The idea of podcasting, while having been around for a couple of years, seems to have really taken off in the past few weeks. What’s really exciting for me is seeing people use the Bloglines Web Services API to create new and interesting podcasting clients. There’s Doppler Radio which has been out for a couple of days. And I just saw an announcement of the Bloglines Enclosure Download Script. We’ll be adding these to the Bloglines Web Services section of the web site. Are we missing any other programs?

Previously I had mentioned how we were having problems with Seagate drives. On the flip side, I’d like to point out two exceptional companies, HP and Sleepycat Software. In production, we use several HP Procurve switches. These are devices that connect the various machines in the Bloglines cluster. Like some other aspects of our cluster, we’ve bought several of these off eBay, which even several years after the bubble burst, is still a good source for cheap computer hardware. Recently, a newly purchased used HP switch died on us. There were two exceptional things about this. First, the switch continued to operate, but in a reduced way. Specifically, we couldn’t access the management functions of the switch.So even though the switch had ’lost its brain’, it continued to do the basic functions of keeping the network going. This highlights exceptional design on HP’s part. The second exceptional thing about this event was HP’s support. They overnighted us a replacement switch, no questions asked, no receipt needed. The switches have lifetime warranties, which apparently apply even to secondary owners. Amazing. They made true believers out of us. At least for our networking gear, we’re HP purchasers for life. The second company I want to mention is Sleepycat Software. Sleepycat makes the database software that powers large parts of Bloglines. Sleepycat perhaps isn’t as well known as MySQL or Postgres, but their software is very fast, bulletproof, and their support is top notch. They deserve more attention. Some people dismiss their database because it doesn’t have a SQL query engine. SQL is fine for ad-hoc queries. But I can guarantee that not a single query that we run on our databases is ad-hoc, by definition. We have a defined set of database APIs, and we want them to run as fast and reliably as possible. So why take the 10x or more performance hit of a SQL engine or risk the bugs inherent in a more complicated system? You get a fully ACID compliant database system, with hot and cold backup capabilities, as well as a full replication system. And it’s open source. I don’t want to start sounding like a commercial, but I thought both of these companies deserved to be highlighted based on my experiences.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been busy with travel and work. And I had the misfortune of coming back from New York with a nasty cold. But that doesn’t mean that things aren’t progressing with Bloglines. We’re in the middle of one of our hardware upgrade cycles - we generally have to add machines to the Bloglines cluster every few months to keep up with growth. This past month, the API announcement and all the press has accelerated the latest upgrade cycle. Always a good problem to have. We’re also completing some back-end architecture work that I’m really excited about. Just because an Internet service is scalable, that doesn’t mean you’re not always working on it to continue to scale it. Scalability is not an endpoint, it’s definitely a journey. On Friday, a great article on RSS and Aggregators appeared in Business Week. Here’s the first paragraph:

I continue to be amazed at the activity surrounding our announcement last week of the Bloglines Web Services. Several libraries have been quickly developed to interface with the BWS, and several aggregators have been working on supporting the services. I think I’ve even seen a Bloglines IM notifier client. We just opened up a set of forums for developers to talk about the BWS. In other Bloglines news, there was a really interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today talking about RSS and Bloglines. And today we rolled out a new feature, Show Only Updated Feeds. When enabled, this option (found under the Feed Options of the Account page) changes the left-pane of the My Feeds display so that it only shows subscriptions that have unread items. It’s a great way to simplify the display of the My Feeds page.

All I can say is “Wow!” We thought people would be interested in the BWS, but the overwhelmingly positive response was beyond our expectations. Thanks! Here are just a few items on the announcement:

• Eweek : Bloglines Tackles RSS Bandwidth Issue
• O’Reilly : The New Bloglines Web Services, which was then Slashdotted
• Someone has already written a BWS Perl Module. This is fantastic!
• Links to Blogllines, the announcement and the new services section of the web site dominate today’s Top Gaining Links

So, to everyone, thanks for the support! Over the next couple of days we will be setting up a web-forum for developers to discuss the BWS and other web services.