Follow by RSS
Subscribe once and every new piece comes to you, in order, in full. No algorithm, no account, no middleman deciding what you are allowed to read.
There is an older and quieter way to follow a website, and it still works better than anything the social platforms have put in its place. It is called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it has been doing the same honest job since the early days of the open web. You tell your reader which sites you care about, and it gathers their new writing into one calm list, the moment it is published.
No one sits between you and the words. There is no feed to be ranked, no engagement to be farmed, no quiet decision in a data center about whether today is a day you get to hear from me. You asked to follow, so you are following. That is the whole arrangement.
Why it matters
For years the only way to keep up with a person or a small business was to find them on Facebook or X and hope. Hope the platform showed you their posts. Hope an algorithm decided you were worth reaching that day. Hope the account was still there in the morning. We built our whole sense of staying in touch on top of machinery that was never built to serve us, and could change its mind, or its owner, at any time.
RSS gives that power back to you. The feed belongs to this site, your reader belongs to you, and nothing in between gets a vote. If I post once a week or go quiet for a month, you will know either way, because the new pieces simply arrive. It is the difference between a letter sent to your door and a flyer you might catch sight of if you happen to walk past the right window at the right second.
The two feeds
This site publishes two feeds. Copy whichever one you want and paste it into your reader.
- Blog. Essays on broadband, the open web, faith, and building things that last: https://joshlambert.xyz/blog/index.xml
- Work. New projects, launches, and case studies: https://joshlambert.xyz/work/index.xml
Both update on their own as I add new posts, so once you have subscribed there is nothing more to do.
How to start
Getting going takes about two minutes. Pick a reader for whatever you use, install it, and add a feed by pasting in one of the addresses above. Most readers will also let you paste the plain site address and find the feed for you. From then on, your new writing collects itself in one place, waiting for whenever you have time to sit down with it.
Readers worth using
All of these are good. The ones marked free and open source cost nothing and answer to no one, which is rather the point.
- iPhone and iPad. NetNewsWire (free and open source), Reeder , or Unread .
- Android. Feeder (free and open source), Read You , or Inoreader .
- Mac. NetNewsWire (free and open source) or Reeder .
- Windows. Fluent Reader (free and open source) or RSS Guard .
- Linux. NewsFlash or Liferea .
- Anywhere, in a browser. Feedly or Inoreader sync across your devices, and FreshRSS (free and open source) lets you host your own if you would rather own the whole stack.
That is the open web working the way it was meant to. You follow what you choose, you read it on your terms, and no one gets to stand between us.