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last year between April and June, there’s kind of been a moratorium on commentary about the greater weblog/syndication world. I found that nothing productive really came out of it, and I wasn’t really invested enough to continue to post about the topic. I tried it, and it was interesting for a while, but I’ve moved on.

I still read Scripting News nearly every day and I still think Dave Winer is a bit of a nutjob a fair bit of the time. Sometimes I agree with him, but I rarely feel strongly about it when I do. Usually it’s about something run-of-the-mill or otherwise meaningless. Today, however, I found myself actually rooting for Dave, which, to be honest, felt a little, well, dirty (j/k).

As I write this, though, the inspiration for my short step out of character isn’t posted on the site any longer and appears to have been replaced by this bland little item. Apparently, Dave was semi-spurned by IDG, the organizer of the Syndicate conference for posting the details of his interactions with them regarding his finding a personal sponsor for his appearance. In particular, I’m betting they didn’t like the criticism he leveled after they told him he couldn’t have a personal sponsor. He had written a very honest, but fair response to their attempt to censor his weblog by threatening his ability to speak if he didn’t stop posting the details. He said, thanks, but no thanks.

Hey, I don’t agree with the guy very often, but I sure appreciated what appeared to be his stand on this issue. I hope he re-posts it soon.

UPDATE:

Looks like I spoke too soon (about his taking it down). He just moved it off the front page. It’s posted at the bottom of this entry at reallysimplesyndication.com.

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BTW, the moratorium is back on. Also, Dave is back to being his good ol’ nutty self again today.

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I certainly applaud the effort. Anything that makes RSS 2.0 more useful is great as far as I’m concerned. What’s odd to me is the fact that he appears to get a pass WRT “funkiness” from Dave Winer.

According to Dave’s definition of funkiness for RSS 2.0 clearly states:

A feed is funky if it uses extensions to provide information that can be expressed by core elements.

In this case, the <atom:author> element, while richer than the core <author> element in RSS 2.0, serves the identical purpose of the element it replaces — identifying the author of a given <entry>. This appears to fit the above definition of “funky” quite well.

Now, call me a cynic, but where’s the outcry? Is it because Andrew is a newly anointed member of the RSS 2.0 Cabal? I certainly don’t know. I’m sure there is some subtle difference that is lost on me. Someone enlighten me. Please.

Dave Winer has begun an experiment in audio weblogging. Various other experiments in Audio Blogging have been tried and I haven’t liked a single one. Now that Dave has seemingly revived this movement, I figure it’s worth commenting on.

While the future of the web will most certainly include ever increasing amounts of multimedia content, I don’t believe that run of the mill ‘spoken word’ blogs are the likely or appropriate successor to today’s text blogs.

In the blogging context, text content has a number of advantages over audio content:

First, text is searchable. If, six months from now, I’m curious as to Dave’s thoughts on audio blogging or the series of events that ultimately inspired this morning’s recording, I can’t find it with a search engine. I can’t use a few, well placed key words.

Second, text can contain hyperlinks. We get an inkling of the audio’s limitations here at the end of Dave’s message this morning as he explains his e-mail address.

One of the great things about blogs is that we can provide additional meaning to the text content by linking to the names of people, places, and articles involved in our discussion. With audio, this kind of contextualization is far more difficult. It either requires assumed knowledge on the part of the reader OR it requires the ‘performer’ to waste time explaining the context, potentially distracting the listener and breaking the flow of the thought. This is somewhat well illustrated when Dave tries to explain who Steve Gillmor is.

Additionally, Dave’s description of his address is probably only useful to somewhat strong speakers of English. While this may not bother Dave, it does speak to the limited usefulness of audio blogs in more linguistically heterogeneous settings. Which leads us to…

Third, text content is easily translated. O.K., sometimes it reads a little funny when using babelfish to translate things, but usually it’s enough to get the point across. This isn’t currently available for audio content.

Fourth: text content is far more easily edited. While some people seem to think that editing weblog posts is a bad thing, it usually isn’t. While spelling edits would no longer be necessary, adding content and/or reworking audio content would require significantly greater amounts of effort than equivalent text.

Fifth: I can process text content at my own pace. Fast readers often implore a scanning technique to skip extraneous portions of a given paragraph or page. Audio doesn’t allow this. In fact, it actually forces the audience to listen and process at the speaker’s pace. With a blog, I can read it as fast or as slowly as I choose. Not to mention the fact that we are subjected to the various sniffs, coughs and other potentially annoying vocal tendencies that text protects us from.

