RSS 3.0 Roadmap

Update: I was just BSing below but should Instant Outlining be an open protocol to provide “in-band” communication, or am I nuts?
* * *
I think it would be interesting to do what Dave Winer says and call it “Molecule”, just to see what people have in mind to make the spec better. It may never get adopted but it would still be interesting.

Some would just want to clarify the existing spec.
Some would want to create another Atom.

I might like to see a better “communications enclosure” element like:

<comm type="AIM">buddybuilder</comm>
<comm type = "skype. . .
<comm type="


We know we need better identity. In fact, let’s just scrap the old systems and build a mail/IM system right into RSS + SSE.

Who’s with me?

I’m sure something is cooking over at microformats.

OPML + SSE vagueness

With all the noise (and little signal) about the RSS spec, I thought it would be fun to talk about some real world questions:

OPML+SSE . . . short pause. . . burst of cheer!!

After a break from SSE since the SkinnyFarm experiment, I thought I’d look at OPML.

I remembered that Niall Kennedy had an applescript thingy that exported his NetNewsWire subscription list as OPML+SSE.

Niall needs to convince me that his placement of the sx:sync element is correct.

The spec says:

The most important extension described in this spec is the sx:sync element, which contains the information required for synchronization. This element is a child of the item or outline element. This is a REQUIRED element of all items in all feeds wishing to participate in SSE-based replication.

And here is a snippet of his output:

<outline type="feed" text="Everything TypePad! " htmlUrl="http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/" description="Everything TypePad!: " xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TypePadNews">
<outline type="item" text="Keep in touch by giving the gift of blogging" htmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TypePadNews?m=85" category="Announcements" created="Wednesday, September 21, 2005 10:15:20 AM"/>
−
<sx :sync id="tag:www.sixapart.com,2005:/typepad/news//24.5956" version="1">
<sx :history when="Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:09:51 PM" by="NetNewsWire"/>
</sx>
<outline type="item" text="Pick your Pics" htmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TypePadNews?m=76" category="Features" created="Thursday, August 18, 2005 11:21:17 AM"/>
−
<sx :sync id="tag:www.sixapart.com,2005:/typepad/news//24.5770" version="1">
<sx :history when="Thursday, August 18, 2005 1:10:32 PM" by="NetNewsWire"/>
</sx>

Hmmm. I take the above statement about REQUIRED to mean that every outline element of an OPML doc or every item element of an RSS doc must have an sx:sync id.
And I certainly wouldn’t think that one outline element could have more than one sx:sync child.

I guess I’ll ask the Microsoft RSS guys because there aren’t many examples around.
Niall? Jack? Paresh? Calling Dr. Bombay . . .

The traveling gesture gang

Steve Rubel and Alex Barnett discuss using SSE, OPML(reading lists) and Attention to not only find new information but mold our media consumption to a digestible level.

No doubt, SSE will play a role (I hope ) in synchronizing OPML lists. How else will we integrate many lists across different platforms and computers. Also this will allow distributed directories to be built by the masses, with no duplication.

That’s neat, but I like the non-technical implications better.

Steve wants to publish his own SSE enabled feeds to search the web for information he might be ineterested in. A personal SSE feed? Sounds like email may be dying.

Interesting.

Alex says to use Attention data to automate and enrich this experience.

More Interesting.

Nick Swannick wants to sync attention across personal clouds, to create his own “Attention Newspaper”.

Even more interesting.

Summary: We want our experience online to be led and defined by our gestures. ASAP*

*amazingly simple and powerful

Bonus: Anyone want to bet five bucks that Steve Gillmor knew I mentioned the word “gesture” before I clicked submit. It’s part of that lock-in experience he’s got going with the Google Suite of Attention Tools.

The Windows RSS Platform API

This looks great.
Suddenly I’m defending Microsoft. No one can deny they’re providing some really cool tools lately like SSE.
I’m hoping this functionality will be available to scripting folks as well as Window’s application developers.
Something like a Greasemonkey API.
Common Feed List looks really cool for the OPML community. It allows you to share your Feedlist among apps and computers locally or across the web!
We’ll see.

