When I was doing more Flash development, one of the most valuable web resources I used was Adobe Feeds. It aggregates many, many Adobe-oriented developer blogs from all over the web. Not only is it a great place to keep an eye on the pulse of the Flash development world, but it’s where smaller Flash developers can get more exposure to more of the community. Thanks to my own blog’s inclusion in Adobe Feeds, I was able to get some answers to some Flash questions more quickly than I probably would have otherwise, all while sharing what knowledge I had to as broad an audience as possible.
When I started doing iPhone development, I looked for something similar for iPhone dev blogs. While there are a lot of iPhone developers out there blogging, I could not find a good aggregator out there. I did find Planet iPhone SDK, but it does not seem to be active (I tried contacting the owner, but did not receive a response). Planet Cocoa is good and quite active, but iPhone development is just part of the coverage there (the rest is Mac desktop development, which I don’t do myself).
Thus, I am starting Planet iDev. Armed with FeedWordPress and a free WordPress theme, I have cobbled together a simple blog aggregator. I should note that many of the blogs I am aggregating I found on this tremendously helpful post by Travis Dunn.
Having never run a blog aggregator before, I am unsure of the ethics and etiquette of Planet-style sites. I have no intention of financially profiting from other people’s hard work, nor do I want to negatively impact others’ endeavours. With that in mind:
- There will never, ever be ads on Planet iDev
- All authors are credited, and all articles link back to their original sources (as do all of the items in the Planet iDev feed).
- I have set up the WordPress install to not be indexed by search engines.
Regardless, if any blog owner wants to be removed from this aggregation, I will be more than happy to do so, and I offer my sincerest apologies.
On the other, if any iPhone developer out there wants their blog to be added to this Planet, simply email me at planetidev@gmail.com (or comment on this post) with your blog’s information, and it will be considered for inclusion. Preference will be given to blogs that focus on the development and production process, rather than blogs that are mostly for product promotion.
I still have some questions regarding Planet etiquette. While most Planet sites seem to include the entire contents of the aggregated blogs’ posts, I wonder if it would be more polite to only display an excerpt (but include the entire article in the feed). Please share any thoughts you have on this matter, or on Planet iDev in general.
I hope others out there find this resource valuable and useful, and I hope this helps encourage a sense of community. Thanks!
Visit Planet iDev.