I’ve set up a dedicated feed for tips and tricks on using Feeder. You can subscribe to the feed with this URL: http://reinventedsoftware.com/feeder/tips.xml and on the Feeder product page.

Initially the feed contains mostly updated versions of tips that have already been posted (and updated) on this blog. New tips will also be posted on this blog, although they may be in a more blog-friendly style to the content in the tips feed.

Over time these tips will cover all sorts of different areas, from cool features in Feeder you may not know about to help on performing specific tasks and in-depth looks at new functionality as it becomes available.

There are so many different things you can do with Feeder and so many different ways people want to actually achieve these things. Hopefully these tips will cover things the help files could never hope to address.

Feedback is always welcome, as are suggestions for new tips. Either leave a comment on the blog or get in touch. Thanks!

Happy 30th birthday, Apple Computer!

• There’s a good quiz on the BBC News site.
• MacUser is running a series of articles on Apple’s history.
• Wired has a collection of articles covering all sorts of Apple goodness from over the years.
• Macworld is doing lots of stuff.

Here’s to 30 more!

It’s great to hear that Don McAllister is quitting his job at a corporate IT firm to focus on ScreenCastsOnline and his new EuroMac Podcast full time.

ScreenCastsOnline is an innovative video podcast that shows you how to use your Mac to its full potential. Each week Don guides you through something new, whether it’s using RapidWeaver or how to get the best out of .Mac, and you can watch how it’s done on your screen or iPod.

Don has found that it takes a lot of hard work to create and maintain the show and that if he wants to take it to the next level and have any kind of work/life balance, he needs to do it full time. I fully understand!

To achieve this Don is now adding Extra! subscriptions that provide exclusive premium content, the ScreenCastsOnline DVD, high definition versions, ad-free shows, monthly newsletters and much more. Check it all out at ScreenCastsOnline.

Best wishes and congratulations to Don for making the jump!

Update: Great to hear Don on DSC #359 and Adam being so encouraging about Don’s plans.

A quick and easy way to password protect a feed is to set your web server to require HTTP authentication for the directory where the feed and any enclosure files reside. Here are some instructions on how to set up this authentication with Apache: Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

Authentication Support

All the best RSS readers support this authentication including NetNewsWire, NewsLife and NewsFire. As for podcatchers, iTunes and Juice Receiver support this but iPodderX (renamed Transistr) needs the URL tweaked – see the workaround below. Also there are the online services: NewsGator supports it, Bloglines needs the URL tweaked (again, see below) but Google Reader didn’t support it at the time of writing.

Feeder supports HTTP authentication for downloading, reloading and previewing feeds.

Workaround

iPodderX and Bloglines can’t read a normal URL that requires authentication. The workaround is to include the user name and password in the URL itself. For example:

http://user:password@www.example.com/feed.xml

This URL also works in the other RSS reader applications mentioned above.

Updated September 15, 2006 – iTunes 7.0 no longer requires the workaround mentioned above.

I released Feeder 1.3 yesterday and while the release notes and news page give an overview of what has changed, a proper explanation of the major new features requires more than a single bullet point.

In a nutshell, this release is about making life quicker and easier for both podcasters and regular feed creators, improving publishing support so that it’s easier to understand while being vastly more flexible and revisiting almost all of the application to make it look, work and feel better than ever.

I plan to take a closer look at some of the major new features on this blog to explain more about them and mention some tips and tricks hiding in the app. I will also be setting up a dedicated feed for these and other such articles.

Lastly, I really couldn’t release Feeder with my web site the way it was. The old design was actually my prototype from July 2004 when I first launched the business. I did a mockup in Photoshop, sliced up the images and slapped on some hurriedly written text figuring I could do it again properly a couple of months down the line. It was the difference between constructing a site in a day or two rather than spending a whole week on it.

It is always the way in IT that workarounds and stopgap measures instantly become permanent features and it’s much harder to undo them later. The new version of the site is faster, more compact, much more standards compliant (still working on some minor issues there) and just more up to date. I hope to make this blog match the main site, but if that sounds familiar I wrote the exact same thing just over a year ago. So don’t hold your breath.

Update March 22: I did the blog redesign. Whatever next! 😀