> PubSubHubbub evolved and is now able to work with any kind of data (not just RSS or Atom), opening the door to a JSON based syndication format.<p>It is not made clear why this is desirable. The author makes no case for why a JSON-based system would be any better than the current XML system. Perhaps the implied "eww XML", but XML is <i></i>the standard<i></i>.
> For RSS, I have first to “guess” (or rather hope) that there is a feed, since browsers now hide the infamous orange icon. I can then select the url of that tab and copy it. Then, open a new tab, go to the reader I chose to use and paste the url. Hopefully, that reader is smart enough to actually find the feed url from this page’s url. If not, I’m screwed anyway and I’ll have to look into the HTML code of the page!<p>On sites that provide a feed link, I just click that link, which opens that feed in feedly, and I hit add to my feedly. Process is as simple as twitter. The choice of some sites to hide their feeds and provide no links is the burden of site designers.
Oblig XKCD: <a href="http://xkcd.com/927/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/927/</a><p>I think also however that this post brings up a lot of good points. Specifically I feel it touches on a very important one subtly... we do have now a "web of data" even if it isn't exactly the W3C spec of such a thing, we still have one. Now what?
It's too bad FeedTree (<a href="http://www.feedtree.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.feedtree.net/</a>) never caught on. Decentralised, peer-to-peer push distribution of RSS-style updates. Instead we ended up either hammering servers checking for updates, or using centralized hubs like FeedBurner, and eventually moving to completely proprietary services like Twitter and Google+.
Hmm...when I click on an RSS feed link in Safari, my RSS reader (NetNewsWire) opens and asks me if I want to add this feed. (Worked for the comments feed, didn't see a link for the blog, and the "subscribe" button didn't work).<p>Yes, polling has issues, but the author doesn't explain how changing the file format from RSS to some JSON-based format makes those problems go away.<p>Maybe I am just dense, but neither does the author show real problems, nor does he offer solutions. Well, the latter being somewhat unsurprising considering the former.
<i>The “level 0” solution is to periodically fetch each feed, parse it, diff it and hopefully find something new.</i><p>Um, less solutions to this exist, but they are much simpler than 'PubSubHubbub or RSSCloud'. And don't require any changes to RSS.<p>You are requesting this thing over HTTP. You (and the server delivering the feed) simply need to use standard HTTP caching headers. etags, last-modified, etc.<p>No need to fetch the XML and parse it and diff it.
The main criticism here doesn't really apply to any readers that apply the slightest effort in making the subscription process streamlined.<p>Take <a href="https://kouio.com" rel="nofollow">https://kouio.com</a> for example (a Google Reader replacement I've built), in kouio you just enter a website's address and it'll discover the feed automagically.
> The “level 0” solution is to periodically fetch each feed, parse it, diff it and hopefully find something new.<p>Wait, do feed readers really not do a HEAD request first and check Last-Modified ?
I've been wondering if feeds would be more discoverable if browsers integrated it with bookmarks. Bookmarking a page with an RSS feed becomes a 'live bookmark' that acts like a bookmark folder with unread counts.<p>But there's probably a billion edge cases that make it too difficult.
RSS specs doesn't change is actually a great benefit to services build around it. Both <a href="http://dealbert.net" rel="nofollow">http://dealbert.net</a> and <a href="http://joboyster.com" rel="nofollow">http://joboyster.com</a> use RSS as the main data source format.
We should add query parameters onto RSS requests, and gradually upgrade while remaining backwards compatible. Create clients and server features that are compelling enough, and people will update their server code.
Offtopic somewhat, but if you're building a feed reader in Python, you can use feedfinder.py[1], to allow for feed discovery. The last feed reader I wrote, years ago, utilized it to great effect.<p>Every new feed reader on the block shocks me when I have to enter the exact URL to the feed (e.g., domain/xml/feed.xml, or what have you).<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/feedfinder/" rel="nofollow">http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/feedfinder/</a>