UPDATE Jan 2006: My web feeds are now Atom-based, and they are only full-text. I also offer an Atom feed with comments. I also provide a FeedBlitz option that lets you get daily emails with my latest entries. I've stripped all the href's below, as they don't go anywhere.
UPDATE Sept 2005: Many of these aggregators no longer work, and my feeds have moved slightly. Please see the sidebar at the main blog page.
With an upgrade to Moveable Type 2.661, I now have the ability to offer Atom syndication, along with RSS. I offer all these options because people like them, and it doesn't cost me. See below if this makes no sense to you.
Note: I am not offering e-mail subscription to my weblog. [Update - no longer true!]
Your options for subscribing to Knowledge Jolt with Jack:
Full entries - This gives you an RSSAtom feed of the full text of my blog entries with a link to comments.
Exerpts - As above, but only the first 40 words of a given entry.
Atom Feed - This is a new feed with more functionality than RSS. Most aggregators are learning to use Atom as well.
Here are the automatic-subscription links for my RSS full feeds in some of the more popular aggregators. Let me know in the comments if there are others I could add, or if I could do this a better way. [Thanks to Ross Notes for the formats below.]
AmphetaDesk
Awasu
Bloglines
BottomFeeder
FeedDemon
Fyuze
HeadlineViewer
MobileRss
MyWireService
NetNewsWire
NewsIsFree
NewsMonster
nntp//rss
Radio UserLand
NewsIsFree
SharpReader
Syndirella
VoxLite
Wildgrape Newsdesk
WinRSS
What does subscribing or "syndicating" mean? It means that you can use an external (to my website) tool to read my regular postings. This is very useful when you read many other weblogs as well as this one. Instead of going to each site to read their words, you can have all the words collected (aggregated) in one location. There are many tools that offer aggregation, either on a website or on your local computer. Even Yahoo is getting into the game of aggregating RSS feeds. For those familiar with Yahoo and portals, they have been "aggregating" news for a long time. They are expanding their aggregation capability to a language that is commonly used in the blogging world.
Syndication is now becoming popular enough that many other news and information sources are syndicating their content. For example, all the InfoWorld content is syndicated - not those groovy orange XML buttons like this: . So? You ask. Well, if you are already visiting a bunch of these sites individually, just think how much faster it would be to visit one location and find out what is new at ALL of them! That is the power of aggregation.
The software landscape keeps changing, so along with the list above, check the Blogspace list of aggregators or do a Google search on "rss aggregators" and look for what makes sense. I have been quite happy with Bloglines, if you are curious. It's a web-based service, so I can catchup from another computer. And I can even share my blogroll with others, for those who are curious to know what I read.
Update 11 Feb 2004: added quickSub to the main index, which allows for rollover subscription of my RSS feed to about 20 different aggregators.
Update 8 July 2004: updated the location of my XML file. Ooops.