Coderplay

I recently decided to take a look at who is using RSS 2 HTML (a site of mine that allows you to take an RSS feed and present it as HTML; it’s great for website creators).

RSS 2 HTML works by giving the website creator a bit of HTML code that embeds the RSS feed into a web page. The end result is that when you visit this person’s website, you see the contents of the RSS feed along with the other content on the page. Additionally, it puts a small link back to the RSS 2 HTML website. This link is the only acknowledgment I receive for the websites that use my service (this includes bandwidth costs that are incurred every time a person visits a page that uses RSS 2 HTML).

When looking through the list of websites that use RSS 2 HTML, I found a highly interesting result:

University of New South Wales – Library – RSS Library Resources

The link following each and every bullet point on that page loads an RSS 2 HTML feed. “Great!”, I thought, “a prestigious university using my tool”. But then I noticed that they had hidden the link back to my site; this means no acknowledgment to me whatsoever! That’s right – UNSW, with total revenue in 2007 of $959 million¹, is too cheap to recognise the contribution of my work to their website.

What adds insult to injury is that I used to be a student at UNSW, and I was charged large sums of money for the privilege.

But I’m a nice guy. Even though they don’t acknowledge me, I’ll still provide them with the same fast efficient RSS 2 HTML service – which is perhaps more than they deserve.

¹ http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/UNSW_AnnualReport_Financials_2007.pdf