As noted by Jason Clark, it seems that Bloglines has an issue with titleless posts. But, posts shouldn't need titles - what do other blogs do with asides? How does Bloglines handle a blog like Dave Winer's?

Archived Comments

  • Bloglines puts a "permalink" link at the bottom of posts without titles. It's less noticeable, but it works. I suspect there's some subtle difference in the permalink and the title link; the title link doesn't always go to the actual original blog post. I think the permalink shows up only if there isn't a title pointing to the original post.

  • I think titles are helpful for old eyes like mine, unles all the posts are tiny short things.

    I like your blog & good luck with delicious & CA!

  • not only bloglines has a problem with them. newsalloy.com too. But it seems that wordpress doesn't like titleless posts either, because your blog's pager at the top of the page (for going to the next/previous post) doesn't display properly if the next/previous post has no title :(

  • Thanks Ian, I didn't notice the 'permalink' link on Bloglines. Something similar might be nice here, Les, as your titleless posts don't have a visible (clickable) permalink. The comments link provides a way to get the permalink, but it's not exactly the same.

    Having the permalink in Bloglines makes the title less important- all the posts appear in order, so the title only helps with skimming. As these are 'asides', I skimming the body is just as quick. I am curious about other aggregators. It's been ages since I've used a desktop three-paned aggreagtor, such as NNW; I'd guess it's like having an email in your inbox with no subject.

  • Asides are something I've been trying to sort out for awhile. They're meant to be quick cast offs, maybe a paragraph at most, and certainly not ponderous enough to need titles. The idea is to be more like instant messages to the blog and its readers, rather than emails.

  • I'm reading your blog with BlogLines, and I can click the "Permalink" link on your titleless posts to load the blog entry.

  • NewsGator Online will excerpt the post for a title - for example, 2 posts ago showed up with the title as "Huh. Generally, I scoff at the idea of hand-holding...". FeedDemon does the same. Some readers fall back on the pubDate if there's no title, can't think of a specific example but I know I've seen that.