<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Nowadays many of us use feeds very often without thinking of them as
feeds, when we subscribe to podcasts.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>To start, at my own personal web site (<a
href="https://www.hemrin.com/" class="uri">https://www.hemrin.com/</a>)
many of the pages have feeds, typically those that are blog-like pages,
and you can subscribe to several feeds on my site.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In some cases, feeds are an alternative to subscribe to e-mail
notifications and e-mail newsletters.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Furthermore I subscribe to Status pages. I get notifications for
example from my internet service provider for their planned and
unplanned maintenance.</p>
<p>Several authorities have interesting feeds.</p>
<p>I have feeds from some companies and organizations.</p>
<p>I have feeds from many software developers, for example Thunderbird
and Linux Mint.</p>
<p>I have feeds from some journalists and politicians and alike.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
