feedgrazers
Grazr script, which allows you to make widgets with the Grazr app, and potentially much more, is now public.
In case you don’t know, Grazr is sort of an OPML. . . well grazer. It’s a very important concept in this future present world of a web that is built on top of RSS.
If I was forced to choose whether I could only use RSS or HTML, I’d choose RSS.
Luckily, I don’t have to. I just think it’s more important in the paradigm shift that is taking place right now. The move toward services and relationships, that is, over distribution and consumption.
I was allowed to test it out in the private beta, and found it to be pretty damn cool. Maybe when I have I minute I’ll post an example of my experiments. I promised not to talk about it before it went public, and man it was tough.
One thing I know. It will be an important piece in the next web application I build.
Expect to see a lot more action in this area. I’m sure Tom Morris has a few things brewing already.
Here is the spec..
OPML heads and job-seekers may wish to look at the open job directory’s free data:
http://freecruiter.com
The OPML is at http://freecruiter.com/directory/
OPML, RSS, REST and XML-RPC API’s are available.
Perfect for readers that subscribe to OPML like BlogBridge or for OPML browsers like Grazr.
Right now source include Monster, Hotjobs, Craigslist and Edgeio, but more importantly businesses, like Edelman and O’Reilly.
The businesses that publish their own job feeds are where the interesting disintermediation aspects lie.
Aug 13 2006 08:24 pm |
RSS and
OPML and
Glists and
grazr and
feedgrazers and
edgeio and
advertising and
Halley Suitt |
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I’m hoping part two of the latest Gillmor Gang will prove more interesting.
If you remember the Jason and the Argonauts tale, you might know how Jason succeeded in conquest over the Seed men by casting a stone at one, who thought it was his neighbor, and letting them all kill each other.
That’s what Steve Gillmor seems to do by letting the fellas discuss the importance of Google algorithms and whether site owners can get a cut by having search engines bid for their site search.
If Steve would have put the “knockoff” Cheerios down for a sec I know what he would have said.
It’s not whether Google’s algorithms hold up, it’s whether they can garner more stock in the conversation with all their attention data.
The winners of the future are not the best technologies. We’ll all be able to plug into those the same way we plug into an electrical outlet.
The winners are the services which add value to the conversations happening throughout distributed web networks.
These networks and conversations are fluid and changing constantly in response to our gestures.
Those who don’t get this are either thinking too hard or just not enough.
In a similar way that facial and hand gestures are a meaningful supplement to spoken conversations, the gestures which we talk about with attention are the metadata of the conversations happening on the web.
That equates to economic power because markets are conversations.
I agree with Jason Calacanis that many in the SEO business are trying to game this system, but I disagree when he says the system works. People are trying to game the system because it does not work. It just works better than the previous systems.
I can prove it Jason. I’ll write a better piece on a new cell phone than Engadget and see which shows up higher on Google.
No. Those dynamics are only part of the game.
The richer system envelops us with answers using our data and our network’s data in a chameleon like fashion, never static like Google. That’s child’s play.
Jason(Argonaut) succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece but was fickle and left Medea for another Princess.
Likewise, in the shorter term companies may succeed by amassing link attention.
The true winners won’t be seeking the Golden Fleece at all. They will be removing the barriers and letting the crystal waters flow in, filtered and clean, Pure Conversation.
The Human Rights Amnesty report claims the war on terror is draining attention from other issues.
Perhaps the governments of the world need to join GestureBank. They gotta be in it to win it.
Then, apply a filter based upon the anonymous pool of attention metadata and figure this all out.
There are some important discussions happening this week about open formats for attention metadata.
ET better phone home because the clock is ticking on everybuddy. The “Duh” Vinci code is unraveling.
I’m closing comments soon. My contact info is mobile:203.219.5159 email:mattatglistndotcom IM:mterenzio@gmail
So, Im back from RSS Alley and OPML Camp today.
I did not blog from the conference simply because the conversations were so rich and thought provoking that I didn’t want to only give them partial attention.
Attention itself was in fact a big topic and there is some big news coming our way on that topic. Other topics included namespaces, the spec, RDF and tags. Oh and Second Life seemed to permeate the breaks. I even talked a little on SSE, and I think we might see some progess on SSE used with OPML soon.
Special thanks must go to Adam Green, who did a great job organizing and Berkman for hosting, and Halley Suitt and the Top Ten Sources folks for hosting the party.
And if Dave Winer is listening, we all thanked you for RSS and OPML in general. Great work.
The whole weekend was truly inspirational.
But speaking of conversations and attention, this one is nearly over for me.
Perhaps a couple transitional posts and I’ll be moving on.
A couple things are for sure. OPML and Reading Lists (Glists if you ask me, Beeds if you ask James Corbett) have a huge future. Attention and gestures have a huge future. Grazr has a huge future and Second Life-like environments have a huge future. I’d like to be in the middle of it all.
Or I could just hang out on the podcast.com platform(search for podcast in second life) and listen to streaming music.
Either way.
What is James Corbett up to?
It almost looks like he just created a model for a distibuted marketplace using reading lists, known to cool people as beeds and to others as glists.
I tend to be excitable so I’m going to spend the rest of the night thinking about this before I comment on whether I think this is a big deal.
In the mean time, I’m going to spend 1.5 hours on Second Life. If I can’t see the big deal in that amount of time, it isn’t for me (but I typically miss boats - I always liked U2, but it took me till Joshua Tree to recognize they were more than an 80’s band)
Dan MacTough channeled through Danny Ayers, or was it Ayers channeled through MacTough . . .anyway
More important than the fact that OPML may not be a good format for a particular use is that the end use always seems to be to render the information in HTML, a la Grazr, Bitty, OPod, Optimal, etc. I just don’t get why anyone would want to transform their information from a format designed for it INTO a format that’s not designed for it only to then transform it AGAIN INTO HTML. Haven’t they ever played with Babelfish? English-to-Japanese-to-French may be fun, but it’s not a very accurate translation.
Great quote, and I hear where y’all are coming from.
But couldn’t the same argument have been made for RSS. In the majority many cases, the reason for putting any data into OPML is because you want a common format to share it with others.
I know there are other options, better formats, and that you can argue that RSS lists or even HTML lists are just as good, but buzz isn’t always a negative thing. Sometimes it can signify a growing consensus.
In such cases, for good or bad, to allow the greatest number of people and services to share your data, you need to put it into the container they are prepared to accept.
So I think these renderers are just ahead of their time, and in order to show them off, the creators may have to force the data into OPML. The developers are looking forward to a day when when OPML is a highly common exchange format, and then these conversion of OPML to HTML will make more sense.
