Google Reader: how to de-duplicate feed entries / items

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Duplicate posts or stories in Google Reader feeds are a pain to have to skim through - they take up space and time unnecessarily. Many people have been frustrated about this problem for a while - it's not just me.

Until Google fix Google Reader to get rid of duplicate feed items, here's how to deduplicate feeds in Google Reader - this method greys out duplicate articles. It's just what I'm doing myself - if anyone knows of a better way please let me know (I find it easier than fiddling with Yahoo Pipes and the like, personally):

1. Use Google's free Chrome browser (download Chrome).
2. In Chrome, install the Reader Plus extension.
   How to install a Chrome extension?
1. In Chrome, visit the extension page eg for Reader Plus, and click the Install button.
2. If you get more popups with "Install", click 'em.
3. If you get a warning at the bottom of the screen about Extensions, apps and themes, click Continue.
4. That's it, no need to restart Chrome or the computer.
3. In the Chrome toolbar, click the spanner icon, choose the Tools menu, then select Extensions:
   
   
   
4. In the Extensions tab that opens up, find Reader Plus and click Options under it:
   
   
5. In the Reader Plus options, click on Layout to expand it, and make sure "Filter entries" is ticked. (I'm not sure if you then need to click Save at the top right (not shown in the screenshot), but best to just in case.)
   
   
6. Now login to Google Reader in Chrome, and you'll see a new "Filter settings" button, top right (illustrated towards the bottom of this post). Click that button and make sure "Hide Duplicates" is ticked, then click the Update button below it.
   
   
7. Reload Google Reader for luck (it may work without refreshing it, but y'know...), and duplicate feed items should now be greyed out (see below) - however, note that sometimes I've found that UNticking "Hide Duplicates" and updating and refreshing the Google Reader page is necessary, especially if I've tried to change any of the the other Filter settings. Go figure. Kept alternating one or other till it worked.
8. "Excludes" also works as far as I can see, though I don't use it myself. Type a word you want to exclude in the Exclude box, tick Hide Excludes and click Update, and feed items which contain that word will be greyed out. And so on. Just play with it, but bear in mind point 7 above, that this feature can be erratic and sometimes it doesn't work, but refreshing Google Reader usually fixes that for me.

What about Google Reader in Firefox?

The Google Reader Filter add-on for Firefox is a Greasemonkey userscript (direct link to Google Reader Filter) which is supposed to be able to remove duplicates from Google Reader, but sadly it doesn't (on my system anyway).

Compare the following.

The first screenshot is of Chrome with Reader Plus - see how the duplicate item is greyed out? - and the second, of Firefox with Google Reader Filter (the same duplicate entry is unfortunately not greyed out).(Ignore the blocked out woody bits, that's just me hiding my Google Alert search from the world!)

Chrome with Reader Plus

Firefox with Google Reader Filter

Both the extension and the userscript add a "Filter settings" button to the top right of Google Reader, outlined in red in the two pics above, but I just couldn't get Google Reader Filter to hide or grey out duplicate items no matter what filter settings I tried.

I still prefer to view actual webpages in Firefox with TabMixPlus, due to Google's (to me) inexplicable and frustrating refusal to allow navigation of tabs in "most recently used" within Chrome. But that's another blog post…

Tags: Google Reader, tricks, deduplicate feed items, de-deduplicate feed, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Track updates to existing blog posts

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This post gives tips on how to monitor and track updates or edits to existing blog posts on blogs which use Blogger / Blogspot.com, with Google's official blogs as an example. 

Many of us subscribe to various Google blogs via feed readers / RSS readers in order to keep up with what's going on at Google. (For beginners: see RSS / feeds primer).

Unfortunately, Google sometimes just edits an old post to provide updates on certain issues, instead of publishing a brand new blog post. And they don't often publish a new post with a pointer to the updated post, either. So, unless you happened to be keeping an eye on the old post, you won't notice the update.

This has happened with Google blog posts about eg encrypted Google search, and also the Street View wifi data collection kerfuffle.

Fortunately, there's a workaround. Instead of subscribing to the standard feed, subscribe to the "updated" feed instead. See how to subscribe to updated Blogger feeds and more for full details (note the examples in the second half of that blog post).

The trick is this: just subscribe using a slightly enhanced URL which catches updates to posts. 

So, if the blog's URL is http://googleblog.blogspot.com, the feed URL you should use in your newfeed reader is:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated&max-results=1000000

- ie add the bit in bold italics.

"orderby=updated" is what gets you blog posts that have been most recently updated/published, and not just newly published posts only.

"&max-results=1000000" or something similar is needed because if you don't add it in (and just use http://googleblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated), it'll only give you the last X blog posts, not all of them (X is currently 25). 10000000 is probably overkill because Google limits the maximum number of blog posts it'll give you from Blogger / Blogspot blogs - the current limit seems to be 500, so you could probably use "&max-results=500" instead.

A twist to note is that if you subscribe using Google Reader, when you search it'll often search a greater number of blog posts than that if anyone has subscribed using the same URL previously, as it'll have indexed the posts they received. If you want to be able to search over older posts from that blog, then you could subscribe to the basic standard feed URL as well, eg http://googleblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Here's another example. To get a feed of new and updated posts on Google's public policy blog, use:

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated&max-results=1000000

(or just make it 500 instead of 1000000). You get the drift.

This tip only works for Blogger / Blogspot.com blogs, not blogs using other blogging platforms like WordPress etc.

Track changes to a webpage by feed or email - Google's "follow changes"

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How to monitor or track changes to a web page (e.g. a webpage listing new publications, what's new, press releases or announcements, news) if the website doesn't provide a feed you can subscribe to? (for non-techies: see my introduction to feeds).

If there's no newsfeed, which is the case with too many websites, most of us wouldn't bother to keep checking back to see if the page has been updated.

Google's "Follow changes"

Luckily Google have introduced a very helpful new feature for their online feed reader Google Reader, so you can still subscribe to changes for a webpage on a site which doesn't provide a feed or proper auto-discovery, and get alerts.

How do you track changes to a webpage?

You can "add" the webpage's normal URL (web address) to Google Reader (button on top left of Google Reader):

Paste in the webpage's URL (as an example I've used http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/news/press_releases/london/ which doesn't provide a newsfeed), and click Add:

If the site doesn't offer a feed or doesn't provide proper auto-discovery, Google offers to generate its own "feedified" version of that page for you, thus enabling you to follow changes made to that page:

Note that it will do so only if the page is in normal HTML in English, and not a Flash page or in a frame (though hopefully there will be improvements in future e.g. supporting more languages). And it won't track changes to a page if the website owner has chosen to block Google Reader follows by adding certain code to their page.

