Ted Ritzer: RSS

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:38:59 GMT

Podcasting mechanics. After I posted yesterday's audio interview, Paul Schaeflein wrote to point out that I ought to be using RSS 2.0 enclosures in my feed so that enclosure-aware aggregators can download media objects. ... [Jon's Radio]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 01:57:17 GMT

BBC: Blog picked as word of the year. Slow news day. [Scripting News]

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 06:54:58 GMT

Trying out FeedBurner / Flickr.

This weekend, I was trying to extend my web design skills, so I was crawling through the code of my friend Caterina's site (I've always admired her site design) and noticed that her RSS feed was linking out to FeedBurner. Then, just this morning, one of my colleagues asked me what I knew about FeedBurner, and I said, "Not much." All this after I had meaning to go back and look deeper into the Flickr / FeedBurner announcement several weeks ago that slipped by while I was on vacation. FeedBurner, FeedBurner, FeedBurner -- time to check out FeedBurner.

I decided to redirect my RSS feed over to FeedBurner. Subscribers shouldn't notice anything -- I inserted a temporary redirect into our Apache config while I'm trying this out (so please don't subscribe to the new URL!):

Redirect temp /dickerson/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/infoworld/dickerson

After an hour using FeedBurner, I'm already really pleased with the stats reporting on my RSS feed: click-throughs on individual items and the number of subscribers (something I could easily get for Bloglines, but not as easily for the general universe). So far, so good for something that is pre-alpha.

Incidentally, if you have a digital camera and you have friends (and here's hoping you have both), you have to sign up for Flickr -- now. I don't know quite how to explain the visceral thrill of using Flickr to post photos, share them with friends, and gather their comments. Not to mention your window into the photo streams of people you don't know who have made their photos public. You have to use Flickr to really get it. You can subscribe to an RSS feed that alerts you when someone has commented on your photos, which is really nice. (Full disclosure: the Caterina mentioned above works for Ludicorp, the folks who you bring you Flickr, but I'm posting this only because I think Flickr is really cool. Flickr seems to be percolating around InfoWorld right now -- Jon Udell ties Flickr into a discussion of enterprise knowledge gardening in his latest InfoWorld column.)

[Chad Dickerson]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 16:43:52 GMT

Share and map your RSS reading list. Dave Winer's created a service that maps out who reads what RSS feeds -- just upload the OPML file from your RSS reader and it will add your name to the list of subscribers for all the feeds in your rota. Cool to see who's reading you, and who you're reading. Made me remember that I have a bunch of blogs in my bookmark group that I haven't entered into my RSS reader... Link (via Battelle) [Boing Boing Blog]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 16:20:51 GMT

Blogdigger Development Blog. Notes about the development of Blogdigger and the RSS Kicker engine. [Recently approved feeds from Syndic8.com]

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 17:06:23 GMT

MobileRSS.

Keith Hurwitz wrote me and said that MobileRSS is "freakishly cool."

mobileRSS is specifically designed for small PDA screens, works within your browser (thus requiring no software downloads or upgrades), and stores all your settings and feeds online (thus using no memory on your device).

[Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Weblog]

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 17:00:16 GMT

My Yahoo in RSS!. 2 Announcing a new experimental service. My Yahoo to RSS converts modules personalized at http://my.yahoo.com/ into RSS feeds. At... [Disruptive Technology]

Wed, 24 Dec 2003 17:54:48 GMT

Merry Christmas from the Accordian Guy worth repeating:

Stole this file from the above site, cause I think it really does capture some of both the frustration and the joy of Xmas.

All the best from WIFLblog and enjoy the Accordian Guy's Christmas story, and don't forget to visit his site:

the Accordian Guy Christmas story now follows:

Merry Christmas, and I mean it in the nice sense of the phrase

by Joey deVilla on December 24, 2003 12:13PM (EST)

This is from last year (with a little polishing up), but it's worth repeating.

While I do believe that some traditions should be put to rest, I also believe that a lot of tradition-bashers are poor-impulse-control cases. Having abandones any actual tradition or culture of their own, they fill the void with a couple of < href="http://www.utne.com/">Utne Reader platitudes, a mild revulsion for anything even vaguely Judeo-Christian, even if it aligns with their beliefs, a pro-pot slant and a half-formed belief in eye-for-eye karmic payback.

Standing for almost nothing, they tend to fall for just about anything.

