Bible Time

What is Atom?

This page explains the RSS feed format used by Bible Time news.

Atom is a new file format for News Feeds. It is quickly supplanting RSS as the standard format for syndicated news. Use the Atom version of Bible Time News if possible in your News Reader software package.

Why Not Email?

This page explains why Bible Time news is not directly available in an email service.

If you want to subscribe to Bible Time News and receive it as email use a conversion service that will reformat the feed as email. izynews.com is one such service.

There are lots of reasons why nobody really wants a newsletter as email, why RSS or its competing formats is better. Here are a few.

Benefits to You:

You don't have to give out your email address, nor wonder what else I might do with it besides send you my newsletter. I never did anything else with the email addresses I collected for the email edition of the Bible Time newsletter when I did that, but you could never know this with certainty, nor could I, if someone hacked my web site.

You need not list www.bibletime.com in your approved email senders folder, which most people don't know how to do anyway.

You don't have to keep your email in box clear for huge newsletters, which would otherwise cause you to miss several editions per year, because they would bounce back to me with a 'mailbox full' error.

You don't have to remember that you subscribed to bible time news when you change email providers.

Benefits to Me:

I don't have to keep the list of email addresses. This is good since I'm trying to study time in the Bible. Such a list was a huge distraction. I also don't have to risk the list falling into the 'wrong hands.'

I don't have to monitor for stale email addresses, nor deal with notes from people who have forgotten that they themselves signed up at www.bibletime.com asking for the newsletter.

I don't have to deal with bounced or lost email newsletters each time I send out something.

I don't have to try to convince a system administrator at some ISP that Bible Time News is not spam. It never was, I never sent it to anyone who didn't ask for it, but tell that to an administrator for someone who can't remember ever visiting www.bibletime.com.

Because an 'article read' is now a simple page read on the web site, my normal logging tools give me a sense of how much real traffic this generates. In other words I can roughly tell if writing an article for Bible Time News mattered to anyone.

I can use the normal web site formatting tools in order to write the articles. This includes graphics, links and Bible quotes and print formatting tools. I don't have to guess how your software will format HTML in an email.

Staying clear of email is a good thing.

Is This A Newsletter?

This page explains how the Bible Time news feed is the modern equivalent to a newsletter.

Starting early in 1999, the Bible Time project included an Email newsletter. The newsletter lasted until May of 2002, when the email system really began to sag under the load of spam, porn and viruses.

In May of 2002 I began the process of switching off the Internet for updates on news to interested subscribers. This was a low tech answer to this high tech problem.

• It limited subscribers to those in the United States. Though there are many interested Americans, the web site logs indicate many Bible Time fans in the UK and Australia, as well as other locations across Europe, Africa and India.

• It limited subscribers to those who could pay. This was a huge problem because the subscriber base was to small to support advertising.

• Production was limited to 1 time per month. With mailing delays it was read by subscribers often 6 weeks beyond headline dates.

In May of 2004 the newsletter was reborn in a new format: a News Feed. The format is clean, without the spam attacks typical of email and it is timely.

News Feed Readers

This page provides links to possible news reading software if you need such software for your Personal Computer.

There are a bunch of different News Readers available for download to your Personal Computer. Rather than keep a separate list, let me refer you to the Google Listing for an exhaustive current list.

There are many different features in News Readers. You can down load and try out News Readers that seem interesting to you.

I am currently using the news component in KDE's Kontact program. There are several other choices.

I recommend you select a news feed reader distributed under a free license. Ideally it would be under the GPL. (For that matter is your Operating System under GPL? But, I digress.)

What is RSS?

This page explains the RSS feed format used by Bible Time news.

RSS is one of two popular file formats for News Feeds. It is the older and more widely established of the formats. If in doubt about what your News Reader software can handle, select the RSS version of Bible Time News.

Bible Time News supports version 0.91 of RSS, which is about the oldest form of this format. By supporting this version it has the widest possible audience and should be readable by every News Reader software package.

Because the format is considered by many to be proprietary the format is being quickly supplanted by Atom. If you know your News Reader software supports that format you should select Atom instead.

Why a News Feed?

This page explains the RSS feed format used by Bible Time news.

Unlike email newsletters, where the server sends out the entire newsletter inside the email, a News Feed only sends a summary. The 'News Reader' software on your personal computer shows the headline and possibly the article description and then you click back to read the contents if you are interested. The individual articles never leave the Bible Time server so all the normal tools for building web pages are still available.

Subscribers need News Reader software in order to read News Feeds. There are several free ones available for download off the Internet. You can also subscribe to a conversion service that will convert the RSS feed into email you if you cannot find a News Reader software package. Once such service is izynews.com.

News Feeds are different than email because pages are 'pulled' by someone sitting at their computer reading news instead of 'pushed' by the servers. Articles only move on the net when a person wants to see the details.

There is no point in the process where the system is open to spam or viruses.