tag:blog.trawlr.com,2008:mephisto/ Mephisto Noh-Varr 2007-12-04T01:03:17Z ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-12-04:105 2007-12-04T00:59:00Z 2007-12-04T01:03:17Z <p><a href="http://www.slashdotdash.net/images/iPhone2.gif"><img src="http://www.slashdotdash.net/images/iPhone2p.gif" alt="" /></a></p> <p>You can now enjoy trawlr.com on the go by visiting http://iphone.trawlr.com/ (or visit the usual site and follow the link). It’s been fully optimised for ultra-fast loading with minimal data transfer – it even feels nippy here in the UK on <span class="caps">GPRS</span>.</p> <p>As always, any feedback is greatly appreciated – add your comment here or email me directly at ben [at] trawlr.com</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-10-24:102 2007-10-24T22:00:00Z 2007-10-24T22:10:33Z <p>You can now enjoy trawlr.com in all 3 major browsers; Firefox, Safari and <span class="caps">IE7</span>.</p> <ul> <li>Firefox</li> </ul> <p><img title="Firefox" src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/10/24/trawlr_firefox.png" alt="Firefox" /></p> <ul> <li>Safari</li> </ul> <p><img title="Safari" src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/10/24/trawlr_safari.png" alt="Safari" /></p> <ul> <li><span class="caps">IE7</span></li> </ul> <p><img title="IE7" src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/10/24/trawlr_ie7.png" alt="IE7" /></p> <p>Another extra feature is that you can collapse the right-hand bar to maximise the item view…</p> <p><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/10/24/trawlr_extended.png" alt="" /></p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-10-19:97 2007-10-19T22:23:00Z 2007-10-19T22:29:22Z <p>It may have gone quiet on the blog recently, but trawlr is being continually improved. Here are some of the recent, exciting new features…</p> <p><a href="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/10/19/trawlr_slashdot.png"><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/10/19/trawlr_slashdot-thumb.png" alt="" /></a></p> <ul> <li>Feed overview page has changed to include a preview of the site and a small graph showing the frequency of posts (number per day for the last month) as shown in the screen-shot.</li> <li>Browse by tags allows you to find feeds and recent posts that have been tagged by trawlr users.</li> <li>Search from within the reader (through all feeds).</li> <li>Within the reader you can opt to read feeds by either list or extended view.</li> </ul> <p>There’s also been work on improving performance; I hope you’re enjoying the site.</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-06-02:52 2007-06-02T12:21:00Z 2007-10-24T21:59:10Z <p>Since just over a week ago <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/">Feedburner</a> has started showing <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/">trawlr.com</a> subscribers in its feed stats. You might have recently noticed a slight jump in the number of subscribers to your blog or website (not quite on the scale of Google Reader)!</p> <p>The Feedburner stats for the trawlr blog are shown below, with a healthy 56% of subscribers from trawlr. The jump in subscriber number is also shown in red on the graph.</p> <p><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/6/2/trawlr__blog_feedburner.png" alt="" /></p> <p>I’d like to say a big thanks to the Feedburner team for including trawlr subscribers (and <a href="http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/06/feedburner_google.php">good luck for your future with Google</a>)!</p> <h2>An update on some numbers for the site:</h2> <ul> <li>Over 500 users</li> <li>Almost 9,000 <span class="caps">RSS</span> feeds</li> <li>Just under 1,000,000 <span class="caps">RSS</span> items (<a href="http://www.trawlr.com/items/1000000">item #1,000,000 on trawlr.com</a>)</li> </ul> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-04-25:34 2007-04-25T09:48:00Z 2007-04-25T09:49:08Z <p>Confused about <span class="caps">RSS</span> and want a straight-forward explanation of the benefits of using an <span class="caps">RSS</span> reader? Then check out the 3.5 minute video below.</p> &lt;center> &lt;script src="http://blip.tv/scripts/pokkariPlayer.js" type="text/javascript">&lt;/script>&lt;script src="http://blip.tv/syndication/write_player?skin=js&posts_id=209879&source=3&autoplay=true&file_type=flv&player_width=&player_height=" type="text/javascript">&lt;/script><div><a href="http://blip.tv/file/get/Leelefever-RSSInPlainEnglish369.flv"><img title="Click To Play" src="http://blip.tv/file/get/Leelefever-RSSInPlainEnglish369.flv.