Category: Technology

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Returning to Business

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It was interesting to read Evan William’s carefully written essay about weblogging APIs this morning, and watch his writing as it slowly revolves around to the need for standards, particularly in the chaotic and competitive world of weblogging technology. As he, and others, are discovering, they have to be prepared to take the steps necessary to work effectively in an environment in which no one person has, or should have, control:

 

The only way there will be a universal blogging API is if everyone who needs to has input and sign-off on it, and it cannot be controlled by any one vendor.

I perhaps now understand the need for standards bodies more than I ever have before—even though the term gives me willies.

I have spent too much time lately on technology, poetry, and photography, and need to return to the roots of this weblog, which is writing. But at the same time, I want to applaud Ev for taking a step in the right direction — acknowledging that there is problem in weblogging and that problem is that there are too many specifications and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

It started with RSS, it’s continued somewhat with Trackback, and now the lack of a standards body is impacting on weblogging APIs. For the non-technical, this may seem as if the issue doesn’t impact on you, but it does. When weblogging tools have to accomodate multiple APIs and multiple RSS specifications and so on, the tools get bloated, their performance suffers, and you, the weblogger, get hammered with demands that you support this RSS and that weblogging API by upgrading your installation and so on.

In addition, the energy that should be directed to new innovations or faster applications, or better security is being bled out to writing code that parses five different flavors of RSS, and three different flavors of weblogging APIs. This doesn’t even include recent discussions about what format to use for porting data from one weblogging tool to another, something that’s going to become more critical over time.

This is a no win situation. By what stick do you measure that continuing chaos is ‘good’ for us all?

Dave Winer wrote today today:

 

This morning I came up with a new app that that integrates weblogs like Scripting News with search engines like Google in a new way. It’s very exciting. I’m jumping up and down and giggling I like it so much. Now if I wanted to really be a bastard I’d hire one of your grad students to patent it, and make sure everyone who implemented it would have to pay me a royalty. But I’m a fool. I think people’s brains will explode when they get to use this. It’ll be an incredible research tool for busting patents, believe it or not. In that way it’s perfectly appropriate to give it to the world for free. Now can you come up with something Creative Commons-like so that when the poopy little wiener boys at the W3C claim I didn’t invent it (they think Microsoft or Guha invented everything) I can show them a record in some database that gives me appropriate credit for the invention. How about some middle ground for people who want credit for their work, but don’t care to erect a tollbooth?

 

Without knowing what Dave’s ‘new application’ is, we don’t know if he really did invent something that will withstand the patent process, but he has a right to patent any new technology he invents. However, he’ll also have to withstand the challenges to his claim that come with this process. Dave has a right to claim something as his own that he has invented, but he doesn’t have the right to claim something as his invention when there is prior art showing otherwise. He doesn’t have the right to rewrite history.

Issues of who invented what aside, the biggest problem with the current state of business in weblogging technology is that a few ‘giants’ in the weblogging industry, such as Userland, or Blogger, or Six Apart (Movable Type) can force decisions on what approaches are best, when the better quality effort may come from a much smaller company or even a single person. An independent standards body would allow all voices to be heard, and the best, not the biggest, would float to the top.

As I write this, I can already tell you, guarantee it even, who will now come out writing ‘in favor’ of Dave Winer and who will write ‘in favor’ of Ev (or against Dave), both sides not realizing that weblogging should be growing beyond dominance by any one person by now. We had our time in the sandbox and it’s time to grow up.

Unless that’s what people want — all of us in the sandbox, playing with our pails and our sand, and arguing about who has the bigger shovel.

(Thanks to Sam for the link to Ev’s post.)

Update

The thread that led to Evan’s essay is here. It demonstrates why a standards body is needed, why there will never be one, and why I need to stop writing about weblogging technology in my weblog.

Categories
Connecting Insects RDF Technology

What didn’t work

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The RDF Poetry Finder was more than a personal interest of mine — it was an attempt to see if a project could go from idea stage to implementation through the efforts of people who participated purely on interest — no formal group formation whatsoever. Additionally, it was a project that would, I hope, bring together members from both the technical and humanities communities, in such a way that each would contribute equal expertise to the project. The type of project would force this because it really did require a deep understanding of the mechanics of technology and poetry.