Changes to the page show up as a new feed item in your Googlified feed for that webpage, see illustrations below. You can add the new feed to a folder, rename it etc in the usual way.

You click on the item title (i.e. the "Generated feed for…" link) to go to the changed webpage.

Example: the UK's Office of Fair Trading, who have a lot of consumer-related responsibilities, don't provide an RSS or Atom feed for their press releases page. Using Follow Changes, I can be informed through my feed reader whenever new press releases are issued:

What's more, I can get those changes by email too, if I want - see below for a tip on how to do that.

What changes does Google track?

From my testing (through editing this web page on different days), the feed item won't display the entire webpage tracked. It shows:

• additions
  
  
  
• amended sentences (with the changed bits shown in bold in the feed item), so you can see what's changed.
  
  
  

However:

• it doesn't flag deletions (just additions - e.g. the screenshot below doesn't note the deleted line, just a new line I added at a dfferent location to mention the deletion)
  
  
  
• it will only shows snippets (cut off) if there have been more than just a few changes.

What if someone else has already added the webpage?

Then Google doesn't offer to create the feed for you, it just adds it automatically to your Google Reader. That's pretty efficient, it must just generate one feed for every webpage requested, and serves it up to all users of Google Reader who asks for it.

Just as, with a "normal" feed, Google must effectively just fetch it once for all subscribed Google Reader users (though they must store several copies on their own servers), rather than fetch it afresh for every user.

How often does Google Reader check for updates?

As far as I can tell from my limited testing, it's checked at least 2 times a day, at about 9 am GMT, noon GMT - so perhaps it's 3 hourly?

How to get changes to a page by email

Here's a little trick for using Google Reader's new "follow changes" feature to receive your tracked webpage changes by email, rather than feed.

The advantage of email of course is that it comes to you, whereas with a feed you have to remember to go and check it - unless you have your feed reader open all the time, but then you still need to go look at it. (Maybe an add on to make it sound a "Ping!" when a new feed item arrives? I use a Chrome extension Google Reader Checker that shows in the Chrome toolbar the number of unread feed items, myself.)

Anyway, here's how to get Google Reader follow changes by email, free:

1. Subscribe to the page so Google creates a feed for it, as mentioned above.
2. While viewing the generated feed (go to it by clicking the "from … Google feed by Google" link in the feed item, if you're not already there), click the "Show details" link on the right:
   
   
   
3. Copy the Feed URL link http://whatever (it doesn't look like a link, but it is, so you can rightclick it and copy):
   
   
   
4. Now go to FeedMyInbox (a free service) and paste the feed URL in the upper box, and the email address you want notifications sent to in the lower box, and hit Submit.
5. You'll get an email asking you to click a confirmation link, so do so.
6. You can also create an account with FeedMyInbox by clicking another link in their first email, so you can confirm new subscriptions direct without having to do the confirmation link thang. More convenient.

And that's it, you can now get your Follow Changes notices by email.

How could Google Reader's "follow" feature be improved?

Before Google Reader's new feature was introduced, I used veteran tracker service WatchThatPage (see their FAQ), which also lets you subscribe to webpages and get email notifications of changes (or view the changes on a single webpage). I chose email as again you have to remember to go to the webpage to see the changes, else.

That service is free, though if you use it for business or ask them to watch a lot of pages they say they want a fee. I hear that lots of organisations use it for business current awareness. WTP don't seem very commercially minded though, as I know enterprises who've requested info on fees in order to pay them, and they've never responded. (Personally I think they should just put up a list of fees based on the number of times they have to check a week for a particular user (number of pages x frequency of checking) and provide Paypal or other payment details, and I think they'd pull in a decent amount. But there we go.)

There are some very helpful aspects of the WTP service, which monitors any http (but not https) web pages:

• the user can choose exactly how often and when a particular page should be checked, and use "channels" to get separate emails for selected groups of webpages
• it helps eliminate false positives - web pages that seem to have changed, but not in substance - by letting users report "page problems". E.g. where the only change on a page is the current date. (I've not used Google's Follow Changes long enough to know if it's smart enough to ignore those kinds of changes yet)
• similarly users can report if it the alert says everything has changed when only part of a page has changed, and they adjust things accordingly.

Opportunities for Google to appeal to enterprise users

Google Reader could be really valuable for enterprise users to keep up to date with business-related information, what information managers and librarians call "current awareness", but oddly enough Google don't try to tout its use for that. They should, especially in conjunction with the ability to get Google Alerts as a feed.

Google should include Google Reader in Google Apps, which it markets to organisations, and develop Google Reader's features with the aim of making it more enterprise-friendly.

For example, with paying enterprises:

• timing - let users choose if they want Google to check certain followed pages more often than the standard, e.g. 5 times a day at specific times set by the user, like WatchThatPage do
• timezones and date stamps - let users set timezones for Reader, so the times shown on feed items are correct - and in addition clarify how timestamping on feeds works; it should show the time the feed item was received by Google (or the time the page was updated), rather than the (variable) time the individual gets round to opening the feed item. In business it's often useful or indeed essential to know the timing of things
  
• adapting to problems - provide a feature like WatchThatPage's to enable false positives to be eliminated e.g. ignoring changes in the current date, and similarly false negatives
• follow WatchThatPage! - basically just see how WatchThatPage does it (they've had years of experience), and do it at least as well. Buy them out, whatever...
  

I have other thoughts on how Google Reader (and other Google products) can be made more enterprise-friendly, but I'll leave that to another blog post.

Tags: Google Reader, tip, trick, tricks, email, current awareness, webpage monitoring, webpage tracking, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Google Reader keyboard shortcuts

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I notice the list of keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) for Google Reader on Google's Help/FAQ pages isn't comprehensive (e.g. it's missing: e for email, v for view original webpage, / to move the cursor to the search box).

To get the most recent full list of keyboard shortcuts, while you're in Google Reader just type a ? and you'll get a translucent popup with the list.

Or you can access that list of Google Reader keyboard shortcuts here. I use 'em all the time. (Just wish there was a Shift v for opening the original item in a background tab/window).

Tags: Google Reader, keyboard shortcuts, hotkeys, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Feed publishers – top 12 best practices

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How should a website implement feeds? Below is my wishlist of essential to-dos for any website that provides feeds (reflecting my top 12 feed annoyances but of course), in the form of an open letter to website owners.

In my view these are the minimum best practices that web sites which publish feeds should follow. And here's a tip: how not to implement feeds is to omit any one of these steps! (except no. 12, which in my view is optional unless the site has lots of feeds).

