Have you ever tried reading the XKCD feed on a mobile browser like Android Browser or Mobile Safari? Doesn’t it annoy you that you can’t read the comics’ title text (the additional joke that pops up when you hover the mouse cursor over the comic in a desktop browser)? Try the improved XKCD feed, which uses Yahoo! Pipes to put that text in a more readable format. It also provides links to comic explanations and XKCD forum threads if you’re into that kind of thing.
Similarly, are you bothered by having to click through to read Cyanide and Happiness instead of reading it right in your feed reader? Enter A Better Cyanide & Happiness Feed, another Pipes feed, which embeds the comics in the feed.
My life has been improved immeasurably by these feeds.
“Pipes”.
Ha! Brilliant.
Improves your life, but pisses off the comic owners lifes.
In the case of the XKCD one, it’s linking to someone elses forum, losing XKCD potential community members.
In the case of Cyanide and Happiness, it’s losing them page views, and associated add revenue, and worse inserting someone elses add.
I won’t argue with Cyanide & Happiness potentially losing advertising money. That potential definitely exists. On the other hand, I suspect they would benefit more from new means of discovery like Google Reader’s “Popular Items” feed than they lose through some savvy users not visiting the site as often. From what I’ve seen since I started following “Popular Items”, the official Cyanide & Happiness feed has never featured, but the improved one has, and has thus definitely sent them additional traffic.
XKCD is Creative Commons licensed. Randal Munroe has made the explicit decision to allow this sort of extension of his work for the benefit of fans. It doesn’t lack any content of the original feed, so I don’t see how it’s going to lose XKCD community members. I will admit that I just assumed those links were to the official forum though. I wouldn’t argue with the suggestion that they should be.
The original Better and Cyanide and Happiness Feed has been broken with a new website update.
An Even Better Cyanide and Happiness Feed is an updated version since the author no longer maintains the original.
Thanks for the update Ozmo. I had noticed that feed wasn’t working properly anymore but I hadn’t got around to seeking out a fix.