I started to use Netnewswire in the last few months. I didn’t do much with it until a few weeks ago when Feedly made the headlines about their AI protest control thing.
I learned they have an exporter so I exported the OPML file of my feeds and there were so many of them. Netnewswire slowly started filling in the posts and surprisingly, considering the lack of attention I’ve paid my feeds in many years, it found plenty of posts. My unread count sat at over 10,000 posts at one stage.
Still, there are far too many where the last post was in 2009 or 2012. A few were still blogging in 2019. Yet more announced they were moving from Blogger or WordPress.com to their brand-new website at some custom domain that is now sadly a spam trap for unwary visitors. The long abandoned blogs are a deep dive into history. They celebrate events that happened oh so long ago. The sites are frozen in time.
I have to say, it was sometimes lovely to read the musings of a lost generation of writers. They’re either offline or now on Facebook or one of the other walled gardens we humans seem to love. I was going to list some of the blogs that are still updated, but it turns out there are quite a few of them. You’re probably familiar with most of them. Matt, XKCD, Laughing Squid, and Simon are some of the more famous blogs I have followed for many years.
Here’s a few you might not know. Feel free to middle-click and open them in a new tab. Go on, have a look.
And oh, there’s more! I’ve also come across some incredible photo blogs that I used to love visiting. I would always wonder how they managed to capture such breathtaking photos. And there are so many WordPress blogs too, with a wide range of topics and interests. I haven’t had the time to go through all of them yet, but being on Mastodon has taught me that it’s okay not to keep tabs on everything.
One feature that has been a game-changer for me is the “Today” smart feed. It shows me updated feeds, and just by scanning through it, I can quickly see which sites are still very active. It’s helped me realize that I don’t need to follow some overly busy sites any more. It’s been a freeing experience, letting go of the need to keep up with everything and instead focusing on the feeds that truly matter to me.
Also, “Mark All as Read” is very liberating.
BTW – I’m still blogging (after all this time) here (of course) and on inphotos. My last post there is the 840th daily post in a row. I gave a talk to Blarney Photography Club recently, showing some photos from Automattic meetups over the years. I found a bunch of old photos I wanted to publish. That’ll explain the American photos that went up recently!