Chris Baldwin's summed it up pretty handily -- and perhaps unintentionally -- in a Bruno comic from last year:

To borrow the line about Klansmen and Martin Luther King Day: C'mon, Bruno, how hardcore a secularist must you be to not want a day off?

Of course, those of us who celebrate Christmas would argue the exact opposite: here we took a beautiful Christian holdiay and destroyed it through corportization and "We're white, we're straight, we're sorry!" guilt.

(There's a Randroid who would take another tack and say "here we took a beautiful commerical holiday and destroyed it in usual religious fashion." Haven't we developed some kind of Ayn Rand repellent yet?)

In the end, I believe that intent counts.

I'm certain there is no malice, no implicit "convert or die" message and no forcing of one's beliefs on others when someone wishes someone else a Happy Chanukah, Eid, Diwali, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Tet or even Festivus, the actions of certain vicious zealots notwithstanding. Balanced minds do not see any implied Hitler overtones at Oktoberfest nor Hirohito/Tojo insinuations at the sushi house, and neither do they see the Crusades in Christmas.

When people say "Merry Christmas", most of them are really saying "Happy Holidays, and I'm celebrating them Christmas-style. You do your thing, and I'll do mine. Come by for drinks."

That what I'm really saying, anyways.

No matter what you believe, enjoy the break from the hustle and bustle of 21st century life. Be nice to each other. Hug someone you love.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Tue, 23 Dec 2003 04:51:45 GMT

RSS Greatest Hits. Oh Great LazyWeb Hear My Prayer: An RSS aggregator that converts text to speech and saves the resulting audio in Original article: RSS Greatest Hits... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:18:14 GMT

RSS Winterfest is a two-day conference, Jan 21-22, for people who use RSS. An audio conference that you participate in over the telephone. No charge, but registration is required. Should be very interesting. I'm doing the opening session, from a conference room at Harvard Law School, with people who are using RSS, and we'll talk about what they want to do with RSS, what they like about today's software, what they don't like; products and services they might want to buy. How do you feel about ads in RSS? How can schools, businesses, the government, better use RSS? Comment here. [Scripting News]

Sat, 20 Dec 2003 15:57:35 GMT

Kaye Trammel asks what RSS can do for you, and almost nails it. It's true you are being generous by publishing what you write in RSS; and it does make it easier for the reader, but you get something in return -- commitment. A person who subscribes to your weblog is saying they want a permanent relationship, they want to read everything you say. Someone who doesn't subscribe comes when they remember, or when someone else points to you. Not much commitment there. BTW, a subscription doesn't mean they agree with you, or even like you. Remember the old agage: Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. [Scripting News]

Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:20:59 GMT

Utah Legislative News now available as in RSS.

The Utah Legislature has created an RSS channel with general interest news items including notices of the Legislature's Interim Newsletter, audit results and other significant content changes on their website. They envision many other uses for RSS in the future. I am really excited about this development. We now have quite a few RSS channels, including utah. gov news, Utah business news, the Governor's news, Utah library news, etc. I am hoping to put together a subscription page at some point in time that will make it easier for interested users to subscribe to the various news channels.

[David Fletcher: Utah Government]

Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:18:43 GMT

La Fing interviews Chris Pirillo and JY Stervinou about RSS. [Scripting News]

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:46:50 GMT

Top 10 reasons why RSS rules. ";->" [Scripting News]

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:45:45 GMT

RSS + BitTorrent= Answer to Bandwidth Woes. It's obvious that peer-to-peer is the answer for people who want to give away great Internet content without losing their... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 17:30:37 GMT

New Browser Based RSS Aggregator. I'm playing with the beta of Fastbuzz, a new aggregator. It lets you create a search and turn it into... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:53:28 GMT

A letter to Harvard about Syndication.

A Note to Harvard University:

Dave Winer handed you a major gift when he turned RSS 2.0 over to Harvard. One that, I'm sure, you might not yet fully appreciate.

I've seen the light. Syndication will clearly be a major part of what happens next in the computer world. Already my ability to read Web sites has increased ten fold (I now read about 640 RSS feeds in the time it used to take me to read less than 60 HTML-based Web sites).

You think RSS isn't changing things? Heck, just look at politics. Here's a new RSS news aggregator that one of the top presidential candidates, Howard Dean, is using to push news out to his followers.

