I finally got around to setting up a news aggregator that I intend to actually maintain in just one place, on one machine (NetNewsWire, on my desk mac at home). Too many recent crashes and disparate bookmark lists on different computers under vaying OS’s.

I also did a keyword search on Photoblogs.Org looking around for… well, stuff, and came across what looks like a fairly-recent blog belonging to Gordon Stettinius, who for a while had been publishing a magazine called EyeCaramba. I’d recently been digging through Gordo’s website anyway, while looking for interesting work done in 6x6 format. Some of it was familiar – maybe because of a Minneapolis connection, or his collection on Rollei-Gallery.net? — even without this new blog his website would have rated a mention here some time soon.

It’s annoying that his blog can’t be linked to my newsreader — what gives with blogspot and blogger, anyway? None of their sites that I’d like to link up have feeds, nor do some other notable blog sites, sometimes inexplicably: Consumptive, the A Photo A Day Blog (doubly surprising since it’s a Moveable Type site), not Leon Taylor, not Tread, not Eddie, not… well, many.

I admit: though I’ve always provided a feed from Botzilla, I’d been sliding on the whole RSS/Atom feed business, waiting for it to gather more steam; yet it seems like some major players are deliberately moving to block. If Blogspot and Blogger were promoting their own alternative mechansims, that would be one thing — but they are not. Instead, their actions seem designed to suppress a technology intended to increase the S::N ratio and reduce bandwidth demand… I don’t get it. Doesn’t “bandwidth demand” == “operating expense” to these providers?

On a similar note, it’s funny that the Photoblogs.Org keyword search feature is essentially undocumented, and (as far as I can obviously suss out) not directly accessible from their regular search field — though it’s my favorite feature. Instead, you need to edit the URL yourself, unless you use this botzilla-exclusive magical search tool: