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DeWitt Clinton  » Blog Wiki Identity Search: About Archives Categories Bookmark at delicious Subscribe at Google Subscribe at Bloglines Subscribe at My Yahoo  Content Comments DeWitt Clinton Twitter: Little earthquake. Posted about 2 days ago Microblogging syndication formats August 16th, 2008 by DeWitt Clinton I’ve been thinking a little bit about the syndication formats for microblogs lately, and I’m wondering if we might all agree upon some very simple conventions to integrate the various providers. Nothing profound here, just some simple ideas about how to get an easy win with existing technologies.Taking FriendFeed as the best current example of an aggregation site, I notice that the FriendFeed team has hand-coded various content providers, but they don’t have the same richness enabled for generic feeds.For example, take Dave Winer’s stream on FriendFeed. His FriendFeed page looks pretty darn good, doesn’t it? (I pick Dave because he does more to syndicate various content sources than just about anyone.) But then notice that his native FriendFeed bookmarks, his Amazon wishlist, and his Flickr photos all have rich content syndicated and look stunning, but his basic blog feed — itself a very rich content source — is comparably lacking in how it is represented in the aggregated stream.It’s the difference between this: And this: Why is this? Dave’s blog, syndicated over RSS, has plenty of great data to display. Only the blog post title is displayed — missing are the images, an icon, a summary, and more. Couldn’t those be captured as well?As a strawman proposal, what if content aggregation sites agree to display the following standard elements from RSS feeds:<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Scripting News</title> <link>http://www.scripting.com/</link> <description> Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution. </description> <language>en-us</language> <copyright>Copyright 1997-2008 Dave Winer</copyright> <pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <lastBuildDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:35:00 GMT</lastBuildDate> <docs>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html</docs> <generator>OPML Editor v0.73</generator> <managingEditor>scriptingnewsmail@gmail.com</managingEditor> <webMaster>scriptingnewsmail@gmail.com</webMaster> <item> <title>Perfect timing!</title> <link> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/08/15/perfectTiming.html </link> <guid> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/08/15/perfectTiming.html </guid> <comments> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/08/15/perfectTiming.html#disqus_thread </comments> <description> I just read this [...] </description> <enclosure url="http://www.scripting.com/mp3s/weatherReportSuite.mp3" length="12216320" type="audio/mpeg" /> <pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:23:10 GMT</pubDate> </item> </channel></rss>From this feed we’d want to consider the following RSS elements:rss/channel/title - the name of the blogrss/channel/link - the link to the blogrss/channel/item/title - the name of the entryrss/channel/item/link - the link to the entryrss/channel/item/description - extract the first 512 characters as the first commentrss/channel/item/enclosure - inlined media types (images, mp3, video)And for the Atom case the corresponding elements would be:feed/title - the name of the blogfeed/link - the link to the blogfeed/author/name - the name of the authorfeed/entry/title - the name of the entryfeed/entry/link@rel="alternate" - the link to the the entryfeed/entry/link@rel="enclosure" - inlined media types (images, mp3, video)feed/entry/summary - extract the first 512 characters as the first commentfeed/entry/content - use this if the summary doesn’t existFor bonus points in both cases, parse the HTML content of the rss/channel/item/description or feed/entry/summary elements for <img/> elements, extract them, and display them as images along with the post.And for a custom icon, use the host’s /favicon.ico.Put all that together and we’d have the following, all without any manual intervention on the aggregator’s side: This is just the beginning — I feel I’m only scratching the surface of what can be extracted from existing syndication formats. For example, comment stream aggregation (via the comments element or RFC 4685 autodiscovery) is a great next step after this. And I only call out FriendFeed because they’re the best at aggregating multiple content sources, but these concepts apply to any content aggregator, and finding a way to reuse existing formats like RSS and Atom to create rich presentations automatically will enable us to do more with less manual work between aggregators and publishers.Also note that this isn’t intended to replace a standard format for activity streams. Those are something slightly different, and I know efforts are underway to define conventions there. Rather, this is simply an effort to get more out of the syndication formats we already publish, and in doing so, allow for aggregators like FriendFeed to present a richer experience to their users without requiring as much manual tuning per content source.Thoughts?Update:Bret notes:We do pull out images and videos for entries that use Media RSS, but those tend to be video and photo sites (the spirit of the Media RSS format is that the post *is* a photo, as opposed to the use case highlighted here, where the picture is simply a thumbnail or accompanying a larger post).Good