[edit 11-12-2005: Don't read my original entry below. I just sound mean when I rant. I should have just politely e-mailed the person in private, stating my concern about RSS feeds (or lack thereof). All is better now because dryeyeblog.com has an RSS feed (see the comments for the link). Woohoo! Sorry that I'm mean. I'll try to be less mean in the future.]
In my opinion a blog that does not include an RSS or Atom site feed is really only a “blog.” It might as well be just another website. If you subscribe to the e-mail newsletter Optometric Physician, then you saw in the 11-7-2005 news section that
“Vision Research, makers of TheraTears dry eye products, has launched www.dryeyeblog.com, aimed at providing doctors and patients with a means of keeping updated on the latest news, research and information on dry eye.”
Excuse me, but how can you keep me updated unless you provide a site feed? (Do you actually expect me to remember to always go check your site every day?) Since they are just using a blogger.com template, they could at least turn on the Atom site feed so that their news imports automatically into my bloglines feed aggregator. (If they ever get it, someone please leave a comment so I can subscribe.)
UPDATE: They responded and added a feed. That’s what I call service.
Often with a Blogger.com powered blog, you can append “atom.xml” to the address, and get the feed. Feeds are turned on by default. Also, if you’re using a browser like Firefox or IE7, it can “autodetect” the feed. However, with that site, I didn’t seem to be able to get to the feed, so I agree with your rant.
Atom is activated for http://www.dryeyeblog.com and the url is http://dryeeyeblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml . Let me know if this works or does not work for you. We aim to please. Jeff
There is not also a link called “Site Feed” that takes you right to the feed page. I have tested it and we should be fine. Jeff
Subscribed!