small problem with the APOD RSS feed?

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tardis42
Asternaut
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Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:01 pm

small problem with the APOD RSS feed?

Post by tardis42 » Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:29 pm

I follow the APOD RSS feed (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod.rss) and in normal use every day i see the new APOD, but i also see yesterday's APOD appear in the feed again. I've worked out that this is because when the new APOD is posted it's URL is given as

"http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html"

and the URL for the previous day's pic is changed from that to e.g.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100528.html

this change of the url in the feed means that my RSS reader thinks it's a new post, so it reappears even if i deleted/marked it read the previous day.

Anyone else have this problem?

I'm using Opera 10.53 on OS X 10.6.3 as my RSS viewer.

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Henning Makholm
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Re: small problem with the APOD RSS feed?

Post by Henning Makholm » Sun Sep 19, 2010 3:07 pm

tardis42 wrote:I follow the APOD RSS feed (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod.rss) and in normal use every day i see the new APOD, but i also see yesterday's APOD appear in the feed again.
...
Anyone else have this problem?
It's even worse if you use Google Reader. There I only ever see yesterday's picture. Apparently it considers today's picture "already read" based on the URL.

If whoever controls the feed generation code could get it to use permanent links for all items, it would improve reader experience considerably.
Henning Makholm

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RJN
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Re: small problem with the APOD RSS feed?

Post by RJN » Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:40 pm

Thanks, Henning. Based on your report, I just emailed the ASD group at NASA GSFC who wrote the RSS feed. Hopefully this is something they can implement. - RJN

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