1. Just FYI. Your ads are UGLY in my aggregator. One of the pleasant aspects of RSS is that it clears out some of the clutter and lets me get information in a bare-bones fashion. Throwing these images in the middle of the description tag really goes against the grain of RSS's purpose. You need to ask yourself why people are using your news feeds rather than visiting your webpage. Then you need to ask yourself if this practice defeats that purpose. For me it has. The only reason I ever end up at your site is because I notice something interesting in my news reader in a headline--I don't have it bookmarked, i don't know the URL--I just end up here because I clicked a link. That link is now gone, because after I post this comment I am unsubscribing from your feed. I just don't want it anymore if it is going to have a big ugly picture at the bottom of every post. Now the only traffic you'll get from me, and hence the only ads you'll serve to me, will be the occasional times I end up here after a web search. Probably not the result you were aiming for. Without the RSS subscription I will forget about this website. I doubt I'm alone. This is a shortsighted practice. It would make a lot more sense to have abridged headlines that draw traffic rather than full posts with adds. Good luck, your former visitor.

Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by encomiast

2. I don't know if this makes me happy or sad. As a publisher of RSS I can't help but be a little pleased. As a reader I am a little sad in the passing of what was a fairly pure publishing medium. Times change I guess.

Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Allan Burns