LJ from a firehose

[mdlbear]

If you have a reasonably fast connection, just type this incantation into your shell window:

 telnet updates.sixapart.com 80
 GET /atom-stream.xml HTTP/1.0
 Host: updates.sixapart.com
 
 

and don't forget that blank line at the end! The result will be a real-time Atom (XML) feed of every public posting on LJ. (Visit updates.sixapart.com in a browser to learn more.)

This, kiddies, is (more-or-less) why Google, etc. will happily index your posts even if you make them friends-only immediately after posting them -- they will already have hit the feed at that point. (Actually, this is a brand-new-today hack, but the problem can occur through other paths -- as long as there's a small window during which a post is public, somebody will see it.) The solution is to mark the post as friends-only before you post it.

Oh, you do all know about blogsearch.google.com, right? (From finagler / docbug_feed)

Comments

[tagryn]

Thanks! Very stream-of-consciousness to see all the posts go by.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I suspect Google will respect anti-googling tags (I forget where I heard about that), but the Atom streaming is important to know about. I'm glad that I often put things as Private when saving drafts, only changing the security setting when finished.

And I assume that anything I type online can by the general public. Or the NSA. Whatever.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

That should be "can be read by..." Sheesh. Tpysoe R Su.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

You can set a minimum security level for your posts. If you go to http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console and type "set newpost_minsecurity friends" all your posts will show up as friends only. You can edit a post to make it public if you want, but that way there are no oopses.