The latter combination of the technologists with the community was the real interest to me. I didn’t do the Poetry Finder because I needed practice with technology — I have close to 20 years of practice, I think I get it.

Along the way, though, I made several significant mistakes. Since we learn from our mistakes, I thought I would share these:

1. Antagonizing the Tech community

I started this project out by doing a deliberate pushback against RSS and FOAF, mainly RSS. By doing this, I had hoped I could attract the attention of the people who work with RSS, particularly the RDF/RSS people, but without tying RSS into the project. In addition, I hoped I could break through a growing belief that RSS 1.0 is representative of all RDF semantic web efforts.

What I did do was antagonize the RSS 1.0 fans, and they are nothing if not loyal. This ended up losing me key technology people, as well as spinning off a lot of energy back into the RSS vortex. Not just the RSS vortex, but the ongoing personality differences that have plagued RSS for too long.

2. Not providing the right hooks for the poetry enthusiasts

I think I did better attracting people from the poetry community. However, I didn’t give them the necessary hooks in how to participate in this project.

We’ve trained the ‘user’ in the weblog community and elsewhere to be passive — the technologists will generate the idea, develop the specs, write the implementation, and help you use the technology. If you don’t implement their new technology quick enough, you’ll hear about it. If the techs aren’t moving fast enough, there’s the LazyWeb.

Well, this is good. No, I take that back. This is not good.

We’ve made the ‘user’ in our community, the weblogger or other web site owner who doesn’t have a strong technical background, into a spectator; and we’ve turned much of our technical activity into spectator sport.

Scenario: Roman arena. Two participants. The issue is RSS. Get the picture?

This was a mistake. It was one I tried to rectify with Poetry Finder, but wasn’t as effective as I needed to be. I’m not quite sure how to do this better.

3. Tied project into RDF/XML from the start

Of course, this is a technology and a specification that I’m comfortable with so it’s not surprising I would focus the project on RDF/XML. However, this triggered much of the same glazing of eyes phenomena that always occurs with RDF/XML. I did expect a little of this and hoped that not jumping into the technology right away would work around this. It did, somewhat. However by not focusing on technology from the start, I lost more of the techies.

Additionally, focusing on the use of RDF as the underlying technology from the start also brought in contention from those enthusiastic about competitive technologies, which I wasn’t expecting.

4. Not starting effort out with a prototype

I had hoped to take this project from idea to implementation in the public eye, based on public participation, but I think that the idea of a “poetry finder” is too nebulous for a unstructured group of participants. I should have started with something, no matter how light and unscalable, rather than just, “I have an idea”.

It’s too easy to shoot down “just an idea”, and too difficult to engage people behind “just an idea”. I didn’t have to provide David, but I at least needed to provide the marble.

5. Fragmented discussions

I used more than one technology to encourage group participation in Poetry Finder. Originally the technologies included this weblog and a Yahoo Discussion group, Bloggers Unlimited. There was then bleed through to emails, other discussion groups, and other weblogs.

The Bloggers Unlimited discussion descended quickly into exchanges based on RSS and FOAF, and other pure technology issues. I pulled back, trying another group, Renaissance Web, and this group has been extremely good at keeping the focus at a higher level, and avoiding too much detailed technical conversation.

A challenge with all of this communication: the discussions in the Yahoo groups, and in weblog postings and comments are good, but there is no way of tying them all together other than linking to specific messages, and through the use of Trackback. Of course, if we had something like Threadneedle, or ThreadsML, this problem would be solved because the technology would link everything together. Right?

I used to think so but after this experience, I’m not so sure. I’m finding that the connectivity between the discussion threads is not as much of a factor as the format of the threads, themselves.

For instance, I don’t think I’m the only person that got overwhelmed by trying to follow the discussions at the Yahoo group, Renaissance Web, excellent as they are. Even when sorted by thread, not date. I had a very hard time finding who said what at any given point, especially with all the embedded quoting and nesting and so on.

Trying to connect the Yahoo group discussions into the weblog was difficult because the discussion group entries have such a different style and emphasis compared to weblog posts. Weblog postings, even when focused on responding to other people, have a more persistent quality to them than discussion threads. There is a different feel to each type of discussion; trying to blend them all together in a meaningful way would be like trying to make orange juice by squeezing together six oranges and two apples. And a banana.

