I will talk about information feeds from web sites delivered to my

computer device. I use the term feeds and by that I mean both RSS feeds

and Atom feeds, the two feed protocols which are very similar.

I believe it is very likely you as listener to Hacker Public Radio

know about feeds. Not unlikely you even know the technical details far

better than I do.

Nowadays many of us use feeds very often without thinking of them as

feeds, when we subscribe to podcasts.

But feeds have been around for many years. Back in the days, I used

feeds for websites I was interested in. But somehow I forgot about it

and web browsers stopped to support feed subscriptions.

A year or two ago I started my new journey into feeds. Although it is

not so much talk about feeds nowadays, very many web sites have support

for feed subscriptions.

To start, at my own personal web site (https://www.hemrin.com/)

many of the pages have feeds, typically those that are blog-like pages,

and you can subscribe to several feeds on my site.

From Hacker Public Radio I subscribe to a feed for all show comments.

So when you write a comment regarding my show today, I will get notified

in my feed manager.

I primarily use Thunderbird to manage my feeds. I do not need my

feeds to be synced to other devices. I use Thunderbird daily for e-mails

and it is therefore very practical and natural for me to use it also for

feeds. In addition I use the Feeder app on my Android-based phone for

some feeds.

I do not use feeds for web sites I anyway will visit often or that

have a lot of news. I would be overwhelmed of feeds. Instead I use feeds

for web sites which are not updated so frequently but are sites I want

to keep an eye on. But some are updated daily, like from the

parliament.

In some cases, feeds are an alternative to subscribe to e-mail

notifications and e-mail newsletters.

The beauty with feeds is that I am in charge and without giving out

e-mail or anything - the site owner do not know I subscribe.

Subscription starts so simple as I type the feed-url into my Thunderbird

feed manager. And when I want to end a subscription, I simply delete

it.

Furthermore I subscribe to Status pages. I get notifications for

example from my internet service provider for their planned and

unplanned maintenance.

Several authorities have interesting feeds.

I have feeds from some companies and organizations.

I have feeds from many software developers, for example Thunderbird

and Linux Mint.

I have feeds from some journalists and politicians and alike.

I have feeds from persons with competence in various areas I am

interested in. And other persons who are interesting for the persons

they are and their thoughts.

So, this show is to tell you that I have rediscovered feeds and found

them useful for me. Maybe you already use feeds. Maybe this show will

inspire you to have a look into feeds as a useful tool for your personal

or professional life.