Sandwalk: What Is an Aggregator?

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

What Is an Aggregator?

There are probably some people who don't know what an aggregator is. It's a feed reader, or a program that reads the news feeds from your favorite web site. This is how you can keep up with the news on all the important blogs like Sandwalk!

I use the Goggle Reader that's featured in the following video by commoncraft. It will teach you all you need to know about Really Simple Syndication (RSS). There are other readers that are just as good but I like the web based readers 'cause I can access them from several different computers.

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

[Hat Tip: Shelley Batts who used to read blogs the old fashioned way.]

3 comments :

sylas said...: Hey Larry... I recently discovered feeds, and was instantly hooked.

Have a look at my blog, and you can see that I've put the little orange feed icon next to my feed links. It really helps draw the eye. I've put two feed links (for posts, and for comments) at the top of my sidebar, and I've added an icon to the feed link at the bottom of the post and blog pages, by modifying the template.

One good feature of blogger is that you can subscribe to a feed of all the comments for a particular blog article. I am currently subscribed to the feeds for three of the posts in your blog, just so I can keep track of the comments people are making.

This link is available at the bottom of a post page, but it's not clear what it is really for. I've added the icon to help make it stand out.

When I was first setting up my blog, "Sandwalk" was one of the blogs I looked at to help decide what features to use. It would be cool if I can return the favour. Use the icons! I did it by uploading the icons to imageshack and linking to that. I'm not sure if that is the best way, but it's working well for now. I can give you some template details if you like!; Tuesday, May 22, 2007 11:22:00 PM
Unknown said...: I've never used icons. I've always just copied the URL of the site and used the subscribe to feed type of link in my reader.

I wonder, does a reader count on something like Stat Counter as a visit? I've noticed gator showing up in my links, but I've never seen google reader show up.

Thanks for the post. I'll look into adding icons on my page.; Wednesday, May 23, 2007 10:48:00 AM
sylas said...: My understanding is that site counters do not count access through a feed.

Nevertheless, I think it is a good idea to provide the feeds, because they add value for the readers. People like them, and I encourage my readers to use them. If they are subscribed to my feeds, they'll see when I have material posted, even if it is not "counted" as a visit.

Sometimes they'll actually click on the links to shift from the feed readers to your blog directly; and trip the counter. I see this happening in my blog stats, with the referral of a visit being the google feed readers.

Without the subscription, my visitors might never even have seen it.

There's debate on whether or not feeds should be full feeds or partial feeds, and whether the feed should include adds. My aim is to give the best possible value to my readers, and get traffic because lots of people are aware of and subscribed to the blog. There are some indications that a partial feed will give increased visit counts; but it may be that long term you are still better to get a wider reader base simply by providing the most usable service possible.

See discussion of this and related points at The end of the RSS experiment (Cognitive Daily).; Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:34:00 AM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

What Is an Aggregator?

3 comments :