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Monday, August 20, 2007

The Internet is Broken! Okay, maybe just लिब्स्यं

I went to a lot of trouble to do the last episode well. I did the next
episode well. I certainly tried. True for all my shows, for that matter,
as best I could manage.

But apparently, nobody has seen my last episode for the last week or so.
Or the previous episode. And probably not the one before that.

I don't expect any vast number of people to be impressed by my brilliance.
I do expect that those folks I'm paying to provide access to my show to
have their heads somewhere else than their butt. I'm figuring it'd be
nice for the company that I'm paying to make my (cough, cough) content
public, namely Libsyn, would make my content public -- and would know what
has been made public, would make sure that the agency -they- have
partnered with, namely Kiptronic, would know what's been publicized and
seen by interested parties.

Not so much, so far.

Kiptronic, Libsyn's partner, is convinced that no shows at all have been
heard by any listeners at all, for the past week or two. Even Libsyn's
broken stat system claims I have 45 listeners. Kiptronics says I have no
listeners at all, and have had none at all...

Maybe it's an oversight. Getting the money out of my Paypal account, that
they don't overlook. Getting the content to the audience, not so much.

If you want to be the best, it might be nice if you actually did the work
and -were- the best. Haven't seen it.

I admire everything about Libsyn, except how much they suck, deeply and
profoundly suck, at actually providing an environment for podcasts, and
access to same.

Let's be fair. Feedburner handles my feed, and they kinda suck, too.
They simply don't do anywhere near good service. Stuff gets lost.
Regularly, and on a continuing basis. And Feedburner is one of the best
in the business, maybe THE best in the business. But they really don't
know what's going on with the feeds they have.

Or if they do, you can't find out what that is.

There are only a handful of outlets where the relative handful of folks
actually download and listen to podcasts. If one of those sources no
longer recognizes Feedburners feed, Feedburner has no clue. I have a
significant (for my show) number of subscribers who use iTunes. If that
breaks, I lose a quarter or a third of my subscribers.

But Feedburner just tells me I have a whole lot less subscribers. And
maybe I do. If Feedburner doesn't know how to get it there, and doesn't
know when it doesn't get there, then yeah, there's a whole bunch of
subscribers by my standards who aren't subscribers anymore, because they
can't get the content. So they aren't subscribers anymore, because
Feedburner, or Libsyn, is broken, and badly broken at that.

I know there are a number of RSS Agreggators who haven't seen my last half-
dozen shows. That's broken. Since Feedburner's main power is promotion
to aggregators, and that doesnt' happen.

Real Simple Syndication. Real Simple, till it doesn't work, then it's not
Syndication, it's a lie, but I'm still paying the same amount.

It seems that some aspects of RSS are broken. The only aspect of RSS that
certainly isn't broken is the part where I get billed.

Aggregators don't know what's changed with my feed. An ad server service,
partnering with my own host, doesn't know what's changed with my own feed.

So, what am I paying for? And why am I still paying for it?

I'm not paying for Feedburner, Google is paying for Feedburner. And
Feedburner has no idea what's going on with my feed. So what is Google
paying for?

So, where's this whole Internet thing I've heard so much about? If you
can't transfer one file from point A to point B, WTF exactly are y'all
doing? Hell, I could transfer files 30 years ago. Has something changed?

I didn't create the standards, y'all did. So how come y'all can't live up
to your own standards?

Libsyn, Feedburner, Kyptronic. What do you do for a living, and why am I
giving Libysn money?

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