Pimp my blog with FeedFlare

I'm not one of those people that is obsessed about having my own unique CSS, so you won't see me waste much time with that. As long as the format is readable and the HTML in the post feed looks okay, I'm happy.

What does interest me is finding people who get something out of my posts. I have a grand vision for the web, as many other people more influential than me do as well. My first few entries have been a bit longer than I'd like, but they are such a small step towards sharing my vision. It has been a challenge to keep them even as short as they are. Of course, having a day job helps. Nevertheless, I've noticed that a few people have managed to discover and read these entries. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to participate in discussions on these shared interests in the future.

Quickly catching myself up with some of the recent blogging tools, I found a couple of interesting posts. One was from Robert Scoble with a great interview with Google's Marc Lucovsky talking about adding AJAX Search to your blog. I could use that to tie in other blogs talking about the same topics. The idea is to make it easier for someone, mostly me, to participate on a certain range of ideas. Well, that isn't going to be trivial, so I will move on for now.

The other post was from Matt McAlister on a new Del.icio.us publisher API. I'm a Del.icio.us user who scans for other people that bookmark items like I do. I add those people to my network. Putting the information of how many people bookmark my posts directly on my blog will save me some cycles. The first place I found information on the API was on FeedBurner, where they have added use of the API to their FeedFlare service.

I created a FeedBurner feed for my blog. The next step was to add the FeedFlare to my blog itself. One blogger pointed out that FeedBurner provides you with information that doesn't go with Blogger Beta. Followed the advice, I went to the FeedBurner forums to pick up the required snippet.

Simple enough for me. Actually, it was pretty darn simple. Sure, I've left out all of the issues of now having multiple feeds, so I'll never be able to tell just how many subscribers I have. Sure, I've given my e-mail address to half the Earth by now to get access to one web service after another. No, I don't have any guarantees those guys will be providing that same service to me tomorrow, but why shouldn't they? Should I really be expecting anything more?

(Update 2006-12-23: I saw today Del.icio.us posted information on their site about the new API. I probably won't look at it much, since I've already got it going with FeedFlare.)