At least, it felt this way to me. Maybe I’m weird.

Then there is the problem of censorship in the Yahoo groups. The one and only time I deleted a message in Blogging Unlimited was a mistaken email that was sent to the group. The only time in Renaissance Web was one of my responses. However, during this time I was censored in another group — and the group was not informed that I was censored, or that this type of censorship had occured. This wasn’t directly related to the Poetry Finder, but it is a problem with Yahoo groups and even weblog comments.

Still, I liked the forum/email/discussion group because there is no ‘ownership’ of the topics, anyone could add new topics, and there was a great deal of good commentary, especially in Renaissance Web. Much more in this format than the weblogs.

However, rather than having a conversation about Poetry Finder in just my weblog, I was now having conversations in many places. This meant that I had to respond in multiple places, to multiple threads, some of which may have started out on the Poetry Finder but morphed into something else.

And how to bring all this together? How do I get the Yahoo Groups people to read my weblog entries on Poetry Finder? A link won’t necessarily do it. How do I get my weblog readers to follow the many discussion threads at Yahoo? Some people are more comfortable with email lists, some more with weblogs. How do we establish a communication across the different venues? Sure we can hack together threads between IM (Instance Messaging) and weblog and Yahoo group — but goodness, it would be like trying to hold a church service during half-time at a baseball stadium, simultaneously using a semaphore to signal the service to the blimp passing overhead, while there’s a flock of geese in the way.

And some of the geese don’t like each other.

Gah!

Within all of the many threads, I had to work at generating enthusiasm for this crazy idea in order to attract the group participation the project needed, in multiple venues. Tthis was getting exhausting, particularly in light of the pushback — not the direct pushback, which I was expecting; but the indirect pushback, the subtle and not so subtle putdowns, which I’ve not particularly adept at dealing with. The honest, intelligent, and concerned opinions from people that I’m spinning my wheels, and that his baby just ain’t gonna fly. Something else I’m not particularly adept at dealing with.

I wish I was Audrey Hepburn. She’d know what to do. And probably look good while doing it, too.

It’s not particularly easy to continue a ‘crazy, impossible, half-baked’ idea when you have a feeling that some people think you’re blowing smoke out your ass. In multiple venues.

Summary

What next.

Well, I have a tick bite, which isn’t healing. The housing complex pest specialist says the head is still in, but the infection should clear eventually. Creeps me out a bit, though — I have tiny insect chompers in my ankle. Had another thunderstorm this morning, and now it’s getting humid. My cat likes my Titanium PowerBook because she can use it for a head rest. I need to do laundry, but I’d rather take another walk. Somewhere covered in asphalt. I have some web pages and PHP I need to do for a friend. I think I’ll make chicken for dinner tonight. Better yet — BLT pizza. With beer.

Yeah: Huh?

I don’t want to abandon Poetry Finder, not the least because I don’t like people thinking that I’m ‘giving up’. Dammit, and I also think the idea has merit. But I do need to figure out how to correct my mistakes, and how to get this moving again in a constructive manner. Or, more likely, just let it die, another smoke filled idea.

In the meantime, weblogging as usual. Pics, writing, cat.

zoelovetibook.jpg

Categories
Connecting Insects RDF Technology

What didn’t work

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The RDF Poetry Finder was more than a personal interest of mine — it was an attempt to see if a project could go from idea stage to implementation through the efforts of people who participated purely on interest — no formal group formation whatsoever. Additionally, it was a project that would, I hope, bring together members from both the technical and humanities communities, in such a way that each would contribute equal expertise to the project. The type of project would force this because it really did require a deep understanding of the mechanics of technology and poetry.

The latter combination of the technologists with the community was the real interest to me. I didn’t do the Poetry Finder because I needed practice with technology — I have close to 20 years of practice, I think I get it.

Along the way, though, I made several significant mistakes. Since we learn from our mistakes, I thought I would share these:

1. Antagonizing the Tech community

I started this project out by doing a deliberate pushback against RSS and FOAF, mainly RSS. By doing this, I had hoped I could attract the attention of the people who work with RSS, particularly the RDF/RSS people, but without tying RSS into the project. In addition, I hoped I could break through a growing belief that RSS 1.0 is representative of all RDF semantic web efforts.