Some guilty parties are named and shamed below. However, choccies & bouquets go to the BBC. Kiss kiss. If in doubt on feeds, the general rule is, see how Auntie did it, and do it that way.

Dear Website Owners

Please, please, please:

1. Feeds, feeds, give us feeds! Just give us feeds. HTML webpages are soooo 20th century.
2. Feeds for all periodically changing pages. Provide feeds for all pages on your site which readers may want to check regularly – not just news but also events, publications etc.
   1. Example: Citizens Online offers a feed for news, but not new publications. (And their “What is RSS?” link doesn’t work, which is ironic)
3. Feeds per topic (and ideally one global feed too, see no. 12). Give us separate feeds for different pages or topics, so users can choose to subscribe to the individual feeds whose subject matter interests them, rather than having to get everything from your site in a single “all in one” feed.
   1. Example of good practices: BBC’s feeds; Out-Law.com’s per topic feeds.
4. Autodiscovery on all relevant pages. Enable autodiscovery on all pages which have feed equivalents (and point ‘em to the right feed addresses!).
   1. Counter-example: Out-Law.Com (as an example of bad practice for a change) don’t provide auto-discovery code on their news page.
   2. Amazon don’t provide auto-discovery on their feeds page for their news releases.
5. Autodiscovery on home page. Also provide autodiscovery for your feeds on your site’s home page, not just your individual news or other sub-pages.
   1. Out-Law.Com don’t provide auto-discovery on their main page either. (You can still find their feed address via Google Reader, but that’s due to Google coding cleverness, not auto-discovery on Out-Law’s site.)
6. Display feed icons / chicklets on your news / blog pages. Include clearly visible feed icons / chicklets on all pages which have feed equivalents. Don’t leave ‘em out (my emphasis): “The canonical use of the feed icon is on a web page containing information (such as blog posts, news articles, and so on) that is also made available via web syndication, with the icon linking to a URL for the web feed.”
   
   And don’t just have just a text link saying “feed” (like this example, see top left). People are visual animals, we tend to look for nice visible icons.
1. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has a press releases page, but the feed URL for press releases isn’t even hinted at on that page – only on another separate page. You even have to search for “RSS” to find the page listing feeds! Easy to find, not.
2. Newish information law blog Amberhawk have a “Subscribe to this blog's feed” link, but it’s small text & not obvious – and there are no chicklets.
7. Link your feed icons properly. Feed icons should be linked to the addresses of the correct associated feeds – i.e. to the correct feed URLs. People expect to be able to rightclick feed icons to get your feed address.
   1. Don’t link the icon to another webpage that lists the feed URLs (ahem Google Groups feeds! scroll to bottom of page, feed icon doesn’t link to a feed but a webpage; smacks too to New Scientist and Amazon). Feed icons are meant to link to feeds, not webpages! (my emphasis): “The canonical use of the feed icon is on a web page containing information (such as blog posts, news articles, and so on) that is also made available via web syndication, with the icon linking to a URL for the web feed.”
   2. Don’t link chicklets to feed URLs that don’t actually work! (smacks to the European Commission – the RSS dropdown links only work in Internet Explorer, no other browser; and trying to choose a language (French etc) from the very shy Javascript dropdown list is almost impossible unless you’re very dextrous of mouse, so there’s an accessibility no no there. And the XML link on that page makes e.g. Google Reader and Bloglines choke.)
8. Title your feed. Give proper descriptive titles for feeds (and for individual items). “Site feed” just doesn’t cut it (whose??), “(untitled)” is just as bad. “X’s feed” (for a site named X) is slightly better, “X news”, “X publications on topic Y”, “X events”, “X what’s new” better still.
9. Give us full feeds. Provide full feeds, or at least the option of full feeds, and not just headlines or excerpts. (The European Commission’s press releases feed is next to useless especially for the Midday Express.)
1. The only thing I don’t like about the BBC is that they don’t provide full feeds, only 1 liners, on their news sites. (They have full feeds on their blogs, at least.)
2. Too many sites only provide short feeds. I guess they want readers to click through to their sites in order to view their advertising. But now there’s services like AdSense for Feeds, why not put out full feeds with ads? And the ad point is no excuse for public service sites like the BBC.
10. No false “new” feeds. Produce your feeds properly so that they don’t always get marked as “new” whenever something irrelevant changes on your source page, and pop up again on your users’ feed readers. It wastes their time having to check feeds which supposedly have new content but don’t.
11. Help de-duplicate items. If you put out several feeds which may sometimes contain the same new item because it’s relevant to more than one main topic, don’t forget people might subscribe to all those feeds. So help enable their news readers to de-duplicate items by encoding your items appropriately. Otherwise, having the same item pop up in different feeds is a time-waster for your users / customers. (I know not all feed readers can de-duplicate, but at least for those that incorporate the facility, help them do it!)
12. (Optional) Feed directory and global feed. [EDIT: sorry, correcting bad editing after copy/pasting!] If you offer a ton of feeds, consider offering a single “directory” page listing all available feeds, as an extra service to users, and a single global feed that combines all your feeds, especially if you’ve done no. 3 above - but do that in addition to (not instead of) the above.
    
    Why? Because it’s very helpful to have the option of an “all in one” feed for users who want everything from your site but don’t want to have to subscribe one by one to every single individual feed you offer, and it also means that the user who subscribes to the single all in one feed can avoid getting duplicate items (see 11).
    
    If you decide to provide a directory page listing your site’s feeds:
    1. make the directory page easy to find, at a minimum from your home page and pages that have associated feeds, or on a search for “feeds” or “RSS” on your site
    2. don’t attach the directory page’s URL to the standard feed icon! Yes I know I’m repeating 7.1, but this bugs me
    3. list all your site’s available feeds on the directory page, not just a random selection (e.g. the IPPR feeds page doesn’t list their podcast feed)
    4. make sure the feed addresses listed on the directory page are correct and actually work.

(For those new to feeds see my detailed howto guidance / tutorial introduction on the basics of publishing feeds, primarily aimed at bloggers, and my very basic intro for new feed users.)

Tags: newsfeed, newsfeed, RSS feed, RSS feeds, wishlist, annoyances, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Using feeds: feed subscription problems? troubleshooting (2)

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This post follows on from my basic introductory guide / primer on feeds, for the beginner who wants to start using news feeds aka RSS feeds.

Here I cover how to troubleshoot the all too frequent issue that arises when your feed reader or aggregator can’t seem to find a feed when you point it to a website or web page to try to subscribe to a feed.

How can I subscribe to page X on site Y when my feed reader can’t find a feed?