OPML 1.1, Clouds and SSE

If you read this old post you can see that at one time OPML 1.1 was going to be released and it was going to have a cloud element.
Because Dave Winer had to take a break because of health issues and the fact that Intsant Outlining used Instant Messaging instead, the new release never came to be.
Now we seem to be at a time when OPML sharing is about to explode and perhaps SSE will be a part of that. But SSE doesn’t help the “polling” issues caused by wanting immediate notification of remote changes.
And not every application will be able to or want to incorporate Instant Messaging, so the question is whether polling each other’s OPMl files is the best we can do.
Scratch that. We are not looking for the best, but we do want to incorporate good ideas that can be easily implemented.
I’m on the fence here.
I think using clouds would greatly help the bright future that remote OPML sharing has in store for us.
But I also think it is equally a good idea for RSS and has been available since 2.0, and I don’t off hand know of one service that uses it.
Just think of how much more services that are notified of change immediately can do for as opposed to having to poll at intervals of an hour or more.
I doubt it will make it’s way back into OPMl, but I think it’s worth considering.
We plan on sharing alot of OPMl. Clouds could really enrich that experience and save bandwidth to boot.

bonustag: whathehellisallthisabout
: )

SSE Update

There is a new update on SSE on the Microsoft RSS Blog.
Jack mention’s yours truly and the experimental two-way feed site SkinnyFarm which I created.
Thankfully, he left out any mention of the site bugs.
It’s funny, I didn’t think anyone was paying attention (besides a few cool people who’ve emailed me). Certainly not anyone at Microsoft.
I’m excited to see what changes they have made.
I really believe that use of the SSE extension will become the norm rather than the exception. But that prediction also relies on that fact that RSS usage hasn’t nearly hit the upcurve of the hockey stick.
We ain’t seen nothin yet.

What problem reading lists solve

Dave Winer says “I don’t know why I didn’t see this before, but reading lists solve a huge problem we’ve been struggling with, in an open way not controlled by any vendor.”

My guess on what he is talking about is this:

Reading lists allow us to keep our subscription lists in sync across varied computers and feedreaders.

Well, that’s something I’m working on anyway, and it might please Steve Gillmor, who’s been asking for that for a while and I’m using my favorite RSS complement, SSE. Dave might have something bigger in mind, even though I think this is pretty big.

NewsRiver: The end of the Web as we know it

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The day is almost here.
I’ve been talking heavily about a change in which pure conversation (ala Cluetrain) takes over the web.
Talk and share, as opposed to publish and read. While it sounds obvious, and aspects of this can be seen in file-sharing networks, Instant Messengers and even plain old email, there is a richer soil to till in the fertile grounds of RSS and OPML and SSE.
That combined with a distributed, peer-like architecture will bring about the decline of the browser and homepage and the rise of the web coupling.
A newsreader/writer like device which handles our communications, commerce, whatever.
We are seeing a home-page and browser decline with the popularity of RSS readers and still there are cries from the likes of Steve Gillmor and others that we will not click-through to web-pages in posts which do not include its full content.
The Web is disintermediating the Web.
We are well on our way with the release of the NewsRiver aggregator API , by Dave Winer.
The first of the next-generation web tools will be built upon the NewsRiver platform. Mark my words. As sure as the Pope is Italian. (Uhh…you know what I mean)
The rules have once again changed.
Dave Winer has done it again.

2006 - Here we come.

I have so much confidence that 2006 will be one of the best years for the web ever. There are so many great things happening.
I have no predictions, but I will state where I am looking for innovation.
We are on the verge of some great collaborative but distributed services built upon the ability to share information efficiently and in a more meaningful way than links and comments.
The combination of a scenario with structured blogging , shared feeds ala Jarvis’ take on SSE, read/write web ala Winer’s OPML editor and citizen journalism ala Dan Gillmor seems to be putting the entire news media business on a precipice.
Fall or Fly. Everyone needs to make their own choice.
I know mine, so I’ll be announcing some new experiments shortly on the subject of SharedNews , a term I coined describing wiki-like particpation in news feeds.

Shared RSS with SSE review

Let’s go over this once in totality.
I really firmly believe in threaded RSS or blog discussions in the future. More tightly coupled than the way blogs are today.
One suggestion has been a unique tag like “threadedfeed09876545464″ in a blog post and then subscribing to the RSS feed for that tag at Technorati.
That way all posts in the blogosphere with that tag will find their way to the anyone interested in this grouping.
It was suggested for people who wanted to keep up with all posts about a given conference or something like that.
RSS feeds should incorporate Microsoft SSE (Simple Sharing Extensions) in them. This was created for syncable apps like calendars but it can keep track of posts that are in reply to each other (or threaded).
Use the version to keep track of the drill down level of the thread and one level of the update element to keep track of the immediate “parent” post.
Threaded discussions. Add microformats or structured blogging and you have distributed classifieds, auctions, “wiki on rails”, shared news gathering, or whatever you can dream of.