The fact that Harvard now owns the RSS specification will let Harvard play in a whole new realm of technology that our society will use. That is if Harvard doesn't blow it between now and 2005.

That's what this letter is all about.

Today Harvard's spec, RSS 2.0, is the leader in the syndication race. But, if everything remains the way it is today, RSS won't be on top for long.

Why not?

Because the market is changing. Just over the weekend there was a corner turn in the Atom camp. Atom is a format (and an API) that competes with RSS. Why is that? Because Atom started with the RSS spec and improved on it. What was the corner turn? Over the weekend Sam Ruby shipped a set of slides that spelled out quite clearly just how it is better.

That alone didn't mean much. But, today, my favorite news aggregator (NewsGator) supports both Atom and RSS. NewsGator is built on Microsoft's .NET platform. Why is that important? Well, today it might not seem to be. But, we're building our next version of Windows (code-named Longhorn) and Longhorn gives tons of new capabilities to .NET developers that haven't existed before.

Why is that a problem? Because Microsoft's developers are starting to compare RSS 2.0 and Atom and I'm seeing more and more of them switch to Atom because of the advantages laid out in Sam Ruby's slides.

What does that trend mean? Well, the value of the gift that Dave Winer gave you is going down every day. It might not look important today. Very few people are supporting Atom today. Well, except for Google, Six Apart, and IBM. Do they matter to this industry? Will the products they ship have an impact on the weblogging and syndication markets? To the Internet itself? You betcha!

Which is why I'm writing this letter. It's a roadmap of how Harvard will end up being the syndication leader in 2006, instead of Atom, er Google and IBM.

Here's what I'd do if I were at Harvard and in charge of the RSS spec:

1) Announce there will be an RSS 3.0 and that it will be the most thought-out syndication specification ever.

2) Announce that RSS 3.0 will ship on July 1, 2005. That date is important. For one, 18 months is long enough to really do some serious work. For two, RSS 3.0 should be positioned as "the best way to do syndication on Microsoft's Longhorn." The betas for Longhorn should really be rocking by that date, so you'll have tons of new developers trying to build innovative things for Longhorn. More on that later. For three, it would freeze the market for 18 months because "Mr. Safe" will not want to move away from RSS before he sees what the future of RSS will be. Also, "Mr. Safe" will want to stick on a platform that will be compatible with RSS 3.0. Today that platform is RSS 2.0.

3) Open up a mailing list, a wiki, and a weblog to track progress on RSS 3.0 and encourage community inclusion.

4) Work with Microsoft to ensure that RSS 3.0 will be able to take advantage of Longhorn's new capabilities (in specific, focus on learning Indigo and WinFS). Build a prototype (er, have MSN build one) that would demonstrate some of the features of RSS 3.0 -- make this prototype so killer that it gets used on stage at the Longhorn launch (in fact, make it even better than that, so it gets included with every copy of Longhorn that's shipped).

5) Make sure RSS 3.0 is simply the best-of-breed syndication protocol. Translation: don't let Microsoft or Google come up with a better spec that has more features.

Why would you do all of this?

Well, imagine what'll happen to Harvard's name recognition if your syndication format gets demonstrated on stage by Bill Gates? Imagine where future software engineering students will want to attend. Harvard or Stanford? Hmmm. Stanford generated Google. You do the math. How much does a single student pay nowadays? $150,000+ to attend Harvard for four years? How many students decide to attend Stanford because that's where Google and Yahoo were started?

But, it'd take some vision. It'd take some chutzpah.

Of course, if you don't have the vision, that's OK. Atom is there to take over if you fumble the football.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:52:46 GMT

Nokia's RSS.

Russell Beattie talks about Nokia's use of RSS.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:52:19 GMT

RSS 2.0 Framework.

The RSS 2.0 Framework. Enables .NET programmers to add syndication to their apps.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:52:03 GMT

KB RSS Feeds.

Tim Heuer says that the Microsoft Knowledge Base RSS feeds are "must haves."

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:51:09 GMT

BitTorrent and RSS.

eWeek's Steve Gillmor covers my life lately: RSS and BitTorrent. Disruptive? Heck yes!