This is a frustrating problem for people new to using feeds (and indeed people not new to feeds!). There are workarounds to solve it.

The solution depends on the reason why trying to subscribe didn’t work when you gave your reader the website address. (If you don’t know the first thing about feeds, never fear, just read my short feeds primer.)

Here are suggested troubleshooting steps first, with reasons why later (for the curious) – if you’d like to know what autodiscovery etc means, just see the last part of this post:

1. Try giving your feed reader another web address – not the home page of the site, but the exact web address of its news page or events page, whatever webpage it is that you’re trying to subscribe to.
2. If that still doesn’t work, either (a) there is a feed, but there’s no autodiscovery code for the feed on the equivalent webpage (wag finger at the site owner, naughty bad, there’s really no excuse for not adding autodiscovery); or (b) there’s no feed for that page at all (slap on wrist for site owner, even badder).
3. Let’s consider (a) first. This means you’ll have to manually look for the feed address and add it to your reader:
1. Is there a feed icon? Go to the webpage you want to subscribe to. Hunt for a feed icon (called a chicklet) that looks like this, in varying sizes: or XML or . Rightclick the icon, save the link, and paste the linked address into your feed reader's "add" facility. It could be a text link, not an icon or image, it doesn’t matter; you just want to save that address and use it.
1. Pitfall / trap. If that still doesn’t work, the site may have given you the wrong link. Feed icons are meant to link to the relevant feed addresses. But I’ve seen sites which link the chicklet to a webpage that lists the site’s feed addresses!
2. So try leftclicking on the link instead, and if it goes to a webpage, you know what they’ve done. Take the feed address you want from that page – hopefully they’ve provided a feed for the page you need.
2. No feed icons or feed links? Some sites offer feeds, but don’t bother to include feed icons on the pages that have feeds. Boo to them, spank spank! Those sites lazily have just one webpage (or more) where they list the feeds available for their site. So, go find that page. Search the website for “feed”, “newsfeed” or “RSS”. If you can find the page and it has the feed address you need, then you know what to do.
3. No feed at all? OK, if none of that worked, the site owner probably hasn’t bothered to supply a feed for the page you want. Give them a good kick, then go read my separate post on how to “subscribe to” (track changes on) a webpage that has no feed – which is coming up in future (see, who sez I can’t do cliffhangers?)

Why can’t I subscribe to the news page on site X? Why won’t it work?

For readers who want to know why trying to subscribe to a feed sometimes doesn’t work.

1. A feed is basically a copy of the content on the site or blog, converted into a special format suitable for feed readers. It even has its own web address (URL) – separate from the webpage’s address.
2. Remember this: feed address, web address, not the same. Just as a site can have different webpages with different addresses, its various feeds will have different addresses too.
3. So you can only subscribe to a feed for a webpage if the web site concerned:
   1. provides feeds in the first place (i.e. converts their webpage content into feed format – this can be done automatically on blogs, but sadly not on many basic websites), AND
   2. provides a feed for the page you want.
4. Many sites don’t produce feeds at all; even sites that provide feeds don’t bother to create a feed for every single webpage on the site. They don’t need a feed for every web page, granted - but they certainly ought to provide feeds for all pages that contain periodically updated info which their visitors or users might be interested in knowing about. Like news or events.
5. Also, feed readers need to be given the correct address of the feed you want to subscribe to (else they’ll cry or choke, complain and say “Oi, there’s no feed there!”). For this, they depend on:
   1. you, to manually enter the exact feed address (if you know it) when you add a feed, or
   2. (a) you, to give the reader the website’s address, and then (b) the website, to then tell the reader (behind the scenes) what the feed address is. (Remember, the web address is not the same as the feed address).
6. How the latter works is, the reader goes to the web address you’ve given it, then checks special hidden code on that webpage to get the feed address (this is known as “feed autodiscovery” because the reader discovers the feed address automatically from being given the website address).
7. However, as you’ve guessed, it’s up to the site owner to include this special code on the webpage. If they don’t, the po’ lil reader can’t do auto-discovery, try as it may.
8. Also note that the code is attached to the web page, not the site as a whole - a site author might put autodiscovery code on one webpage but not another, or put different codes on different pages (as they would have different associated feeds – e.g. one feed for news, one for publications, etc). Or, of course, not put any at all..
9. As for wrong links on feed icons - there are conventions / guidelines on using feed icons. The conventions exist for a reason. I quote, my emphasis: “The canonical use of the feed icon is on a web page containing information (such as blog posts, news articles, and so on) that is also made available via web syndication, with the icon linking to a URL for the web feed.” Sites which don’t follow the conventions make life much harder, unnecessarily, for their users – including their actual and potential customers. I have no idea why they don’t sort out their feeds and related webpages properly, it’s really not difficult. But there we go. I hope these troubleshooting tricks and tips are helpful.
   

Tags: feed, newsfeed, newsfeeds, RSS, Atom, guide, basics, howto, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Publish your Feedburner feed in realtime

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If you have a Feedburner feed for your blog or site, you can now elect to have your newsfeed published as a real time stream using what’s called the PubSubHubbub protocol.

(Normally, updates to feeds are only sent out / fetched periodically, not as and when it happens.)

To do this, just activate PingShot – see this Google post for how to turn on PingShot.

I don’t mind a time gap myself because sometimes, sod’s law, immediately after I publish a post I spot a typo I’d missed before, so I like having the chance to fix it quickly before it goes out.

For those new to news feeds, see:

• very basic short primer on feeds (for users not publishers)
• practical summary guide on Feedburner and
• more info on using Feedburner as a publisher.

Those interested may also check out my detailed introduction to feeds.

Tags: PubSubHubbub, real time feeds, realtime feeds, real-time feeds, PingShot, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Using feeds: introduction / guide for absolute beginners 1

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This is a primer on how to use feeds / newsfeeds. I’ve done detailed posts on feeds before; this is just a brief intro for the intelligent non-techie, based on helping a friend get started using feeds, as there seems to be more non-geek interest in it now. Feeds finally going mainstream?

This first post (of a series) is a basic overview of feeds. Later posts will be more tutorial like, and will cover step by step how to use and subscribe to feeds (using the free Google Reader), including troubleshooting tips - all from the viewpoint of a feed user (rather than feed publisher, which was my previous main focus).

What are feeds or RSS feeds, what use are they?

1. Instead of having to go round manually checking your fave news websites or blogs regularly for added or updated content, just fetch their content to you in one place, and check that. Examples:
   1. News or press releases
   2. Publications – papers or reports issued
   3. Forthcoming events
   4. What’s New page (combining all the above, perhaps)
   5. Blog posts.
      
