Wednesday [9]

9.  More gobbledetechspeak

Just received this:

Hi James,

FeedBurner has been a part of Google for almost 14 years, and we're making several upcoming changes to support the product's next chapter. Here’s what you can expect to change and what you can do now to ensure you’re prepared.

Starting in July, we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure. This will keep the product up and running for all users, but it also means that we will be turning down most non-core feed management features, including email subscriptions, at that time.

For those who use FeedBurner email subscriptions, we recommend downloading your email subscribers so that you can migrate to a new email subscription service.

Run that by me again.  You're 'keeping the product up and running' by removing the one service I need it to provide - email subscription?  Uh huh.

For many users, no action is required. All existing feeds will continue to serve uninterrupted, and you can continue to create new accounts and burn new feeds. Core feed management functionality will continue to be supported, such as the ability to change the URL, source feed, title, and podcast metadata of your feed, along with basic analytics.

Well what the hell are they saying then?  There's a clear disagreement over philosophy here between google and myself. I am not remotely interested in lists of subscribers, or who is visiting, I have no access to IP addresses, I do not wish to have.

What I do have and it's most useful, is notification.  If anyone comments, a ticker lights up at the top of the screen, whether laptop or ipad, I click 'Publish' if it's a known commenter, if not - then I read and usually publish.  That's all I personally need from it.

Now if you the reader subscribe by email to a post or comment - I don't know about that. I'm hoping that does not end because some people like being notified of a new post or comment. I've not the slightest idea who's doing that.

Anyway, we have until July it seems.