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:48:46 GMT

RSS & BT Together?. AntiPasto writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, RSS and BitTorrent could be set to join in a best-of-both-worlds content management system for the ... [Slashdot]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 14:58:52 GMT

Brent Simmons on two frequently asked RSS questions. 1. About using HTML in titles and descriptions. 2. Should link elements be permalinks or should they point to an external page? We're may write clarifications, if necessary. In both cases, the spec says something. We'd like to know where people need clarification to deploy content or apps. [Scripting News]

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 05:35:26 GMT

Who Groks RSS for Corporate Info? Nokia. Wow. If you're into RSS and wonder how a company can use it to empower a wider community, check out... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 01:04:09 GMT

Markup in titles in RSS?.

The RSS 2.0 spec and its predecessors may not say clearly enough if you can or can't include markup in titles. But I don't think you should include markup in titles. Titles are like file names (not exactly of course). They are a happy medium between software and people. Both must be able to read them and make sense of them, in all contexts, and do so easily. While it seems reasonable that a description may contain markup, it also seems reasonable that a title should not. So, if I were writing a validator for RSS, and encountered markup in a title, I'd warn the author that many processors would not be happy about this and it would be safer to strip the markup from the title.

Disclaimer: Scripting News is a weblog, not a spec. If you interpret it as a spec you will be making a mistake. I think I've said this quite a few times, but a few people still treat it as if I were writing a spec here. Not so. And not fair.

A postscript. I went back to see what the spec actually says, and it turns out it's not really a problem with the spec, rather with my recollection of what the spec says. Scroll to elements of item. It says descriptions may contain entity-encoded HTML. It doesn't say that a title may. So if that's the biggest problem people can find with the spec (which many were flaming about when I wrote it, it's not like they offered any help, btw) then it's a pretty damned good spec if you ask me.

[Scripting News]

Sat, 13 Dec 2003 07:27:51 GMT

RSS Feeds from Philadelphia Newspapers. Glad to see Philly.com's RSS feeds for the Inquirer's front page and the Daily News' local news.... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Sat, 13 Dec 2003 07:26:51 GMT

FeedDemon 1.0 going Gold!. At the stroke of midnight tonight (CST), I'm "officially" locking the FeedDemon code in preparation for its final release. It's... [Disruptive Technology]

Sat, 13 Dec 2003 07:13:08 GMT

The RSS Pushmepullyu
My column on RSS, which noted how poor a name the acronym is, sparked a good discussion over at John Battelle's blog about how to find a better name.

And I note (thanks to Lockergnome for the link) that Amy Gahran of Contentious has a contest going for a new name.

Jeremy Zawodny makes the same point I was trying to make, in a slightly different way:

In 2004, RSS is going to go mainstream--and it's going to happen in a big way. Remember when you first starting seeing URLs appear on billboards and at the end of movie trailers? So do I. It's going to be like that. One day we're just going to look around and realize that RSS is popping up all over the place. And a couple years later, we'll all wonder how we ever got along without it.

Finally, Dru (no last name provided) wrote in to say, "RSS is not push, it is all pull. And that is extremely important... Any time an RSS reader goes to check on a feed, it pulls down a copy from the given url."

He's absolutely right, in terms of the technical meaning. However, from the user's standpoint RSS provides essentially what "push" promised but delivered only with great, painful effort: dynamic notification of new stuff to read. So, though I stand corrected in my use of the term, I think the analogy still holds. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

Tue, 09 Dec 2003 14:20:37 GMT

Social Bookmarks Manager

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 23:17:36 GMT

RSS in Government does an article on the Government of Canada's Online Newsroom that releases RSS feeds, check it out at:

http://www.rssgov.com/archives/000075.html

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 02:58:46 GMT

Since starting this blog my output of regular columns has declined, but I'm back, tonight, with an ode to RSS. This will be old hat to many reading here, but for the wider world of Salon's readers and beyond, RSS remains a novelty worth introducing with a fanfare. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 02:51:29 GMT

RSS, Key to User Freedom. Steve Gillmor (my older, wiser brother who writes for eWeek): Sun, RSS and Apple Challenge Office Dominance. Suddenly, the Windows... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 02:44:29 GMT

Andrew Grumet: "BitTorrent will probably be the killer app for dealing with RSS enclosures when they catch on." [Scripting News]

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 02:41:48 GMT

TownPortal: Bringing RSS to masses. TownPortal provides integrated RSS 2.0 support. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Wed, 03 Dec 2003 02:37:21 GMT

The state of Arkansas has an RSS feed. Via Ray Matthews. [Scripting News]