What I did do was antagonize the RSS 1.0 fans, and they are nothing if not loyal. This ended up losing me key technology people, as well as spinning off a lot of energy back into the RSS vortex. Not just the RSS vortex, but the ongoing personality differences that have plagued RSS for too long.

2. Not providing the right hooks for the poetry enthusiasts

I think I did better attracting people from the poetry community. However, I didn’t give them the necessary hooks in how to participate in this project.

We’ve trained the ‘user’ in the weblog community and elsewhere to be passive — the technologists will generate the idea, develop the specs, write the implementation, and help you use the technology. If you don’t implement their new technology quick enough, you’ll hear about it. If the techs aren’t moving fast enough, there’s the LazyWeb.

Well, this is good. No, I take that back. This is not good.

We’ve made the ‘user’ in our community, the weblogger or other web site owner who doesn’t have a strong technical background, into a spectator; and we’ve turned much of our technical activity into spectator sport.

Scenario: Roman arena. Two participants. The issue is RSS. Get the picture?

This was a mistake. It was one I tried to rectify with Poetry Finder, but wasn’t as effective as I needed to be. I’m not quite sure how to do this better.

3. Tied project into RDF/XML from the start

Of course, this is a technology and a specification that I’m comfortable with so it’s not surprising I would focus the project on RDF/XML. However, this triggered much of the same glazing of eyes phenomena that always occurs with RDF/XML. I did expect a little of this and hoped that not jumping into the technology right away would work around this. It did, somewhat. However by not focusing on technology from the start, I lost more of the techies.

Additionally, focusing on the use of RDF as the underlying technology from the start also brought in contention from those enthusiastic about competitive technologies, which I wasn’t expecting.

4. Not starting effort out with a prototype

I had hoped to take this project from idea to implementation in the public eye, based on public participation, but I think that the idea of a “poetry finder” is too nebulous for a unstructured group of participants. I should have started with something, no matter how light and unscalable, rather than just, “I have an idea”.

It’s too easy to shoot down “just an idea”, and too difficult to engage people behind “just an idea”. I didn’t have to provide David, but I at least needed to provide the marble.

5. Fragmented discussions

I used more than one technology to encourage group participation in Poetry Finder. Originally the technologies included this weblog and a Yahoo Discussion group, Bloggers Unlimited. There was then bleed through to emails, other discussion groups, and other weblogs.

The Bloggers Unlimited discussion descended quickly into exchanges based on RSS and FOAF, and other pure technology issues. I pulled back, trying another group, Renaissance Web, and this group has been extremely good at keeping the focus at a higher level, and avoiding too much detailed technical conversation.

A challenge with all of this communication: the discussions in the Yahoo groups, and in weblog postings and comments are good, but there is no way of tying them all together other than linking to specific messages, and through the use of Trackback. Of course, if we had something like Threadneedle, or ThreadsML, this problem would be solved because the technology would link everything together. Right?

I used to think so but after this experience, I’m not so sure. I’m finding that the connectivity between the discussion threads is not as much of a factor as the format of the threads, themselves.

For instance, I don’t think I’m the only person that got overwhelmed by trying to follow the discussions at the Yahoo group, Renaissance Web, excellent as they are. Even when sorted by thread, not date. I had a very hard time finding who said what at any given point, especially with all the embedded quoting and nesting and so on.

Trying to connect the Yahoo group discussions into the weblog was difficult because the discussion group entries have such a different style and emphasis compared to weblog posts. Weblog postings, even when focused on responding to other people, have a more persistent quality to them than discussion threads. There is a different feel to each type of discussion; trying to blend them all together in a meaningful way would be like trying to make orange juice by squeezing together six oranges and two apples. And a banana.

At least, it felt this way to me. Maybe I’m weird.

Then there is the problem of censorship in the Yahoo groups. The one and only time I deleted a message in Blogging Unlimited was a mistaken email that was sent to the group. The only time in Renaissance Web was one of my responses. However, during this time I was censored in another group — and the group was not informed that I was censored, or that this type of censorship had occured. This wasn’t directly related to the Poetry Finder, but it is a problem with Yahoo groups and even weblog comments.

Still, I liked the forum/email/discussion group because there is no ‘ownership’ of the topics, anyone could add new topics, and there was a great deal of good commentary, especially in Renaissance Web. Much more in this format than the weblogs.