      
2. Feeds are much quicker to use, not just because you don’t have to visit multiple websites anymore, but because (at least on Google Reader) you can skim through all the latest “headlines” at once, on one page (rather than opening each folder individually). Then, you just open the ones you’re interested in reading further. Potentially feeds are a real time saver.
   
   Analogy: imagine your email has folders for different types of emails, and all incoming emails get “filed” into the appropriate folders automatically on arrival. But one “folder” called “All new mail” has all recent email for all folders; you just look at that one folder to skim the subject lines of all new emails, without having to file any emails manually. You can still look at folders one by one if you like, or search across all folders; the “All new mail” folder (“All items” in Google Reader) is just a convenient way to see what’s new fast, at a glance.
   
   
3. You fetch (subscribe to) the content you want via feeds / newsfeeds / RSS feeds / Atom feeds (people use those words interchangeably to stand for the same thing).
   
   
4. Some feeds are full (a complete copy of the substantive content on the equivalent webpage), some are partial (only an excerpt, and you have to click through to the source website if you want to read the full item). Most feed users prefer sites to offer full feeds, as it’s more convenient for the user. (On ACE I offer the option of full feeds.)
   
   
5. Software that regularly fetches the content for you and aggregates it all in one place is called a feed reader / news reader / aggregator. The reader can be software on your computer, or it can be on the Web (where you can login to it from any computer).
   
   
6. You can also use feeds not just to track new publications, but also to get alerts or updates on topics you’re interested in, right in your feed reader - e.g. mentions of a particular phrase in Google News or on websites or blog posts. Including from sites you don’t subscribe to.
   
   Those are really feeds for the results of periodic searches. (To set one up - just do the search, and subscribe to the search results.)

How do I subscribe to feeds?

1. Sign up for a feed reader, or download and install one (more info on feed readers). Most are free.
2. Add the feeds you want to your reader (how to subscribe to feeds).

I’ll be doing a separate post later on the basics of exactly how to set up and use feeds on Google Reader, ie a step by step tutorial – look out for that if you want to learn more.

But trying to subscribe for a feed doesn’t work!

Too many sites are awful in terms of their support for feed and feed use. Even sites that provide feeds don’t always (and they should) provide them in such a way that feed readers can “get” the feeds automatically from knowing the website’s main web address (URL).

This is a source of frustration for many new users of feeds. I’ll cover how to troubleshoot and work around feed subscription problems in a future post. (Update: link to that post added.)

What if the site or page I want to subscribe to doesn’t provide a feed?

There are ways to get updates of changes to webpages with no associated feeds.

Again, I’ll be covering a workaround in a future post.

But I want more info now!!

The curious or keen may if they wish read my detailed introduction to feeds.

Tags: feed, newsfeed, newsfeeds, RSS, Atom, guide, basics, primer, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Blogger: how to add email address to feed

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How do you include your email address in your feed, if you're using Blogger? (See my intro to feeds for beginners if you're new to feeds.)

THE QUICKIE

To show your proper email address in your feed (as opposed to noreply@blogger.com), in your Blogger profile tick "Show my email address", save - and your feed will thereafter display the email address entered in your profile's Identity section.

THE LONG & SLOW

Your blog's feed can potentially list your email address. That can be useful for things like Feedburner's FeedFlare, which lets you add an "Email The Author" link to each post in your feed (as opposed to your blog webpage) so that a feed subscriber can click the link to, you guessed it, send you an email.

But previously, there was no point in Blogger authors activating "Email The Author" in FeedFlare, because any attempt to do so only sent subscribers' attempted emails to the black hole that is "noreply@blogger.com" (and it certainly won't reach you!):


However, a recent upgrade to Blogger ("Blog feeds optionally include your email address") means that you can now display your correct email details in your feed, and even add "Email The Author" links to your Feedburner feed if you want to (but there are downsides, as I'll come to).

It's optional. So, how do you take up the option to include your email address in your feed?

How to display your email address in your feed

1. Sign in to the Blogger Dashboard.
2. Click "Edit Profile" on the right.
3. Under Privacy, tick "Show my email address" - this means whatever email address is entered in the following Identity section of your profile will be used:
4. Scroll to the end and click "Save Profile".

This adds your email address to your feed behind the scenes:

How to activate Email The Author in FeedFlare

1. Sign in to your Feedburner account.
2. Click the name of the feed you want to add the links to,
3. Click the Optimize tab.
4. Click FeedFlare on the left.
5. Against "Email The Author", tick the "Feed" column:
   
   
   (you can tick the box under the "Site" column too if you display FeedFlares on your blog webpage and want the email links to be visible there, but you may not need to if you're on Blogger as choosing to show your email address will display it in your Blogger profile, which can be reached through your sidebar if you've chosen to display your profile.)
   
   
6. Scroll to the end, click Save or Activate.

Then, in your Feedburner feed you'll see a new "Email The Author" link:

- and subscribers can click it to email you:

What's the downside?

The way Blogger have currently set it up, it's all or nothing: if you tick the box to show your email address, then your email address also shows on your profile page (when you click View from the Dashboard, or the "View my complete profile" link from your blog sidebar), not in just your feed:



Now I do give my email address in my blog sidebar anyway, but I've done it in such a way that (hopefully!) spammers can't harvest it. The way the email address is displayed in your Blogger profile makes it much easier for spambots to grab your address. UPDATE: it's entirely my bad, Team Blogger are entitled to one free spanking (just one, mind!) - Blogger do obfuscate the email address with Javascript, adding extra stuff to the address to fool the spambots; a dedicated spammer could theoretically figure out exactly what they're doing and strip out the extra bits, but they would have to be targeting just Blogger profile addresses, which seems unlikely.

Personally I'd have preferred it if Blogger had provided a new section in the Edit Profile page where you could fill in an email address just for the purposes of displaying it in your feed, but could choose not have it displayed in your Blogger profile (if you wanted that).

Also, if you have more than one Blogger blog, there's no ability to display a different email address for each blog - you have to use the same email address for all of them.

So, I've not ticked that box in my Blogger profile, myself - but of course, it's up to you what you want to do for your own blog.

PS. of the other new Blogger features, I can say "Bagus, terima kasih Team Blogger!" but I've absolultely no idea what "spam interstitials" are. Can anyone please enlighten me?

Tags: blogging, email address, FeedFlare, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Blogger: unofficial feed FAQ

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Here's a guide to some fundamental feeds info for bloggers who use Blogger / Blogspot.com blogs or just people who read Blogger/Blogspot blogs, with some explanation for beginners in the middle, a few tips and tricks on using query parameters, and a quick reference guide at the end.

