This needs to be a rule: Technical articles and blog posts *must* have a date. Always.
I was looking around for articles on how to merge my Twitter feed with Blogger. I found a ton of outdated information, that was, of course, *not* actually dated, making it was impossible to gauge relevance. I think I poked around the internet for about half an hour before stumbling upon something that worked.
(Solution that works as of 2013/02/24: Embed the code snippet generated by https://twitter.com/settings/widgets into your blog layout HTML)
With rapid release cycles and constantly evolving software, blog posts have limited shelf-lives and often only apply to specific versions of the product. It is incumbent on anyone that seeks to document or write about software to understand this. The crazy thing is I've seen this on Wired, Salon and a bunch of other reputable publications. A Google search for "add twitter feed to blogger" yields a surprisingly high number of outdated AND undated results.
Now part of this is Twitter's fault for messing with their API and terms of service. But this is unfortunately the way things are when software isn't completely open. The end user is held hostage by the folks controlling the software. OK - Now I'm starting to sound like RMS. Which probably means I should sign off.
But seriously - software really does need to be open.
I was looking around for articles on how to merge my Twitter feed with Blogger. I found a ton of outdated information, that was, of course, *not* actually dated, making it was impossible to gauge relevance. I think I poked around the internet for about half an hour before stumbling upon something that worked.
(Solution that works as of 2013/02/24: Embed the code snippet generated by https://twitter.com/settings/widgets into your blog layout HTML)
With rapid release cycles and constantly evolving software, blog posts have limited shelf-lives and often only apply to specific versions of the product. It is incumbent on anyone that seeks to document or write about software to understand this. The crazy thing is I've seen this on Wired, Salon and a bunch of other reputable publications. A Google search for "add twitter feed to blogger" yields a surprisingly high number of outdated AND undated results.
Now part of this is Twitter's fault for messing with their API and terms of service. But this is unfortunately the way things are when software isn't completely open. The end user is held hostage by the folks controlling the software. OK - Now I'm starting to sound like RMS. Which probably means I should sign off.
But seriously - software really does need to be open.
1 comment:
I totally agree, after similar experiences. I've gotten in the habit of revising old posts; I put the update date and strikeout old material.
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