Sixth: Text is more easily quoted accurately. Copy. Paste. With audio, this process is a much bigger pain. I’m either forced to transcribe the portion I wish to quote or I am likely to paraphrase, which can be a slippery slope.

Well, there’s six to chew on for now. I’ve left out the obvious accessibility issues, which I’ll leave to someone else.

Does this all mean that audio content in blogs is useless? Definitely not. However, it remains to be seen what types of content it is appropriate for. I would say that it would need to be content that needed to be audio. For instance, audio that contains something that otherwise cannot be represented by text (and no, a plane flying by doesn’t strike me as being that significant). Musical content. Quoting an original item for which the format was audio (television, movies, a speech or presentation). Things like that. The random thoughts of Joe Geek are better expressed in text.

The article points out the most significant current issues (poorly written aggregators & questionable feed content strategies), but even fixing those items won’t solve the problem for long. While some are rightly exploring the concept of a new, distributed model for subscriptions, others are suggesting that aggregators simply enforce hard restrictions on polling intervals. Doing so would be an incredibly unfortunate and short-sighted approach as it would unnecessarily limit a number potential, albeit non-traditional, uses for RSS/ATOM.

Most of the current proposals for this limitation recommend a maximum polling interval of once per hour. Some even suggest a default of once per day. All of these suggestions, however, seem predicated on the assumption that RSS/ATOM is only useful for syndicating a very narrow group of content types. Personally, I can fathom a number of uses for RSS/ATOM technology that would appropriately poll at intervals of once per 10 or even 5 minutes. Such envisioned uses include server uptime/activity monitoring, stock quotes, sporting game progress updates, etc.

The “appropriate” polling interval is best determined as a function of the nature of the content, and not strictly the format in which it is being distributed. By enforcing such a limit at the aggregator, I am forced, as a user to do one of two things:

1. Write an aggregator of my own without the limitation, OR
2. Write a new format & a new aggregatorish application to process the new format

Neither solution is optimal. Especially when I can easily use the basic tools provided my aggregator of choice to separate and manage the information with minimal effort. My suggestion would be to add an optional TTL or MaxPollingInterval to the feed that would be respected by the aggregator. This would allow authors to limit the amount of polling on their site to that which they determined was reasonable.

As the core RSS/ATOM technologies grow, new models for subscription may well be necessary in order to allow them to scale. But please, don’t arbitrarily limit the potential uses of the technology by placing unnecessary restrictions in my aggregator.

I’m a user. I’m also a developer. In fact, as a developer, I’m a user. As a developer, it is important to me that I chose formats that will scale to my needs. RSS 2.0 is simple, and good for doing a great many things, particularly syndicating weblog (or similar) content. However, “syndication” feeds and aggregators are becoming useful for other types of information as well. Apple and Amazon have touched on the edges of this, but so much more A Murder Is Announced trailer is actually possible.

Developers of new, potentially innovative uses of syndication formats, need to be confident that their future needs will be addressed by the format they select. Many of the ideas that have gone into the seemingly superficial improvements made (or planned) by ATOM (internationalization, greater specification clarity, formal specification process, etc.) are not insignificant to such developers.

The original process surrounding RSS 2.0 failed to provide the necessary confidence to enough of those developers that they decided a new format was in order. When arbitrary barriers are encountered, the net community is well known for “routing around” them. In this case that was the formation of ATOM.

After it became clear that ATOM was gaining momentum, some

Freddy vs. Jason movie decisions were made with the goal of invalidating the political and personality barriers presented by the previous process. For some, it would appear, this has been too little too late. Additionally, many suspect that these were only superficial attempts to create the appearance of openness and flexibility while maintaining the status quo. Whether or not that is true in practice remains to be seen. Reassurances provided by Adam Curry and Andrew Grumet, while likely completely genuine, are less than reassuring as the rest of us lack the personal connection with Dave Winer. Show me somebody who doesn’t get along with Dave jumping on board with RSS 2.0 and I’ll feel a lot better.

I personally don’t care what the “winning” (an inadequate term, to say the least) format is. I simply care that it meets and addresses my needs as a developer and a user. If the RSS 2.0 crowd would like to win my support, and I believe the support of other semi-cautious developers (remember Mr. Safe?), show us that we can explore and push the envelope without fear of labels of “funkiness” or other such dreck. Show us that our concerns and requests will be taken seriously. Show us that the process surrounding RSS 2.0 has really changed. Have all of the previously voiced

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concerns surrounding the RSS 2.0 spec been addressed

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? If so, great. Build your campaign around that. Show us what RSS 2.0 is doing to respond to developers and users and why it is better.