You can use this info not only in relation to your own blog, if you're a Blogger user, but also in order to view the feeds of other Blogger blogs that you read, in a way that better suits you - e.g., knowing the tricks I'll show you, you can -

• read the last 100 posts on the Googleblog on one page, even though they're no longer in their default feed and the default feed only shows 25 posts
  
• check the 10 most recently updated posts on a particular Blogger blog (as opposed to the 10 most recently published posts)
• view, in summary or excerpts format only, all posts with a particular label from a particular Blogger blog
• (UPDATE:) submit sitemaps of your entire Blogger blog, including all your old posts, to the search engines to make sure they index your blog comprehensively
• ensure Feedburner always shows to your feed subscribers just your most recently published posts, not old posts you've recently updated.
  

Note: to view the examples quickly, just click the link in Firefox. IE isn't so reliable for viewing feeds.

I start with some exposition for beginners.

What are feeds, news feeds or newsfeeds, web feeds, RSS feeds etc?

Same difference, mostly. See my introductory tutorial guides on What are feeds (including Atom vs RSS); How to publish and publicise a feed, for bloggers; How to use Feedburner; Quick start guide to using feeds with Feedburner for the impatient; and Podcasting.

Blogger feed basics

Blogspot, custom domain, ftp. You can publish via Blogger in 2 different ways. What can be done with your Blogger feed will, for some things, depend on which method you use:

• Blogspot. Host your blog on Blogger's own Blogspot.com - i.e.you have:
  
  • a blogspot.com URL or web address such as http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com - most people use this method - or
  • a custom domain (so that your blog's URL doesn't have blogspot.com at the end) which is hosted on Blogspot behind the scenes, e.g. this blog, or
    
  
  
• FTP. Host your blog elsewhere, i.e. store the blog files on your own servers or a third party host (instead of on Blogspot), and publish via Blogger using FTP publishing.
  

Your public feed. Your feed is only publicly accessible if (1) you've enabled the feed in your blogs settings, and (2) your blog is not a private blog (private blogs don't have public feeds). All public Blogger blogs (whether blogspot, custom domain or published via FTP) with enabled feeds will always have publicly accessible feeds stored at blogger.com.

Feed content. Blogger users can have separate feeds for posts, comments, and per post comments (i.e. a feed containing all comments made on one particular post only). You can even have feeds for labels.

Feed length/type. You can set your feeds to either Full, Short (summary), or None. (More on full vs. short i.e. partial/excerpts/summary feeds.) This can be done separately with the posts feed, the comments feed and also the per-post comment feeds.

The basic Blogger feed address URL formats are summarised in the Blogger Help.

Posts feed address

Whichever way you publish (blogspot, custom domain or ftp), your feed will always be accessible at:

• Atom feed
  http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/posts/default
  
  
• RSS feed
  http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/posts/default?alt=rss
  

- first changing BLOGID to your blog's unique ID on Blogger, of course (how to find out a Blogger blog's blog ID?).

This URL works even if the blog's feed has been burned through Feedburner.

Example - Kirk's blog feed is at http://www.blogger.com/feeds/20460175/posts/default; and this blog's feed can be found at

Note and tip. If you publish via ftp, the above URLs are for a separate copy of your feed which is stored on Blogger's servers, not the URL for feed files stored on your own server, of course. So an FTP-published blog has an accessible feed on blogger.com (as long as it's not a private blog) as well as its own posts feed on its own domain/servers (uploaded by Blogger when publishing, as full or summary depending on the blog owner's settings).

Feed length or type. The "default" in the URL is essential (if you try just http://www.blogger.com/feeds/20460175/posts/ for instance, you'll get an error message). What's it for? The "default" simply means, show this feed in whatever version has been set as the default on that Blogger blog's feed settings - if the blog owner has set it to output a full feed, the http://www.blogger.com/feeds/20460175/posts/default URL will show the full feed; but if the owner has set it for a short feed only, "default" shows a feed with only excerpts.

So here's the first trick. If the blog owner has set their default feed as "full", but you only want to see an excerpts feed or partial feed, you can get it by tweaking the URL.

Examples

This blog is set to output a full feed by default so http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/default gets you a full feed. To get a short feed instead, use http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/summary.

To get my summary feed in RSS format, you'd use http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8849059/posts/summary?alt=rss (note that http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/summary?alt=RSS doesn't work. Note that if trying these tricks using the custom domain of a Blogger blog doesn't get you anywhere, the Blogger.com version using the blog ID in the URL will always work, as should the blogspot.com version of the custom domain blog, if any.)

This tip lets you get a summary feed from a full feed, but not vice versa. If you try to get a full feed from a blog which has been set to output only a short feed, you'll only see an error message like "The feed specified by [url] is not enabled". You can cut down, but not expand beyond, what the blog owner has chosen to allow.

Posts feed address - Blogspot or custom domain alternative feed address

If your blog files are hosted on Blogspot, i.e. it's a blogspot.com or custom domain blog, your feed's web address will also always be at:

• Atom feed
  http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
  or
  http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/posts/default
  
  
• RSS feed
  http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
  or
  http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
  

- again first changing BLOGNAME to your usual blog name or CUSTOMDOMAIN to your custom domain, of course
(Alternatively you can think of it as adding "/feeds/posts/default" etc after the end of your usual blog URL).

Note. Even if you use a custom domain, you're still hosting your blog files on Blogger/Blogspot behind the scenes, so the blogspot.com feed addresses will also work. If you changed to a custom domain and kept your old blogspot.com address, you can use that. (Can't remember your old blogspot.com address? In the Blogger dashboard, Settings, Publishing, click Switch to: blogspot.com to see your Blog*spot address; but do not Save Settings, just close or back out of that page!)

Note. For backward compatibility with Old Blogger, for non-FTP blogs you can also get a feed at
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml
or
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/atom.xml
(or the RSS equivalent if you change "atom.xml" to "rss.xml"). However you should move to using the above URLs, going forward.

Examples

ACE's RSS feed can be found at several URLs:
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss and
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8849059/posts/default?alt=rss

While for Kirk's default Atom feed, you can use any of these URLs:
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/20460175/posts/default
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/summary
(Since his feed is set to "short" in his Blogger settings, the "default" URL will go to his summary feeds, and no full feed will be available.)

Or
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/rss.xml
(available, but you should transition to the new feed URL formats.)

Comments feed address

As with posts, the blog comment feed (a feed for all comments made on all posts) for a particular Blogger blog can be set to Full, Short or None, and you can only access the comment feed of a blog if it isn't a private blog.