Wed, 03 Dec 2003 02:37:05 GMT

Maybe Doc is ready for Payloads for RSS. [Scripting News]

Wed, 03 Dec 2003 02:35:26 GMT

Don Park suggests that Blogger and Movable Type adopt RSS 2.0. I've been asking them to do this for a long time, repeatedly, and ask>RSS 2.0 spec as an immovable object in the way of something, but we went to great lengths to make sure that it wasn't in the way. It's licensed under the Creative Commons for-attribution license. So all you have to do, if you want to produce a derivative work, is credit me with authorship of the original. Period. End of obligation. And if you don't want to use my spec as the basis for yours, your obligation to me is zero, nada, nil, void. How much less of an obstacle could it be? Don suggests "backward compatible." I like the sound of that. [Scripting News]

Sat, 29 Nov 2003 23:54:24 GMT

RSS Enables Simple 'Headline News' on the Run. I'm beginning to envision the future of "headline news" -- RSS style on handhelds. This is a new Treo 600,... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 05:10:02 GMT

National Weather Service RSS Feeds

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 04:49:49 GMT

SUPER SIMPLE RSS (free): Simplify the process of RSS file creation. Easily manipulate RSS files crea [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 02:35:54 GMT

PocketRSS is a "Today Screen plugin and stand-alone application which allows a quick and easy method of displaying various types of RSS/OPML compliant data on your Today Screen." [Scripting News]

Sun, 23 Nov 2003 18:43:51 GMT

TechNova suggests RSS Demon

Saw this posting at Ian Betteridge's TechNova blog, and tried FeedDemon out.

"FeedDemon RSS newsfeed Reader for Windows

FeedDemon just starts to look better and better. Current favourite feature: the ability to synchronise to an OPML file somewhere online, allowing you to keep your home and work reading in reasonable sync. One day, I hope NetNewsWire will get this feature."

It turns out FeedDemon is an RSS app that read OPML files, and has a listing of several, so I tried loading these OPML files in Radio, only got InfoWorld's opening, so I have posted the InfoWorld OPML file listings in my WIFLblog links sections, so if you are a fan of either Chad Dickerson or Jon Udell, check out WIFLblog links

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 01:09:03 GMT

Hey the government of Canada has RSS feeds. They're pretty good, not bad at all, but they call their feeds 0.91 but use features only available in 2.0. I'm hesitant to criticize, because after all it's the thought that counts. But my aggregator will ignore the cool 2.0 stuff because it takes the version seriously. Best thing to do is to just change the version number to 2.0 and accept a hearty thanks from your neighbors to the south. And thanks to Lawrence for the pointers (he's Canadian). [Scripting News]

Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:33:24 GMT

Karen Schneider Is A Convert, Too!.

Getting Started with RSS: The No-Brainer Method

"By popular demand, this is a short introduction to RSS, employing Bloglines, a free, Web-based RSS aggregator (reader). This is how I got started with RSS--hence, it's a guaranteed no-brainer!...

Still, RSS is a bit baffling at first. Once you step in, though, you'll have an immediate 'ah hah.' These directions were written to get you from baffled to 'ah hah' in less than fifteen minutes." [Free Range Librarian]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:30:29 GMT

Good Morning, Silicon Valley Has RSS Feed. One of my favorite daily reads, Good Morning Silicon Valley, has an RSS feed you can add to your favorite... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:42:56 GMT

RSS in Government. News about how RSS is being used in federal, state, and local government [Recently approved feeds from Syndic8.com]

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:41:03 GMT

Daily funnies as RSS. Now this is a fantastic idea: daily comic-strips syndicated as RSS feeds -- who needs a separate "comics reader" when an RSS aggregator can suck in anything that can be represented as a syndicated feed?

Adam@Home by Brian Basset http://dwlt.net/tapestry/adam.rdf 2003-08-03
B.C. by Johnny Hart http://dwlt.net/tapestry/bc.rdf 2003-08-25
Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce http://dwlt.net/tapestry/bignate.rdf 2003-08-11
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson http://dwlt.net/tapestry/ch.rdf 2003-06-09
Dilbert by Scott Adams http://dwlt.net/tapestry/dilbert.rdf 2003-06-06
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau http://dwlt.net/tapestry/doonesbury.rdf 2003-06-13
Drabble by Kevin Fagan http://dwlt.net/tapestry/drabble.rdf 2003-08-11
For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston http://dwlt.net/tapestry/fbofw.rdf 2003-08-03

Link (via Ben Hammersley) [Boing Boing Blog]

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:23:31 GMT

from Marc Canter's blog, an article worth repeating, re Dave Winer's Distributed Directories idea:

I thought I'd turn you on to a couple of related sites out there - that are doing things like what Dave is doing.

