I am an avid reader of RSS feeds, relying on Google Reader to keep me up to date with the latest industry news. But there is a hole in the world of blogs - comments are a dead end. I literally read hundreds of blogs and occasionally leave a comment, but I rarely go back to see if anyone else follows up.

Disqus and Intense Debate proposed to close this comment hole by replacing the comment capability of participating blogs with a centralized system. Automattic, maker of the popular WordPress blog software, even recently acquired Intense Debate. But these systems merely add another destination to check for comments and replies.

I wished for some ability to follow comments automatically, right within Google Reader, and now I (nearly) have it! BackType is a clever service that tracks blog comments, associating them with their authors through the URLs many people use when posting. Users of this service can then “claim” their comments (via these URLs) and associate them with their account.

But that’s not the part that hooked me. Once you have an account, you can look up your favorite comment authors and “follow” them through BackType, subscribing to an RSS feed to follow the comments they leave in the future. This even works for people who don’t have a BackType account - anyone using a common URL can be followed in this way. And BackType integrates with nifty network-of-networks lifestream aggregator, FriendFeed.

BackType isn’t perfect, but it’s constantly being improved. It only checks certain blogs. You can submit them through a bookmarklet, but it would be nice if it had a wider set already. I’d also love to be able to automatically “follow” any comments left for a blog post after I comment. In other words, add all comments, no matter who writes them, to my feed for that one post.

But BackType is good enough already that I heartily recommend it. Follow me!

With all the Apple-related content popping up on this blog, I decided to add an Apple-only feed to the mix.  Now, if you’d like to follow my adventures with the Mac, iPhone, and other Apple junk, and don’t care about all the enterprise storage and general home computing stuff, you can subscribe to just the Apple feed.  Most folks are subscribed to my Everything feed, which includes all posts, and won’t need to change a thing.

So here’s a summary of my feeds:

•  All Posts - Everything I post in any category
•  Apple - Posts related to Apple, the Macintosh, the iPhone, iTunes, and the like
•  Computer History - Posts about the old computer junk I love so much
•  Enterprise Storage - Posts related to my profession
•  Personal - Posts of interest to family and friends
•  Terabyte Home - Posts relating to the proliferation of storage and computer technology in the home

Bonus points to anyone who can identify the item pictured!

Serious tongue-twister of a title, right?

I just created a “room” at FriendFeed with many of my favorite enterprise storage and backup-related RSS feeds.  So swing on over there and enjoy!  You can interact at FriendFeed or just subscribe to the Atom feed in your favorite reader to keep up to date on the latest news and analysis.

If you haven’t used FriendFeed before, let me give you the five-second tour:  It’s a web-based community centered on RSS and social activity feeds.  Think of it as a one-stop place to view and comment on the latest news, tweets, wishlists, and everything else you can imagine.

FriendFeed rooms are special cordoned-off areas dedicated to certain topics.  These can optionally be integrated into your main feed or kept separate.

Give it a look!

I love Google Reader. I love Friendfeed. I even like Plaxo Pulse. But here’s what I want: A one-stop blog aggregator that lets me do everything for everywhere in one place. I want integrated socialization, and especially threading and integrated commenting. And I think we can do it! Read on for a recipe for the perfect blog aggregator!

Continue Reading »

I’ve decided to add additional sub-feeds to my blog for those who don’t care about one topic or another. If you’re currently subscribed, this means nothing to you since the current feed is a super-set containing all posts. But if you want just a subset, read on!

There are now five Foskett feeds!

1. All Posts (the superset of the following)
2. Computer History - mapped to the Computer History category and containing posts about this history of computers and other oldy moldy topics
3. Enterprise Storage - mapped to the Enterprise Storage category and containing lots of industry news and opinions
4. Personal - mapped to the Personal category and containing posts of interest to friends and family
5. Terabyte Home - mapped to the Terabyte Home category and containing posts about TiVo, iPhone, SoundBridge, home NAS, Windows, and the like

There will be much overlap between categories (see the posts in the current list) but I thought this might help folks not have to listen to so much that they don’t care about. Just call me Fox News!