To work out the URL for the comments feed of a Blogger blog, it's exactly the same as for posts feeds, including the ability to get full or summary comments feed - except you just change "posts" to "comments" i.e.
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/comments/TYPE

and, for non-FTP blogs only, alternative additional URLs at
http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/TYPE or
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/comments/TYPE

- where of course you should first change BLOGID, YOURBLOG or CUSTOMDOMAIN to the one for the blog you want, and change TYPE to the length of feed you want to get i.e. default, summary or full.

Note: for FTP blogs, the only way to access the comments feed is through the blogger.com address - currently, no comments feed is uploaded to an FTP blog's own servers, only the posts feed is uploaded.

Examples

The summary Atom feed for all comments made on my blog can be reached via:
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/comments/summary
http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/summary or
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8849059/comments/summary

The full feed for all comments on this blog:
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/comments/full
http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full or
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8849059/comments/full
(or changing "full" to "default" would also work as this blog outputs a full feed as default.)

And one way to get the RSS feed for all comments in summary form only:
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/comments/summary?alt=rss

Per post comment feeds

Per-post comment feeds, i.e. a feed of all comments made on one particular post only, are again available only if the blog owner has turned on per-post comment feeds (I turned mine off, for instance), and it's not a private blog.

To get the URL of a per-post comment feed, use the URL as for the main comment feed, but add the ID of that post after "/feeds/" e.g.:
http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/POSTID/comments/TYPE

Two ways to find out the post ID:

• as mentioned in the Blogger Help, if the blog owner is logged in to the Blogger Dashboard, in the Edit Posts view (making sure Published or All is selected if necessary), just mouseover the 'Edit' link next to a particular post, and its postId will be displayed in the browser's status bar as the number just after the "postID=" bit - or
  
  
• if you're not the owner of a Blogger blog but want to find out a post ID, and they've enabled "Email this post to a friend" or similar (the envelope icon , usually at the end of the post - Dashboard>Settings>Basic>Show Email Post links set to Yes), just hover over that link. Again the postId will be the number after "postID=". (If there's no such link because it's not been enabled, I'm not sure how you'd find out the post ID.)
  

Example

To get the feed for all comments on Frivolous Fragments' post on heroic materialism (whose post ID is 3253976247961230387), I'd use one of these URLs:
http://frivolousfragments.blogspot.com/feeds/3253976247961230387/comments/default or
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/5281402533658280011/3253976247961230387/comments/default (as I can tell the blog ID from viewing source on that blog).

Label feeds

Feeds for labels are available as well (if the posts feed has been enabled on the blog and it's not a private blog).

Unlike comments and per-post comments feeds, you can't set feeds for labels separately. Labels are a subset of posts, and as such take on the same settings enabled for posts (full or short).

You access a label feed by taking the post feed URL, adding "/-" and then "/labelname". Again, with ftp blogs you can only access the label feed at the blogger.com URL.

Example

Here's 2 ways to access the feed for the label "Blogger" on Kirk's blog:
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/20460175/posts/default/-/Blogger
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger

Or to get all posts labelled "consumer" on this blog, in summary format only (not the full post):
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/summary/-/consumer

Note. Label names are case sensitive (so to find all posts labelled "food" don't use "Food"), and label names should also be URL encoded for any special characters. In other words to get a feed for a label whose name includes a special character like "bits&bobs", you need to make it "bits%26bobs". So look up the % substitute or use a converter for any special characters which appear in the label name, namely: ! * ' ( ) ; : @ & = + $ , / ? % # [ ]

Multiple labels ("and" label search). You can even query for multiple labels by adding the additional label name with a slash ("AND" operation ), e.g.
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger/Google
will return posts labeled both Blogger and Google but not posts that have only been labelled "Blogger", or only labelled "Google".

Labels do not currently support an OR operation - although the base Google Data APIs do, so it may become available on Blogger one day. (If it does it most likely will be done with a | character (URL encoded to %7C) between the label names.)

Query parameters - tips & tricks, the fun stuff!

Blogger feeds on blogspot and at blogger.com both now support a wide range of useful query parameters. Most won't be that useful to the basic blogger, but some are. And many will be useful if you like to play with your feeds.

"Query parameters" may sound like gobbledygook if you're a non-geek but bear with me until the examples at the end (just ignore the developer-y bits) and you'll see that it's quite straightforward and potentially very handy to know how to use them.

To use a query parameter, you first append a question mark (?) to the end of the feed URL you are requesting (make sure there is no slash \ immediately before the ?), and then add the appropiate query in a name=value format. You can use multiple query parameters, separating them with an ampersand (&). It doesn't really matter in what order the query parameters are added.

I'll just list all of these in a table, and I'll give some working examples at the end. The first column is the parameter name, the second is valid values with defaults and notes about their usage.

Note. Again, query paraments will only work with the blogger.com URL, for FTP blogs (whereas for custom domain or blogspot.com blogs they'll just work). Also note query parameters won't work with atom.xml or rss.xml feed URLs.

Name	Value
alt	atom Will return output in ATOM 1.0 Format (wikipedia) (THIS IS THE DEFAULT) rss Will return output in RSS 2.0 Format (wikipedia) json Will return output as a raw JSON (wikipedia) object json-in-script Returns JSON object in a javascript function - use the callback parameter to specify the function name
callback	name of function Used with the json-in-script alt parameter to specify the name of the callback function This parameter has no defaults
orderby	updated Returns the feed sorted by last updated status published Returns the feed sorted by published date (THIS IS THE DEFAULT)
start-index	integer Sets the number of the first entry to be returned. The default is 1
max-results	integer Sets the maximum number of entries to be returned. The default is 25. Most Blogger feeds currently are throttled at an upper limit of 100 though sometimes I've been able to get 500 posts in one feed
published-min published-max	Date in RFC 3339 format These set boundaries on the results returned by published date. The lower bound is inclusive. The upper bound is exclusive. Like everything it should be URL encoded. Unencoded example 2007-05-03T23:59:59-05:00 (see RFC 3339 para 5.8 for more examples) The same URL encoded is 2007-05-03T23%3A59%3A59-05%3A00
updated-min, updated-max	Date in RFC 3339 format The same as the above, only the boundaries are set by "last updated" date

Examples

To see the 10 posts in this Blogger blog which have been most recently updated (not the 10 most recently published posts), use e.g.:
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated
(You'll see that this is quite different from the posts I most recently published
http://www.consumingexperience.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=published)

To view the last 30 posts from the Google Public Policy blog, even though it only has 12 posts on the main page and the default number of posts output in a Blogger feed is 25, try:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=30

If I've been offline for a few months and want to see just the posts published on Kent's blog since 18 January 2008, I'd use:
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/5523094/posts/default?published-min=2008-01-18T00%3A00%3A00&orderby=published
(to view posts published between 2 dates, I'd add "&published-max=" for the upper bound).

