Spoken

It Pays To Advertise: Joe Cheng: Configuring an AtomPub blog needs to be equally easy. For some reason, people in the AtomPub community don’t seem to like RSD (only Six Apart puts Atom endpoints in RSD). We need another autodiscovery mechanism.

Hmmm.  When I looked at RSD nearly five years ago, it didn’t seem so bad.  In any case, here’s a ticket and a patch to get WordPress to support autodiscovery of AtomPub endpoints.

[Here, here! And the peasants rejoiced! And the reason one (influential) person in the Atom community didn't like RSD wasn't for technical reasons, but because Dave Winer is an acquaintance, and an early supporter of RSD... and he was reviled by some members of that community. Anyway, all these years later, RSD is quietly doing its job, and should be employed for this purpose. That was kinda the point, with no preference for one API over another. Thanks Sam!]
Source: Sam Ruby

Posting from a Blackberry: It must support the Metaweblog API and Really Simple Discoverability (RSD). [Ahhh. It makes my heart go pitter-patter to see that tiny little effort yield such continuing payback. Thanks to everyone who helped me pull RSD together. You may note that the link points to the Wikipedia… I didn’t even know someone had put a link up. Cool.]
Source: Scripting News

Aggregator Updated: The fact that Conversant will soon have a nifty, built-in aggregator is no longer a secret. Obviously. That I’m planning to make it work with (and like) my favorite desktop aggregator(s) IS a secret. Mum’s the word! [Seth is self-leaking. These things happen…]
Source: Truer Words

Apple Developer Connection: “RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is revolutionizing the delivery of web content. RSS is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format for coordinating the delivery of time-based content streams, or ‘feeds.’ This means that RSS can be used to deliver content that changes over time. RSS provides for the inclusion of additional data, similar to email attachments, using the <enclosure> tag.” [It’s about time.]
Source: ranchero.com

ALE: Ajax Linking and Embedding: AJAX Linking and Embedding (ALE) provides the ability to embed rich content into an editable document and to then interact with and edit that content in much the same way as it is done with traditional office suites and applications in a desktop environment. A key difference is that instead of embedding objects that are backed by installed desktop applications (e.g. a spreadsheet or drawing application), within the ALE world the embedded objects are AJAX components that are embedded into an editable HTML document. These components adhere to a set of design patterns specified by the ALE specification. So, for example, if a user is editing some content such as a personal note or an email message, then she would be able to directly embed an AJAX spreadsheet into the note or email body and interact with the spreadsheet while remaining in the editing context of the note or email message. As long as the spreadsheet component adheres to the ALE specification it could be fetched across the network, instantiated, and used regardless of the user’s location.
Source: Ajaxian

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project: [If you’ve never indulged, you should. Discover the deep roots of Podcasting.]

REST based authentication.: REST based authentication. Some of these hacks are gross, but it’s nice to know that they exist.
Source: Hack the Planet

Routing around the WS-* vendor stacks: Indeed, WS-* appears to be yet another ivory tower going up in a place no sane native would want to live. The village of the web is already plenty strong to withstand the distraction. Complex lights, flickering buzzwords, and long roadmaps to nowhere notwithstanding.

[Yes, but there’s no reason to ignore XML-RPC. I understand much of the argument for REST, and have no problem with it. But to many it is a very new way to approach the problem, and there’s much about it that feels raw. XML-RPC has been quietly doing the 80% thing for years, and I suspect will continue to do so for a long time. In the meantime, I’d love to see more reference work done, so that REST stuff feels simpler to developers.]
Source: Loud Thinking

Reinventing Copy and Paste: So, I’d love to see, as a user, a way for real rich data exchange to happen between the new wave of online applications. I’d like to see some efforts by (at least!) this group of vendors to make it possible to make compound documents between their applications, and then to choose from one or more tools for editing the discrete objects that make up those documents. And I’d like to be able to automate actions between these multiple tools without resorting to Greasemonkey hackery or convoluted browser tricks. [A good read. I wonder if we’re ever going to have more than the two types Dave talks about in this piece from ‘00? Are there any other types?]
Source: Anil Dash

E-Commerce Report: Your Personal Shopper With the Initials R.S.S.: Looking for new ways to reach consumers, retailers are using R.S.S., or “really simple syndication,” to feed product alerts to Internet users.
Source: New York Times: Technology

Really Simple Sharing: Here’s the draft spec for SSE, and here’s a FAQ that we put together.  A forum where we can talk about it amongst implementers will be forthcoming.  [I keep meaning to dig into this, and I keep forgetting to do so. Maybe it’ll stick this time.]
Source: Ray Ozzie

Ray Ozzie’s clipboard for the web. “Let’s say you have two sites both of which understand calendar data. I want to move an appointment from one site to another.” [Nice! I know the nitpickers will be out in force, but I tried it, it worked! Further, I know some places that could probably use this as it is… though the experience could use some work…]
Source: Scripting News

Today the public review of OPML 2.0 begins, with the publication of the DRAFT spec and the opening of a mail list for the purpose of reviewing the spec. A very small group has been reviewing the spec privately for about 24 hours prior to the public review, to be sure that there weren’t any easy to correct mistakes or omissions. There were, and they were corrected, thanks to the group for their expert advice. The full record of the review is available in the (public) archive of the mail list. [I wasn’t expecting this!]
Source: Scripting News

Sam responds: I am continuing to improve the Feed Validator. That’s my interest in this area. [Sounds good.]