iTunes dumped my TalkShoe Feed

Bruce,

I'm buried in exactly 1178 unread emails at the moment - apologies for not having seen yours by now. I'm glad that you've used TalkShoe's Help system instead.

First, I have confirmed that I get the same RSS feed validation error as you do when submitting to iTunes.

For your information, we build the RSS feed from the text that you input for your episode descriptions (among other things). Invalid characters can be introduced when you cut and paste text from a word processor such as Microsoft Word to a web application such as a blog or RSS feed.

Pursuing that hypothesis, I used the site http://feedvalidator.org to diagnose the problem. I obtained your RSS feed by clicking the "List on iTunes" link on your call page. It looks like this: http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss309... (note to others - just replace 30943 with your own TalkShoe Call ID to get your RSS feed).

FeedValidator gave me this clue related to your episode description for your 9/4/08 show:

# Tonight we'll talk about the FIRST Training Programs, ( http://www.furman.edu/first/fmtp.htm ) that allow you to focus on just 3 quality workouts a week.

I cut and pasted that description from TalkShoe into my MS Word program and found that there were four invalid characters between "a" and "week" (they showed up as empty squares).

I fixed that by editing your description (to the right of the episode listing, click "Options", then "Update") by retyping "a week" directly over the original words. When I saved changes, the TalkShoe system regenerated the RSS feed, now without those odd characters.

FYI, FeedValidator highlighted 2 other errors but they are inconsequential.

I then went back to iTunes and was able to successfully submit your feed.