To view a Blogger blog's feed starting at the 5th entry in the feed (i.e. not the latest post in that blog, but the 5th latest post), and return just the next 5 results, in a JSON object with a callback function named outputFeed, the URL would be
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=outputFeed
&start-index=5&max-results=5

Even more information (non-geeks can ignore)

OpenSearch elements

Blogger feeds return 3 OpenSearch (Wikipedia) elements in the feed header (location varies depending on format type)

1. openSearch:totalResults - the total number of results in the query (not necessarily the number returned in that feed)
   
2. openSearch:startIndex - the index number of the first search result returned in the query
3. openSearch:itemsPerPage -the number of entries returned from the query

Possible uses: find out the total number of posts and/or comments in a blog.

Rel links

Blogger feeds also return several link elements with rel attributes in the feed header.

1. self - <link rel="self" type=" ..." href="..."> Link pointing to the query returned. Type and href will depend on the query requested
2. next - <link rel="next" type="..." href="..."> Link pointing to the next set of results if the results are chunked (more results than the max-results set)
3. previous - <link rel="previous" type="..." href="..."> Link pointing to the previous set of results from a chunked query result
   

Uses: can be used to paginate through a long list of results

Secret feature - post feeds are podcast enabled
The API now also supports adding enclosures to a post (a link element with the rel="enclosure" set and a valid URL with mime-type and optionally a content length set). This can only be done via the API as of now, but support in the Blogger posting interface should come at some point. In other words, unless you know how to post via the API you can't use it yet, but it's there waiting for the Blogger interface to use and feeds can start returning them attached to each post entry now.

REFERENCE GUIDE to Blogger feeds and feed URLs

Basic structure of feed URLs -

http://www.blogger.com/[POSTID/]feeds/BLOGID/CONTENT/TYPE[/-/LABELNAME1[/LABELNAME2]][?alt=&orderby=&max-results=&...]

plus alternative additional URLs for non-ftp blogs only -
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/[POSTID/]CONTENT/TYPE[/-/LABELNAME1[/LABELNAME2]][?alt=&orderby=&max-results=&...] or
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/[POSTID/]CONTENT/TYPE[/-/LABELNAME1[/LABELNAME2]][?alt=&orderby=&max-results=&...]

where:
CONTENT is posts or feeds
TYPE is full or summary or (is full or summary depending on how the blog owner has set it) default
POSTID is optional and only used for per-post feeds, in which case CONTENT must be comments for it to work of course
(Update: forgot to add info for label feeds before, sorry) /-/LABELNAME1 is optional, add it only when you want to get the feed for a particular label called LABELNAME1 (NB case-sensitive), in which case CONTENT must be posts for it to work. If you add /LABELNAME2 it will find only posts that have both labels

and optional parameters at the end:
alt=rss for the RSS feed (default is Atom)
orderby=updated (default is published)
max-results=number (default is 25, maximum seems to be 500)
Other query parameters are possible, as mentioned above.

Posts feed

Atom feeds

http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/posts/TYPE

and alternative additional URLs for non-ftp blogs only -
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/TYPE or
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/posts/TYPE or

historical only - ideally don't use -
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/atom.xml or
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml

- where TYPE (which is non-optional) can be default, summary or (if full feed has been enabled by the blog owner) full. (How to find out a Blogger blog's blog ID)

RSS feeds

Just add "?alt=rss" at the end of the above URLs e.g.
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/posts/TYPE?alt=rss

or change "atom.xml" to "rss.xml" in the above examples e.g.
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Comments feed

As above, but change "posts" to "comments" (and add ?alt=rss at the end if you want an RSS feed) i.e.
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/comments/TYPE
and alternative additional URLs for non-ftp blogs only -
http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/TYPE
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/comments/TYPE

Per-post comment feeds

As for comments, but add "/postID" before "/comments" where postID is the ID of that particular post (and add ?alt=rss at the end if you want an RSS feed) e.g.
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/POSTID/comments/TYPE

Label feeds

As for posts, but add "/-/labelname" at the end - NB lTHE abel name is case-sensitive, you can't have summary posts
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/posts/TYPE/-/LABELNAME
and alternative additional URLs for non-ftp blogs only -
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/TYPE/-/LABELNAME or
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/posts/TYPE/-/LABELNAME or

To find only posts that have been labelled both with X and with Y (but not posts labelled with X but not Y or vice versa):
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/BLOGID/posts/TYPE/-/X/Y
and alternative additional URLs for non-ftp blogs only -
http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/TYPE/-/X/Y or
http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/feeds/posts/TYPE/-/X/Y or

(It's not possible to find posts with label X or label Y, yet)

Query parameters

The most useful parameters for most people are these (stick a ? at the end of the base URL and & in between queries):

orderby=updated (the default is published) - to show feed with most recently updated posts (not most recently published ones)
max-results=figure (up to 500 currently, the default is 25) - to get a Blogger feed with more than 25 posts e.g. if the figure is 50 it'll show 50 posts in the feed
published-min=date-time1 in RFC 3339 format e.g. 2007-05-03T23:59:59-05:00, but URL encoded e.g. 2007-05-03T23%3A59%3A59-05%3A00 (changing each colon to %3A) - for posts published after date-time1; can be combined with &published-max=date2 for posts published before (but not including) date-time2
updated-min, updated-max - similar, but for posts updated after the dates stated.

Example for the official Blogger blog Buzz, whose blog ID is 2399953 - to see the last 50 posts most-recently updated posts from Buzz, in summary form i.e. only the first few characters of each post:
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/2399953/posts/summary?orderby=updated&max-results=50

Note: doesn't work for FTP blogs unless you use the blogger.com URL. If something doesn't work with the custom domain or blogspot.com domain URL, it will work with the blogger.com one.

Resources

Blogger Help
Blogger Buzz
Blogger Data API
Google Data API in particular query requests
Blogger Data API Group
JSON Inspector

Acknowledgements

This post wouldn't have been possible without the sterling work of Kirk, on whose draft I based it. Though I've made it a whole lot longer... Thanks, as always, Kap'n Kirk!

Tags: feed, newsfeed, newsfeeds, news feeds, RSS, Atom, feed URLs, query parameters, Blogger Data API, Google Data API, blog, blogs, blogging, tips, tricks, howto, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience