Feed Confessions

I love TextPattern (the blogging software we use for Needmore Notes). It does nice text formatting, it’s clean and simple to use, and it has lots of nice features. I also like the services provided by FeedBurner, which lets you track how people are subscribing to your news feeds. And I adore NewsFire, the news reader I use on my Mac.

But there’s a little bug that drives me crazy. Any time I “quote” someting, or use apostrophe’s [sic], they show up in NewsFire as their raw character entities… i.e. garbage! It looks terrible and it drives me crazy. It’s been happening for months, but I’ve been unable to figure out where the problem lies – it could be with our website, the blog software, FeedBurner, or my news reader. I’ve tried all my best forensic techniques, but still the problem persists.

My confession? After hours of trying, I’ve just given up! I now just do my best to avoid apostrophes and use bold or italic text instead of quotes! Frankly, I’ve got better things to do! One could consider it lazy, but I’d rather just think of myself as pragmatic.

But just out of curiosity, are you seeing the quotes and apostrophes, or are you seeing a bit of garbage?

Raymond Brigleb

Creative Director, dreamer, partner, father, musician, photographer. Has been known to ride the rails. Pulls one heck of a shot.