So I began the day feeling a bit chuffed about adding a new page of selected audio productions to my research blog. I tweeted and wired it. A student wired back: why no streaming? I looked at the new page again. The links I had given for the audio files pointed to "Download here" pages at the file hosting services I use. So click the blog link, then click the file host's "Download," then save it somewhere, then open it. With what, Winamp? Somehow, having not really thought it through,  I was apparently designing a web page for 1997.

I replaced the click-through layers with direct links to the files. Some browsers would take that as a prompt to play the file in a new Quicktime window, or maybe launch iTunes.

But having seen those slick little volume/playback streaming-media buttons on other blogs, only tonight did I realize my "solution" had been to update the design only to Y2K. Turns out that less than a minute of Wordpress homework would have made the page the right way in the first place. The arcane, complex code required is, apparently, just the word "audio" in front of the file link.

So the prematurely publicized Soundings page now looks like it belongs to today's web. I feel like an idiot. But I sure do appreciate learning from students.