Yes, I know that for the past several weeks I have been making a post about updates to the OPML Download.  Alexia Morgan and I work together to make sure that no one gets missed.  Alexia for those of you who do not know, runs a great resource known as the EVE Bloggers Portal (http://www.evebloggers.com).   In essence it’s a RSS feed reader that updates automatically throughout the day and is a great place to get your EVE blog daily fix.

Alexia and I have been comparing our relative OPML files and we have both found that we have duplicates within our own listings as well as sites that one of us had and the other did not.  This has happened for a few reasons:

Different urls for the same blog

Some people have two different rss feed urls for their blogs.  I am one of them, in fact, I have three.  I have the normal rss feed, a FeedBurner url for email syndication and a third url used for Kindle Syndication.

There is nothing wrong with having multiple rss urls as you can increase your exposure to different audiences and this increase your number of regular readers.  Some people have a different blog titles for their different feed urls and this again led to duplicates being listed in our respective OPML files.

Going forward, Alexia and I will be confirming which url you want to use.  That way, we don’t get “rss feed blog spam” like we were getting.  If you wish to send us each different rss feed urls, we will be happy to accommodate your request, just let us know so that you don’t get listed multiple times or worse, not at all.

Time or more accurately, the lack thereof.

CrazyKinux maintains the central blogroll for the EVE Blogging community and has done so for many years now. CK is a human being as are myself and Alexia.  Being human beings and not gods, we are subject to such pesky mortal things such as work, family and that dreaded real life. We play EVE because it’s fun and we write about EVE because we enjoy writing about a subject that inspires us.  It’s a hobby for us, not a job.  If we could all make a living from this we would, but that’s not possible….yet.

In the past, Alexia and I were using CK’s listing as the main source for our lists.  As real life occupied more of his time the updates fell a bit behind.  Alexia and I started to collect blogs from the comments on his listing as well as submission we would receive by email or on our respective blog posts (Hi Cyberin!).  Everyone has gotten so busy that our communication between the three of us fell behind and unfortunately some blogs ended up not being listed in all the places that the should have as well as the discrepencies in who was listed where.

At this point, I think we have a better handle on things and by the end of this month CK will have his listing updated.  Alexia and I have our lists in sync for the most part and no one should be missed now.

With all the changes over the past few days to our respective lists, it’s impossible to list out all the additions, removals and url changes.  That being said, I would recommend the following:

• Read the blogs on the EVE Bloggers portal (http://www.evebloggers.com).  It’s up to date and gets you your daily fix.
• If you want to use your own RSS reader on a PC, download a fresh copy of the OPML download and use FeedDemon.  It’s a great desktop rss reader and best of all, it’s free.  It’s sync with Google Reader is pretty good too.
• If you read your rss feeds on the iPhone/iPod Touch, use Feeds.  It costs $2.99 in the iTunes store, but it’s one of the better rss readers for the iPhone/iPod Touch and it too robustly syncs with Google Reader.
• Google Reader is a good reader and being web based makes it a commonly used resource, but it is not as robust as many other applications.  It’s OPML import tool is very blind.  It does not validate data and will import a feed you may already have, leading to duplciates.  It will also not perform updates to existing feeds, such as url changes and/or removals like FeedDemon does.

I personally use Google Reader as a bridge between FeedDemon and Feeds and it all works well.  I read feeds in the morning at home on my iPod Touch, let it sync with Google Reader, pick up where I left off on Google Reader at lunch time and finish out with FeedDemon that night at home.  Yeah, I read a lot.  :p

I want to thank all the EVE Bloggers out there for continuing to create wonderful content. You guys do a great job.  Thank you all for reading and keep it coming!

See you out there!

Tags: Blog Tools, Blogging, EVE Bloggers Portal, OPML Update

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