The feedtree-users mailing list is finally up and running. If you’re a current user, or just curious about the project, please feel free to subscribe. I expect that the list will be fairly low-traffic, limited to releases and other important announcements, as well as the occasional “is it really supposed to work this way?” thread.
Hot on the heels of 0.6 is version 0.6.1 (changeset 89), a small update that fixes some bugs in the new statistics-reporting framework and as cleans up the Windows and Mac executables a little bit. It’s important for current users to update to 0.6.1 so that I can continue collecting good data from the network.
The 0.6.0 version of the “publisher+jar” archive (including the ftproxy.jar for command-line operation, ftproxygui.jar for GUI operation on Unix platforms, and ftpublisher.jar for signed feed publication) contained slightly out-of-date builds (for one thing, they still reported version 0.5.1+ instead of 0.6.0).
I fixed the build process in changeset 82; you can now get the fixed zipfile from the Downloads page.
The new 0.6.0 release includes a shiny new GUI and a double-clickable app for Windows and Mac users. Go download it already!
Fig. 1. The proxy as a jarbundled Mac app.
Windows users will get an .exe to run as well, thanks to launch4j. More info: version 0.6 open tickets, Version 0.6 on the wiki.
I’ve added some step-by-step instructions to the FeedTree wiki for configuring various feed readers to use the FeedTree proxy. There’s information for Thunderbird, FeedDemon, Opera, and Mac feed readers. [If you don't see your favorite app here, take some screenshots of the proxy setup process and add them to the wiki.]
Version 0.5.1 of the proxy and publisher (download: feedtree-0.5.1.zip) is out, with a fix for WebDAV uploads and some form POSTs (ticket #3).
The poster I designed for the CS department‘s recent Corporate Affiliates meeting is a great brochure-style introduction to the FeedTree project. Print it on a 3-by-4 foot plotter page, or a sheet of letter-sized copy paper. Grab it from the FeedTreePoster page on the wiki.
There’s growing concern in some quarters over blog pings, in particular that the various ping services are unlikely to be able to continue to provide their free service (viz., listing recently-updated blogs) for an exponentially increasing population of ping sources.
A corollary might be that, yes, ping services don’t scale, and what’s more, they’re not a good idea anyway. Last week, Paul Querna wrote:
Version 0.5.0 of the FeedTree package has been released (see the downloads page).
This is the first public version; it has been operating stably at Rice and other sites for several weeks without substantial changes.
If you decide to try the software, I encourage you to sign up for the feedtree-users mailing list so you can ask questions and get help. If you discover a bug, please report it using the new ticket page.