Above all, please end the FUD campaign about ATOM and other competing formats. Quit predicting the “imminent death of syndication” if we fail to all jump on board the RSS 2.0 bandwagon.

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How about a little vanity for a Saturday? When I search for “Cameron Watters” (quotes omitted in the actual search) on Google, Yahoo, alltheweb and Alta Vista, my site

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Leatherheads dvdrip and Wisenut I don’t even rate a first page listing. All the results those engines do

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list on the first page are by and large to the same place.

One other small downside about Gigablast: The Add a URL feature is disabled at the moment. It’s probably just some technical thing that’ll be resolved soon enough. I probably shouldn’t jump to any conclusions and accuse anybody of a conspiracy or anything before all the evidence is in. That would be really foolish.

UPDATE: I’ve removed some of the stronger language in this post that may have been cause for offense to a prominent blogger. My original comments were tongue-in-cheek, but I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings and my comments may have crossed that line. Mea Culpa (sp?)

don’t remember anyone suggesting that it should be illegal for search engines to ignore such content.

Google is a content Doctor Dolittle video Race to Witch Mountain dvd -centric tool. It finds data. The format is simply a barrier/shell for that data. Even if Google limits its crawl to non-RSS 2.0 open

formats, there is no material barrier to content publishers getting their content crawled, just a political Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough full movie one. The data provided in ATOM and RSS 1.0 is, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to that contained in RSS 2.0. My aggregator of choice (NetNewsWire) reads all three formats quite well. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know which feeds are of which type because other than some ego stroking (on all sides, I might add) Crossing Over buy the differences between the formats is largely irrelevant to their content and, therefore, the end-user. Sure, there are things that are easier with RDF based data and there is something to be said for the simplicity of RSS 2.0, but a title is a title and a date is a date no matter what you call them.

If, on the other hand, Google were to limit the formats they were willing to crawl to only those formats that were created with expensive, encumbered, closed apps, there might be a worthwhile argument against such a decision. That is not the case here. RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM are all competing open formats. Anyone can publish in any of or all three formats with freely available tools The Player download .

In the final analysis, however, we’d be remiss if we failed to point out the largest, overriding check on Google’s power: the user. If users don’t find adequate results, they’ll go elsewhere. Unlike the Microsoft Antitrust situation, there is no financial transaction between the searcher and Google. There is, therefore, no material cost to to the user associated with switching away from Google. If another engine offers better results, users will leave. This has happened three or four times already over the history of the web. Yahoo was king for a while. AltaVista was king. AOL still does a TON of traffic for their search. Google may be at the top of the heap today, but history shows us that a fresher, newer option can gain ground incredibly quickly.

Any comparison to Microsoft (or other anti-trust references) is weak. Google doesn’t control the desktop and they don’t control the network. Call me when Google starts blocking entire networks because those networks refuse to block traffic to Yahoo, AltaVista and other Google competitors. Then we can talk about Google behaving like Microsoft. Until then, the question of legality should even be on the periphery of our thought process.

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“I never in a million years thought Google would stoop this low, even Microsoft on its worst day never played this dirty.”

It appears that Google is fast becoming the “Evil Corporate Giant” de jour. And with Dave leading the “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later” crowd, it is not surprising to see so much invective about the alleged slight to RSS 2.0.

However, after reading through most of the comments, on Dave’s site and others, and after some cursory grepping through my own logs, it becomes clear that the more likely scenario is that Google is just looking for as many predictably named feeds as possible. Further, it seems as if Google only looks for the additional feed types if it doesn’t find that feed type linked in the page.

For instance, on my site, Google indexes my unconventionally named RSS 2.0 and ATOM feeds and every once in a while, it checks for ‘index.rdf’. It has NEVER checked for atom.xml or rss.xml. I’m betting this is because it already found valid versions of those feed types at the linked URLs.

The true test would be to launch a new page with and ATOM or RSS 1.0 feed, but no RSS 2.0 feed (just for testing Dave, just for testing…) and watch and see if GoogleBot will look for the “missing” rss.xml. If it doesn’t, then, at least, we can begin to wonder. There may still be other reasonable explanations.

Finally, I’m curious about the last line of Dave’s e-mail:

Developers, no matter what format they prefer, are going to be outraged that Google, which is a search engine, is trying to control and define publishing. This should be illegal, although of course I am not a lawyer.

