Library Geeks in human form

Posted on Wed 18 October 2006 in Libraries

So, I think I read somewhere on #code4lib that Dan Chudnov, the most excellent host of the Library Geeks podcast, refused to make human-readable links to the MP3 files for the podcasts available in plain old HTML because he had bought into the stodgy old definition of podcasts (hah! "stodgy" and "old" in relation to podcasts) as:

A podcast is rich media, such as audio or video, distributed via RSS. (FeedBurner)

This may explain why, as a non-iTunes user and a person who likes his links nice and clicky, dammit, I have yet to listen to a single Library Geeks episode. Oh, I know -- the shame! What's a geek to do?

Well, if you're sitting in Alabama with just enough free wifi bandwidth to watch individual characters travel through the ether, the geek thing to do is to go out and write yourself a nice XSL stylesheet and combine that with a PHP script that presents a raw but clickable HTML representation of the RSS 2.0 feed. Now I can sit back and let those bits crawl down my thin pipe as I await the pleasures of hearing my first Library Geeks episode, limited only by bandwidth.

P.S.: Yeah, I know FeedBurner [STRIKEOUT:renders the]provides a more human readable representation of the feed, but this human likes his content with as little advertising clutter as possible. Over and out.