Occam’s RazR

Starving for a Feed

by Ike

Yay!

The city of Birmingham has stepped up with a new website!

Mmmm... tasty! (mmm… new website… pretty colors… tasty… mmm…)

So, I was clicking around, looking for the RSS feed for news and updates…

Nothing.

One step forward, one step back.

Doh! I’ll be getting in touch with someone at the city, to see if there are some feeds on the drawing board. It is a brand new rollout, after all — and timed to the beginning of the year, there might have been a few things left unfinished.

While I’m at it, I’ll suggest a page where people can download and mindlessly install the appropriate widgets so those feeds will keep residents connected to the news.

Doh again! It would be a great advance in transparent government. And if that should fall on deaf ears…

Technorati Tags: Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Birmingham, Alabama, RSS, government, transparency

"Starving for a Feed" was published on January 3rd, 2008 and is listed in Communication, Personal.

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Starving for a Feed: 4 Comments

Chip Griffin wrote,

It doesn’t look like there’s much content that would be suitable for an RSS feed at this point, so you’re not just asking them to create the technical tools needed, but rather asking them to create/convert content. I’m not saying it is a bad idea, but it is a more ambitious undertaking for many government agencies where approvals are even hairier than in big corporations.

Link | January 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Ike wrote,

True Chip… but you would think there would be an RSS feed at the very least for the Press Release archive.

Which is empty, by the way.

I’m going to give it time.

Link | January 3rd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Chip Griffin wrote,

I couldn’t even find the press release archive (just found it by searching for that exact text), so I guess that could be an issue, too!

Link | January 3rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Rodger Johnson wrote,

Yeah, RSS feeds are good. Just the other day, I was checking out my former employer’s new website. For an organization as large as it is — one of the nation’s largest statewide community colleges serving 111,000 student on 23 campuses, the student blogs are contrived and the videos used for promotional purposes look like a third grader produced them. The site is just awful and an embarrassment.

Link | January 4th, 2008 at 9:06 am