Frankly, this attitude is more destructive than anything Google could possible do. Google only has as much control as people give to them. Unlike Microsoft, Google does NOT dominate any market with anything approximating a 95% marketshare, nor are they able to secure deals with OEMs to prevent users from using alternative search engines. This isn’t anti-trust. There is no monopoly. The knee-jerk suggestion that this (whatever “this” is…it still isn’t more than a conspiracy theory) should be made illegal is ridiculous.

UPDATE (2004-04-24): A commenter points out that the illegality in this case relates to illegal tying. The crux of any claim of illegal tying, however, would seem to require a showing that Google was, in fact, excluding Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself psp Starcrash download formats other than RSS 1.0 and ATOM. My own limited research, as well as the comments of others elsewhere, show that they are indexing RSS 2.0 feeds. That alone seems to moot any claim of tying as there is no exclusivity?

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similarly searching for unlinked RSS 2.0 feeds. No one has presented anything resembling a conclusive answer on this issue to my knowledge. Once such behavior has been clearly demonstrated, we can begin to fairly question Google’s intentions. To date, all we have is rampant speculation unsupported by the evidence gathered thus far, and therefore, no accusation of wrongdoing or “playing dirty” is warranted. At this time, such accusations, in my opinion, border on the irresponsible.My Brilliant Career film Revelation psp

Upon seeing the above, I was reminded of the fact that I’ve been wanting to write something seemingly intelligent about the standard liberal tripe about tax cuts mainly benefiting the “rich” (which I still intend to do, though this isn’t it). I thought I might do some initial research into what was being said about the “Bush Tax Cut” and I came across this: The Bush Tax. The basic premise is that states are now being forced to pick up the tab for the programs that were cut to make way for the Bush tax cuts. Because I’m not familiar with what is happening in other states, I thought I’d focus on mine. As I read, I was more and more amazed by the misleading information and in at least one case, factual inaccuracy, they presented as evidence. I’ll take on each of the first three, point by point:

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  According to these guys, property taxes increased 9.52%. Hmm…that’s funny. Did you notice they didn’t say “Property tax rates?” That’s because rates haven’t gone up even close to that much. In fact, they nearly admit the misleading nature of their numbert by explaining that it is actually the increase in collected property tax revenues. They never even mention tax rates. What has actually happened is that 1) a ton of new homes have been built, increasing the value of properties for which taxes are collected and 2) in much of the state, home prices increased by as much as 12% in 2003 alone, thus driving up the assessed value for newly constructed homes. For example, my house has appreciated nearly 51% since 1999. Sadly, I’ve only owned it for the past ten months. The assessed value is still at the 1999 amount, but a newly built home that is similar to mine would be assessed at or near the current market price, resulting in higher taxes for effectively the same house.

• College Costs Skyrocket:
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• Health Coverage Slashed:
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As for the remaining two, I guess I’m confused as to why it has become considered the objective truth that government sponsored medical coverage is the best solution. In this case, we have two taxpayer funded programs that were cut in order to prevent a deficit. That seems reasonable. Frankly, I’d prefer not to have to cut a number of things out of my budget when money is tight, but, unlike governments, I don’t have the luxury of being able to confiscate money from millions of people to support my spending habits. Now, there may have been other expenditures that would’ve been better cut than these, but if so, let’s have that discussion.

SIDE NOTE: I also found it somewhat ironic that, in the same article that laments the cuts to these programs, we find big labor complaining loudly about not receiving a massive $2 per hour wage increase for home healthcare workers. Maybe next year we should just give them the raise. Then we can just raise their taxes so much that the increase is effectively meaningless. Wouldn’t that be a fun exercise in liberal government futility.

I’m using Moveable Type to maintain the site. As time goes on, I’ll enable things like comments, trackbacks, and I’ll try to resolve any issues with the design or functionality as I go along. I’ve tried a number of times to sit down and set up an entire site all at once, but I don’t really ever have the time to finish it, so I give up. This time, I just put SOMETHING up and I’ll let it evolve over time.

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I used Mark Pilgrim’s MT templates to help me better understand the template system and my options. I didn’t actually use any of his templates verbatim, just as a reference.

The simple layout was inspired by John Gruber’s Daring Fireball

and, slightly less so, Dave Winer’s Scripting News

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. I should point out, however, that I had the layout concept developed BEFORE Dave redesigned Scriping News. I just liked the photo-as-a-banner idea.

Speaking of the photo used for the site’s banner, thanks much to Doug Ford

for allowing me to use his work on my site.

Anyway, content will continue to come, slowly at first as I spend some of my time working on the site’s structure & features.