1. Phil Pearson's TopicExchange.com. Go to this public site. Define channel/topic of interest (I choose TheMatrix.) Subscribe to any channel you wish (via RSS of course.) Folks can contirbute to channels via Trackback or by manually posting to that channel. As far as I know the TopicExchange was the first blog aggregation channel play.

Some folks use the TopicExchange for conferences or seminars or for special events or emergency situations. Others have copied the concept of blog aggregation channels - in general - for other uses.

2. Then there's eVector's W4/k-collector new service. It's based upon a paralell concept of topics - which are used to aggregate blog posts. But it goes about it a completely different way. Folks utilize a 'k-collector' plug-in in their blog tool to attach keywords to their blog posts. Then a new kind of aggregator - called W4 (for Who, What, Where, When) is used to browse, sort and display these posts - via topic keywords, instead of.... well you get the point, basically that's what Dave Winer is doing today.

But the difference is that W4/k-collector utilzies shared clouds - so that MULTIPLE people are contributing these keywords. The TopicExchange uses an open approach as well. And (surprise, surpirse) Paolo (of eVectors) has been working on a way on connecting these worlds together.

There is also the issue of 'topic mapping' to keep in mind - as well. Afterall one man's musical event is another man's concert.

what this is ALL about is knowledge management coming to the blogosphere. These are unhderlying themes of teh semantic web. This is about agents, and smart software and ne wkinds of tools to enable all this new stuff.

In other words - when Dave Winer discovers this shit - that means it's VERY real, it's been here a while and it ain't going away.

Star Tree Generator for Distributed Directory Navigation

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:35:15 GMT

Building upon Dave Winer's idea of using the outliner in radio to build OPML based distributed directories, I would add the following idea, to add a graphical navigation ability similiar to Star Trees.

One good example of a hierarchial approach to data visualization is found at:

http://www.inxight.com/map/

Currently they give away their star tree creator software, if you try the above link, you will see a concrete exmpale that helps you navigate their website. Now what if we had the ability to convert our OPML based directories into graphic representations, with built in hotlinks to those sites featured in our OPML bookmakr files.

Reminds me of the MIT concept of "Flying Through Information", only instead we are flying the hierarchical directories. A friend on mine deveoped a concept like this called NetReality. And I remember way back when Netscape stole Guptha away from Apple, who had developed Hot Sauce. All of which helped people navigate through information. I think that Tim Bray may be doing something simliar with their Apache capatible product from his company, Antartica.ca

So let's Fly Through Distributed OPML Directories

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 01:25:09 GMT

An important perspective re categories from Marc's Voice

see below:

Terminology disconnect

One of the most exicting things to happen in a long time to to watch Dave Winer discover topics, knowledge management and categorization. And like any true visionary, entrepreneur software guy - Dave is putting his enlightenment where his mouth is - into his code.

But at this point - I think it's fair to say that the word 'category' is being over-used, or shall I say politely 'mis-used', abused, mis-construed and all sorts of other 'buses.

First the word category was used to mean 'separate blog channel'. That's still how it's used in Radio Userland (Dave's former company.) Now Dave is using the word category to mean 'topics' IMHO. Regardless of the semantics (and NO I don't mean semantic web) - the usage of terms is pretty important for us all to get into sync. And stay in sync.

Take Paolo's W4/k-collector product - or Phil Pearson's Topic Exchange. Both use the term 'topics' to mean - exactly what Dave calls a category. I think Dave means category - in a broader sense of a directory - with a drilled down specific topic within a category.

And I shouldn't have to say that all this revolves around the general area of what's known as Knowledge Management or KM. If you can automatically categorize email, IM, message boards or blog posts then..... [insert here any number of rants, raves and elugisms.]

Maybe the terms category and topics can live side by side. A category could be thought of as a directory of topics. Simple enough. Anyway here's Dave's report on all the 'categories' he used last week...........

Reminder, here are the categories of the last week's posts. [Scripting News]