point, and sounds like a great thing to do. Posted in syndication | delicious | digg | 5 Comments » On Fighting the Web Itself August 8th, 2008 by DeWitt Clinton Earlier this week I posted a short piece about end user licensing questions in Silverlight. I discussed potential incompatibilities in the Beta 2 licensing terms with respect to open source software development. For most people this is a niche concern, a curiosity, but not something they would normally be thinking about. Besides, one expects that these problems will get fixed in the final Silverlight EULA. So why raise the question at all?The short answer is that the technology behind Silverlight, and most certainly the company creating it, has the potential of changing how the web itself works.If you’re a web developer then you’ve felt the acute pain involved in writing applications inside the browser. Even armed with the most state-of-the-art toolkits, such as jQuery, Dojo, etc., you’re still limited to the available runtime of HTML, CSS, and JS, and worse, the absolute morass of cross-browser incompatibilities and restricted access to native client-side capabilities. I remain in awe of what people have accomplished in this environment, but I’m sad that this is all we’ve been able to accomplish so far.The web revs slowly. Very, very slowly. In 10 years we’ve seen virtually no meaningful advances in the the ubiquitous web client; just a painful slog forward as web developers learn to eek out just a little more functionality in a constrained environment. Progress is slow because revving the ubiquitous client requires the coordination of multiple parties, not all of whom have shown consistent interest in working together to move the web forward.More recently we’ve seen some earnest attempts at breaking that cycle. Rather than wait for the entire web to catch up, projects like Gears seek to rev the client from the inside out. It may take several years for standards like HTML5 to be widely deployed, but if developers can gain a toehold inside the client and start forcing the issue immediately then we’ll quickly see what works and what doesn’t, and be that much more informed about what to standardize and adopt as part of the long-term web platform.But there’s another approach, an approach best exemplified today by the Flash runtime, whereby one doesn’t seek to improve the web from the inside, but rather replace it entirely. Sure, technologies like Flash take advantage of the web via http-based delivery mechanisms and in that they run inside the browser, and yes, they can use network connections like anything else, but these alternate runtimes fundamentally divorce themselves from the web ecosystem, and in doing so gain a significant advantage, but at a cost.In spite of circumventing the web — no, because they circumvent the web — these new runtimes have the potential of offering a far better developer experience, and hence, a far better user experience, then the least-common-denominator of the standard widely-deployed ubiquitous browser runtimes of today.Which leads us to Silverlight: Silverlight is positioned to take the fork-and-forget approach to the web pioneered by Flash and bring to it an unprecedented wealth of technology and corporate might. With a better underlying runtime and VM, better tool support, far superior multi-language capabilities, and more marketing muscle, Silverlight has all the potential to make rapid and noticeable inroads over the next several months, cleaving a large section clean out of the web.And the scary thing? That this isn’t entirely a bad idea. The browser itself is anemic, the dependency on a single language is a handicap, the security models simultaneously constricting and flawed, the development environments underpowered, and frankly, the whole ecosystem is deserving of a major disruption. We’ve lived too long thinking that what we have today is good enough.Granted, these technologies won’t be perfect at first. On the contrary, they might be slow, cumbersome to deploy, buggy, and feature deprived. But right now that doesn’t matter. The strategy is all about getting a wedge in place, a bit of leverage that can be used to further pry open a vector for escaping the existing ecosystem. And over time, as the technology improves and adoption grows, so will the size of that tear in the fabric of the web.But fighting the web is like holding back the ocean; it will route around you or it will wear you down, but will never go away, and it will never tire or give up. Yet in spite of the futility of fighting the web, Silverlight is being positioned in opposition to the web, not in support of it.Why in opposition to the web? This stems from the principle that the web is axiomatically defined as an open system, where the underlying technologies are resistant to the centralization of control, where the protocols and formats are extensible and malleable, and where the power to effect change is shared and distributed. The DNA of the web is one of ceding control, and of learning to work with, rather than against, the collective wisdom and power a larger community.Whereas a development monoculture, a centralization of control, and a tight grasp on the ability to change and adapt, all stand against these basic ideals, and give rise to the forces that, given enough time, will erode and eat away at any temporary advantage gained.A violation of these principles does not necessarily make for a bad technology, but it does make it something other than the web. The winners here will be those that harness