Alex Williams Weirdness

Alex Williams takes Liz Phair to task for not having an RSS feed for her podcast, which was a follow on from this. There is only one problem with his umbrage, I’ve been subscribed to her RSS feed for weeks, which is highly available on her website, at a really obvious place. I think Alex made a bad assumption, and made an ass out of him and him.

Why did he think there was no feed? Because it wasn’t listed in the Yahoo directory and/or the commentors couldn’t find it. Does he think the Yahoo directory is so perfect that not being there means it doesn’t exist? That’s just silly. I have to side with Liz on this, the first time I heard about it I went to her website and found the RSS url in 3 seconds. Liz Phair 1, Corante 0.

Update: A few minutes after I posted, her episode #4 popped up on my Shuffle. If you do want to criticize her, you can get her on an incomplete MP3 tags charge. They have a vague episode title with empty artist and album fields, so I didn’t even realize I had a new episode.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

9 thoughts on “Alex Williams Weirdness”

  1. this is the feed address (http://lizphair.com/podcast.xml) for anyone stumped by the puzzle…

    sometimes folks skim text to much and miss the obvious, which is one of the advantages of audio and video, no way to skim – you have to listen or watch the whole thing from front to back – how inconvenient text is…

    just kidding of course – that was s.a.r.c.a.s.m. – but i do often wonder what maciej ceglowski is thinking now 😉

  2. Mea Culpa. I looked and looked for that feed. Couldn’t find it until you pointed it out. My error. It is buried, though. Anyway, great to see it is there.

  3. Alex, it was literally 5 seconds for me to find it from loading her site. It was the first place I looked. It’s not the message board, it’s not audio or video, so I looked at “Extras” and voila!

  4. I think I deserve part of the blame here. Alex posted about Liz’s podcasts, and I commented on her post, blasting her for not having a feed. Alex posted later in the same vein. I’m not saying I put words in his mouth, but…

    In our defense, her feed is NOT easy to find. It’s not listed anywhere on her front page. There’s no RSS autodiscovery, so my little orange Firefox RSS button didn’t light up. There’s no familiar icon, or even a link in the places we come to expect them (sidebar, etc.). No link at all. Just some text at the top of the page with the address. It doesn’t stand out in any way – not even underlined. I can see how it would be hard for someone to miss it.

    BTW, Dave, it was great meeting you at PME. Your session was the most powerful I went to, and one of my favorites. Many people I talked to felt the same. Bravo, and thanks for sharing with us. 🙂

  5. Josh, thanks for the kind words on the talk. I appreciate getting an hour of your time.

    What can I say? I found it immediately, so by definition it wasn’t hard to find for me. Perhaps I’m just used to the way band websites get laid out. I don’t want to pick a fight, but the extras page seemed a reasonable enough place for it. Once you go there, every single thing that isn’t nav or sidebar is about the podcast, with the feed being the topmost thing. Saying it should be laid out such that people don’t have to read the topmost sentence is going to far in my opinion.

    Really and truly, if you are expecting all that stuff from musician websites, I urge you not to hold your breath. I think having the feed is at the upper end of reasonable expectations. With musicians, you are lucky if the whole thing is not one giant flash app.

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  7. I came across too hard on the site. I guess I’m too used to looking at geeky sites and podcasts, where the white-on-orange button is the rule, not the exception. Admitedly, I don’t visit many musician’s websites, though I do realize we’re lucky that Liz’s site isn’t a Flash app. 😉

    Can’t wait for the audio of your session!

  8. In retrospect, I think I came across too hard on Liz’s site as well. I see your point, Dave, about not expecting too much from musician sites. I’ll be looking more carefully when checking them out. :-).

  9. I didn’t find it right away either – but did find it after about 60 seconds of searching. I think a white on orange XML icon would make it a no brainer – but the bigger story here was missed: LIZ PHAIR IS PODCASTING! And after listening to a few of them, she’s doing it really well.

    -adam

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