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://blip.tv/file/get/Leelefever-RSSInPlainEnglish369.flv">Click To Play</a></div> &lt;/center><div class="blip_description"><br /></div> <p>There are two types of Internet users, those that use <span class="caps">RSS</span> and those that don’t. This video is for the people who could save time using <span class="caps">RSS</span>, but don’t know where to start.</p> <p>You can of course use trawlr as your <span class="caps">RSS</span> reader!</p> <p>Video created by and found thanks to <a href="http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english">Common Craft</a>.</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-04-19:33 2007-04-19T22:40:00Z 2007-04-19T22:42:06Z <p>Some of you may have noticed that trawlr hasn’t been quite as snappy as usual; at least it’s been causing me to hang around waiting and I wasn’t happy. Part of the reason for this is due to the explosion in the number of feeds that are now being crawled (thanks to all the new users). The server has been given an extra helping of resources (RAM, <span class="caps">CPU</span>) to cope and it’s given the site an immediate performance boost.</p> <h2>New features that have slipped in on the quiet</h2> <ul> <li>Manage all of your <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/subscriptions">feed subscriptions</a> from one location – including the display of any feeds that are pending or are invalid</li> <li>trawlr <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/spy">spy</a> so you can watch the site action in real-time (updates automatically every 20 seconds)</li> <li>Your login details are shown in the top-right of the screen whilst you are logged on throughout the site</li> </ul> <h2>Some quick stats from the site (everyone loves ‘em)</h2> <ul> <li>Just under 500 user registrations</li> <li>Over 8,000 feeds available</li> <li>Almost 500,000 feed items</li> </ul> <p>It looks like I’m still the site’s current feed addict with exactly 397 subscriptions – with the appropriate tagging and favourite feeds I can easily keep on top of my subscriptions (and ensure I don’t miss those usefull nuggets of <span class="caps">RSS</span> gold).</p> <p>That’s it for now, more updates are on the way!</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-29:32 2007-03-29T23:15:00Z 2007-03-29T23:21:31Z <p>You may have noticed a big, black void in place of your favourite rss aggregator tonight… I’m dreadfully sorry to report that there were some issues with the server that had to be resolved. Luckily the site is backed up regularly (at least daily) so almost no data was lost – the only stuff that disappeared were the items crawled today (but they’ll be back soon).</p> <p>Sorry for any disappointment this has caused, normal service has now resumed :-)</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-28:31 2007-03-28T23:01:00Z 2007-03-28T23:05:31Z <p>There’s been an intermittent problem with <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/imports/new"><span class="caps">OPML</span> feed imports</a> on trawlr recently. I’m glad to say that the problem is now resolved.</p> <p><strong>If you’ve experienced a problem with <span class="caps">OPML</span> imports then I urge you to give it one more try… it should be sweet!</strong></p> <p>Also a quick note, the <span class="caps">OPML</span> file import can take a while (up to an hour for your new subscriptions to show up). During this time you can safely browse away from the import status page and either continue using the site or give it a short while and then come back later when all your feeds will be ready & waiting.</p> <p>Any further problems? Just drop me a note below.</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-22:25 2007-03-22T20:19:00Z 2007-03-25T20:32:34Z <p>Another day brings some more changes to your favourite rss aggregator (I hope).</p> <p>1. Subscribe to a feed very easily via the feed’s page. You can also mark the feed as a favourite (click on the star icon in the orange subscription box) and add any tags to the feed.</p> <p><a href="http://www.trawlr.com/feeds/448"><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/22/trawlr_feed.png" alt="" /></a></p> <p>2. When viewing an item you can quickly share it or mark as a favourite by clicking on the relevant icons (star for favourite and the transmit icon to share). The number of users who have read this item is also shown.</p> <p><a href="http://www.trawlr.com/items/92259"><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/22/trawlr_item.png" alt="" /></a></p> <p>3. <span class="caps">BUG FIX</span>: There was a small problem with the feed tagging, if you’ve already tagged some of your feeds you <em>might</em> have to re-tag them. Really sorry about this issue and hope it hasn’t caused you any major headaches?