and finally back to Burningbird, doing what I could to keep my subscriptions in some semblance of order, going through all the summary/fulltext and images/no images/some images switches and other changes along the way… so obviously I appreciate your thoughts. But it’s arduous at times to read you.

Hi Shel, I'm re-entering the b'sphere yet again for the umpteenth time. Your redirect worked fine in my case. I vote for partial feeds, and not simply because of the spam issue. I find it infinitely more satisfying to read someone's post–if it strikes my interest–in its original format. It seems to lend a sense of being more in touch with the blogger's unique personality–even with a blog like yours which I've visited hundreds of times. It doesn't matter. Each time is a fresh touch with Shelley–as opposed to the cold, once or twice removed pages of the feed. After all, a click out of and back into my feed isn't exactly what I'd call taxing.

[…] However, a warning keeps popping up to wonder whether this will end up in unwanted advertising in the feeds. I hope that with Google the free service does not start including ads. Amit Agarwal wonders whether the acquisition spree will head to a monopoly in advertising, killing the options that publishers have today. Shelley Powers has already pulled back her feed. […]

I may be in the minority here, but I welcome this change. I would really like for Google to offer some of the non-free features of FeedBurner to the masses, much like they have done with other acquisitions.

Tom, hi! Glad to see you're back among the blogging. I'll have to kick the subscription to your weblog back into shape.

I do feel bad that I seem to be continually changing my syndication feed, but I do feel a conflict at times between what people want and what I want. Lately, though, I've wanted to have more control of how my information is both disseminated and persisted, though I know it's difficult.

I will, though, try to make any change painless, and feeds useful if not complete.

More on scrubbing our data in a later post — probably tomorrow.

Loren, I have a plugin that removes photos from feeds. I'll also publish a link to it, too.

Scott, I expected most people to be happy about this change. I just think that we need to start being more aware of how much data we toss about.

I agree with you regarding visibility. For over a decade, we've been seeing access to data that was once for all intents and purposes private.