Seattle.BloggersPub

After this, this, this and this, I’ve just posted this:

Currently, the only way to get Google Reader to display a YouTube video is to include the invalid HTML code provided by YouTube. However, it is possible (and recommended if you care about standards-compliance) to embed YouTube videos using valid XHTML 1.0, as described here:

http://www.bernzilla.com/item.php?id=681

However, when YouTube videos (or other videos from services like Viddler, Vimeo, etc.) are embedded in this way, they are ignored by Google Reader and simply do not show up in the Google Reader interface.

The workaround to this problem is providing an enclosure element in your RSS feed, but including that element without a length attribute (which is the way I’ve seen it recommended at the Google Reader blog) is not valid RSS 2.0. And who wants to actually figure out the valid integer value for the length field, anyway?

I’ve verified that Bloglines recognizes YouTube videos embedded via valid XHTML 1.0 without the enclosure element. It would be great if Google would, too.

See the following for more information on how this change could potentially impact a lot of users:

http://www.bernzilla.com/2008/02/16/wordpress-on-the-verge-of-valid-youtube-embeds/

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Bernie Zimmermann

…in the Google Reader Feedback and Suggestions group.

A couple months later, I finally got around to experimenting with the enclosure tag in my web feed. Using the sample provided by the Google Reader team, I updated my feed generation script to look for any instances of the object tag in my post (I only ever use these when embedding video) and copy the data URI directly into an enclosure element in my feed.

Sure enough, as proven by my previous post, the change seems to have worked as I now see the video from that post appearing in Google Reader. There is one slight problem, though. According to the Feed Validator and the RSS 2.0 Specification, the length attribute of the enclosure element is required (contrary to previous hopes), and as I’ve indicated here before, I have no idea how to responsibly generate the value of the length attribute without resorting to somewhat hackish (though creative) techniques of which I’d rather steer clear.

As an attempt at working around the problem, I’ve added a length attribute to the enclosure element, but I’ve left its value empty hard-coded its value as 0. I’ll have to throw my feed at the Feed Validator again and see if that makes it happy, since Google Reader obviously doesn’t care.

I’d be interested in hearing if the new enclosure method is resulting in the videos I embed showing up in feed readers other than Google Reader as well.

While we’re still on the subject of James Bond, I thought I’d post evidence for why Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights” would make an excellent James Bond theme:

As an aside, Rita G.’s character in the real “Flashing Lights” video might make for an interesting Bond girl.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the video.

From ESPN:

North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough — The Associated Press national player of the year last season — will return for his senior year, the school said Friday.

Hansbrough’s return wasn’t a big surprise considering he has long talked about his determination to win a national championship before he leaves school.

Music to my friggin’ ears!

If I had to guess, I’d say the Quantom of Solace folks are trying to compete with Ronin.

Found on the Adobe Premiere Elements website:

“[With Premiere Elements] you can create a Flash video that conforms perfectly to the needs of YouTube, so you get a nice optimized video that loads right up to a web site.”

So easy, even your grandma can do it!

I’m pretty sure I’m not on crack right now, but that’s the only thing that could possibly explain how this photo:

…showed up on the NIN Official News & Photo Updates feed today.

At Web 2.0 Expo, Steven Heintz gave a session on Thermo and after the session he sat down and talked to Rafe Needleman about it. They cover how things are done today and what make Thermo different. There’s not a whole lot of new content for people that have been following Thermo, but it’s targeted […]

If you haven’t seen it already, see it.

The problem with Pandora is that its design completely sucks! I’m not a fan of Flash-based web design as it is, but their interface takes the cake. It looks like something I could design in Flash, and that’s bad!

The design is so bad that I wouldn’t be surprised if former Amazon.com designers were behind it (and we all know how I feel about them). Normally, I might not make such a stink about it, but it really is a shame that the design is so poor, because the Pandora service is really, really useful. It’s been over a year since I last used the service, but in testing it out again tonight, I see that’s it’s just as useful as I remember. It definitely provides a more proactive approach to finding new artists in which one might be interested, whereas services like Last.fm can be a bit more retroactive (you only find out what else you might be interested in once you’ve been listening to a lot of your own interests for a while).

If you haven’t given Pandora a try, I’d highly recommend it for the service it provides, as long as you can stomach the design. And if you’re on the design team at Pandora, all I can offer is an Ice Cube lyric: “check yo self before you wreck yo self.”