the power of the open web, not those who align themselves against it. Fragmentation wastes time and energy and offers little in return other than short term distractions, whereas as a collaboration offers the potential for long term solutions.The collective forces on the web are not going to sit idly by and let the Internet operating system be fragmented and dominated like we saw in generations past. Difficult lessons were learned, and there is an inherent will about the web that resists all such attempts with striking efficacy. Success is unlikely when everyone is aligned against you.But the call to action here is not to go and try to fight the disruptive technology. On the contrary, the ideas are sound and the improvements are very much needed. No, the call is to discover ways in which these ideas can become a part of the web, rather than working to tear it apart.I do not want to see ambitious attempts like these fail. Just the opposite — I want to see them succeed. But success on the web requires a different kind of DNA, the type of DNA that is difficult to adopt when one’s attention is focused on fighting the web itself. Posted in open, opensource, openweb, software | delicious | digg | 29 Comments » Will Silverlight prohibit open source applications? August 6th, 2008 by DeWitt Clinton A little stream-of-consciousness sleuthing into the Microsoft Silverlight Pre-Release Software License Terms, Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 2 has me thinking about an interesting potential future scenario.The Silverlight 2 Beta 2 licensing terms, while in no way guaranteed to be the same terms as the final license, have an interesting side-effect: they appear to prohibit developers from writing open source applications.The relevant portions of the Beta 2 EULA are quoted here (my emphasis):1. b. You may also use the software to design, develop and test sample code and programs that you (i) make available to other designers and developers in source code form as examples of how to use Microsoft Silverlight or (ii) deploy to end users for non-commercial purposes.And:1. c. You may make your Silverlight applications available only on the following conditions: [...] you may not make available any Silverlight applications that conduct e-commerce transactions, that collect personally identifiable information or confidential data, or which are for hazardous environments that require fail safe controls; and you may not offer Silverlight applications on a commercial basis, such as under a paid subscription or on ad-funded web pages.Those restrictions, which are certainly permissible (it’s Microsoft’s runtime, they can do whatever they like with it), have the interesting consequence of making it impossible to write open source Silverlight applications using Beta 2.The reason is what’s known as a restriction of use clause, or discrimination against a field of endeavor. If you recall, the Open Source Definition, the baseline standard for all open source licenses, reads:6. No Discrimination Against Fields of EndeavorThe license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. Thus all open source licenses may not put further restrictions on the use of the licensed code. Yet the terms required by the Silverlight Beta 2 EULA do indeed include such a restriction of use.In other words, if Silverlight 2 were released today under the Beta 2 terms, it would be a violation to write an open source Silverlight application.To be clear, this says nothing about the final Silverlight licensing terms. In fact, we know they’ll at least be partly different, as the Beta 2 terms expire “within 30 days of commercial release of the software, but in no event later than January 1, 2009.”Nor does this say anything about whether or not Microsoft intends to release portions of the Silverlight or .NET itself under an open source license, or whether they will permit open source implementations of the runtime (e.g., Moonlight). Interesting questions, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.So how will the final licensing terms differ? Will Silverlight permit open source applications? I imagine it will, as it seems absurd in 2008 to release a web-based runtime that is hostile to open source. This will be interesting to watch. Update: Okay, now I’m confused. Microsoft is distributing sample code for Silverlight applications under the Microsoft Public License, an OSI-approved open source license, which seems to be a violation of the Beta 2 EULA, for all the reasons listed above.Can someone make sense of this?Update 2: As suspected, this probably isn’t intentional, and might get cleared up in the final release. I feel a little bad picking on Microsoft here, but it’s better to ask about this stuff now than wait until after it is too late. I not so secretly want Silverlight to be successful — I just want it to be successful as an open platform, not one that forks the web in proprietary ways.Lauren Cooney twittered in reaction to this post:@dalmaer saw that :)evidently that’s not the case btw, and we’re working on clarifying it. some pieces of silverlight are under MPL, so…Let’s wait for Lauren’s clarification about the final licensing plans. (Though, there still seems to be a conflict with the Beta 2 EULA… Probably just an oversight.) Posted in opensource | delicious | digg | 14 Comments » Why HTML June 7th, 2008 by DeWitt Clinton Short post here …The thread started by Elliotte Rusty Harold (super smart guy, and a colleague of mine) called |
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