Why Jason Kottke's Feed Messes with My Head

Album Cover: Eyes Open

"It's hard to argue when you won't stop making sense."
Snow Patrol / Hands Open

Posted on April 29, 2008 12:19 AM in Blogging

Almost every feed I subscribe to contains meaningful or at least marginally meaningful post titles associated with every post. Jason Kottke's feed, on the other hand, contains post titles that are, in the majority of cases, substrings of the post content's text. Because of this, my inner monologue while reading his feed goes something like this:

Some great photos of Americans commuting by Vincent Laforet using...

Some great photos of Americans commuting by Vincent Laforet using a tilt shift lens.

Ten ideas for making NYC streets a more friendly place...

(Oh, crap. I'm doing it again).

Ten ideas for making NYC streets a more friendly place for those not in automobiles, including the woonerf, bicycle boulevards, and the green grid...

I feel like I've posted this one before but the Google...

(Oh, crap. I'm doing it yet again! Remember, Bernie, skip the post titles when reading Jason Kottke's feed!).

I feel like I've posted this one before but the Google says no so....LUNCH is a blog written by a couple of NYC architects who believe in the sanctity, sanity, and satiety of the lunch break...

Frustrating? I'd say so. But I love his blog, so what's a guy to do?

Comments

jkottke on April 29, 2008 at 7:44 AM:

Sorry, Bernie. This issue frustrates me as well. The RSS format doesn't explicitly require titles for items but most (all?) newsreaders do. My shorter posts don't have titles by design but since the newsreaders require them, I have to put something in there and the first 10 words is easiest to do automatically.

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Bernie Zimmermann on April 29, 2008 at 8:57 AM:

Thanks for the explanation, Jason, and for taking the time to drop by with information. Like I said, I'm a big fan of your blog, so I'll just continue to try and train my brain to skip those post titles :)

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