</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-20:13 2007-03-20T22:38:00Z 2007-03-20T22:38:51Z <p>Thanks to Peter Cooper, trawlr has been featured on <a href="http://www.rubyinside.com/">Ruby Inside</a> along with an interview with myself about the application’s development.</p> <p><a href="http://www.rubyinside.com/trawlr-an-amazingly-simple-rails-powered-feed-reader-428.html">Trawlr: An amazingly simple Rails-powered feed reader</a></p> <p><a href="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/20/trawlr_rubyinside.png"><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/20/trawlr_rubyinside-thumb.png" alt="" /></a></p> <p>Welcome to all the new users… I hope you find the site useful and stick around to help make it even better.</p> <p>(You might experience some slight delay with <span class="caps">OPML</span> file import and subscribing to new feeds for a brief period).</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-19:10 2007-03-19T19:37:00Z 2007-03-19T19:38:03Z <p>After feedback (from a comment on this blog) I’ve just released a new, more friendly <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/">home page</a> for the site as shown below.</p> <p><a href="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/19/trawlr_home.png"><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/19/trawlr_home_thumb.png" alt="" /></a></p> <p>There’s also been a small change of <span class="caps">URL</span>; if you want to bookmark your main rss page simply point to http://www.trawlr.com/reader/</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-13:8 2007-03-13T22:50:00Z 2007-03-13T22:53:56Z <p>Another hot update to trawlr adding a couple of useful features for you.</p> <ul> <li><span class="caps">OPML</span> file export – so you can backup your feed list to file locally, and should you ever wish to use another <span class="caps">RSS</span> reader you can easily import your existing feeds.</li> <li>Tag management – quite simply it allows you to rename and delete any feed tags</li> </ul> <p>Have fun ;-)</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-12:7 2007-03-12T23:12:00Z 2007-03-12T23:17:08Z <p>The latest new feature for <a href="http://www.trawlr.com">trawlr.com</a> is the ability to comment on <strong>all</strong> feed items. You can now discuss items with other trawlr users along with the usual favourite and sharing features.</p> <p>Basic formatting is supported (via Textile), for an example of this feature and to start commenting yourself <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/items/55904">check out the following item</a> (from this blog’s feed).</p> <p>Hope you enjoy.</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-09:4 2007-03-09T21:24:00Z 2007-03-09T21:29:12Z <p>No <em>web2.0</em> site is complete without the obligatory screencast…. So I’ve created one, just over 4 minutes long, that walks through the main features of <a href="http://www.trawlr.com">trawlr.com</a>. The first screencast, and hopefully more in the future, is available in the <em>screencasts</em> section:</p> <p><a href="http://blog.trawlr.com/screencasts">http://blog.trawlr.com/screencasts</a></p> <p><strong>Note</strong>: There is NO sound for this screencast, so sit back and enjoy…!</p> ben tag:blog.trawlr.com,2007-03-09:1 2007-03-09T00:00:00Z 2007-03-09T00:29:18Z <p><a href="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/9/trawlr_home.png"><img src="http://blog.trawlr.com/assets/2007/3/9/trawlr_homep.png" alt="" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.trawlr.com">trawlr.com</a> is a new online rss aggregator designed to make it easy to keep up to date with all your rss feeds.</p> <p>Some of the current features include a “river of news” style feed view with infinite scroll (i.e. no paging), public sharing and favourite feeds.</p> <p>Want to see an example of a public shared feed? <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/users/ben/shared">Take a look at my shared items</a> (or subscribe to the <a href="http://www.trawlr.com/users/ben/shared.rss">rss feed</a>).</p> <h2>Blog Owners</h2> <p>If you own a blog and see the following <code>User-Agent</code> appearing in your logs or web-stats, it�??s probably the trawlr crawler (can you see where the name originates)! It will even tell you the number of subscribers to your feed.</p> <pre> trawlr.com (+http://www.trawlr.com; 99 subscribers) </pre> <h2>Find Out More</h2> <p><a href="http://www.trawlr.com/">Register for a trawlr.com account now</a>. It’s free, takes seconds and there’s instant access with <strong>no</strong> email activation required!</p>