Comments on: I also want a Yukon Energy Blackout RSS Feed

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:42:26 +0000

Power to the People! (In both senses.)

By: PR Flack

PR Flack — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:31:55 +0000

Hi Dave. I am just back from a week away and am just now reading this posting. I think an RSS feed is a great idea and I am going to talk to our web designer to try to make it happen. I’ll talk to him about the mashup at the same time.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:10:49 +0000

I had thought about writing some screen-scraping code to create an RSS feed out of YEC’s outage page, but screen-scraping is always fragile, and in any case, there aren’t any planned outages listed at present to test with (to YEC’s credit).

There are also a number of online services that can create feeds (in much the same way as Safari, I suspect): http://www.mikeyarmish.com/2006/08/26/5-free-services-to-create-rss-feed-for-a-site-which-dont-have-it/

By: Geof Harries

Geof Harries — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:41:27 +0000

Dave, well, there is a difference between architecture and copywriting, that’s for sure. I arguably had the easy task. As for the lack of an RSS feed, if you’re on Mac OS X Leopard, Safari allows you to turn any website page into a dynamic feed. If the page gets updated, your tiny version gets refreshed too, but you don’t have to check the website. More at http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari.html

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:06:50 +0000

Did I forget to mention how beautifully architected was the information? ‘Tis true — each page’s single paragraph is exactly where you’d expect to find it.

Clearly, I’m having some fun at everyone else’s expense. I’m sure someone at YEC is wondering what they did to deserve this.

By: Geof Harries

Geof Harries — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:24:28 +0000

Dave,

I was part of the team (2004) that developed the Yukon Energy website as you see it today. My main role was information architecture and of course, the project management end of things. RSS was barely out of the gate at that time, so we didn’t consider the technology in our build.

If you contact Janet Patterson communications-at-yukonenergy-dot-ca you’ll find her very easy to deal with and probably receptive to new website enhancements or changes, like an RSS feed.