However, rather than having a conversation about Poetry Finder in just my weblog, I was now having conversations in many places. This meant that I had to respond in multiple places, to multiple threads, some of which may have started out on the Poetry Finder but morphed into something else.

And how to bring all this together? How do I get the Yahoo Groups people to read my weblog entries on Poetry Finder? A link won’t necessarily do it. How do I get my weblog readers to follow the many discussion threads at Yahoo? Some people are more comfortable with email lists, some more with weblogs. How do we establish a communication across the different venues? Sure we can hack together threads between IM (Instance Messaging) and weblog and Yahoo group — but goodness, it would be like trying to hold a church service during half-time at a baseball stadium, simultaneously using a semaphore to signal the service to the blimp passing overhead, while there’s a flock of geese in the way.

And some of the geese don’t like each other.

Gah!

Within all of the many threads, I had to work at generating enthusiasm for this crazy idea in order to attract the group participation the project needed, in multiple venues. Tthis was getting exhausting, particularly in light of the pushback — not the direct pushback, which I was expecting; but the indirect pushback, the subtle and not so subtle putdowns, which I’ve not particularly adept at dealing with. The honest, intelligent, and concerned opinions from people that I’m spinning my wheels, and that his baby just ain’t gonna fly. Something else I’m not particularly adept at dealing with.

I wish I was Audrey Hepburn. She’d know what to do. And probably look good while doing it, too.

It’s not particularly easy to continue a ‘crazy, impossible, half-baked’ idea when you have a feeling that some people think you’re blowing smoke out your ass. In multiple venues.

Summary

What next.

Well, I have a tick bite, which isn’t healing. The housing complex pest specialist says the head is still in, but the infection should clear eventually. Creeps me out a bit, though — I have tiny insect chompers in my ankle. Had another thunderstorm this morning, and now it’s getting humid. My cat likes my Titanium PowerBook because she can use it for a head rest. I need to do laundry, but I’d rather take another walk. Somewhere covered in asphalt. I have some web pages and PHP I need to do for a friend. I think I’ll make chicken for dinner tonight. Better yet — BLT pizza. With beer.

Yeah: Huh?

I don’t want to abandon Poetry Finder, not the least because I don’t like people thinking that I’m ‘giving up’. Dammit, and I also think the idea has merit. But I do need to figure out how to correct my mistakes, and how to get this moving again in a constructive manner. Or, more likely, just let it die, another smoke filled idea.

In the meantime, weblogging as usual. Pics, writing, cat.

zoelovetibook.jpg

Categories
RDF Technology

It was lovely while it lasted

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Updated:

Consensus about the RDF Poetry Finder is that it is, at best, overly ambitious, at worst, undoable. It’s also a project that primarily only interested me — not surprising since it was my little fevered brain storm — so I’m not going to continue the discussion or the essays, at least for now. I’ll work on my own with the suggestions and ideas given, and if I can contrive something, will post the results. With a concrete implementation, or at least a prototype — something in RDF/XML with moving parts for us all to look at — we might try this again.

That’s the thing about weblogging — we find that the stories that interest us, fascinate us, are nothing more than posts to skip over for many of our friends. We don’t all share much more than the tool and the word.

Of course, my mind was focused on this. I have no idea what to talk about now. I’ve already bared my soul. I don’t want to talk about my cat. Postmodernism scares me. I don’t have the background for linguistics. I can’t speak Chinese.

I’ll go back to photographs and borrowed words for a while.

PS

I did want to thank people who dropped in with ideas and suggestions, and expressed interest, good comments, great poetry. If you’re still interested in this as an idea and a concept, please let me know. Contrary to popular opinion, not all technical people really like working on their own. Sometimes, they/I like working with others.

Perhaps I’ll create a quiet little side blog somewhere to work on this outside of the bright light. Some passions flourish best in the soft shadows, like good mushrooms, fine wines, and crazy, unworkable ideas.

My apologies to those who thought I was tucked away with a happy project, a soft pillow, and a warm cup of milk to tide me over. However, I have my photos, and my occasional word — I am content.

Categories
RDF Specs Technology

RSS: The neverending story

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Hi, Evil Twin here!

I’m not sure why, but the very mention of RSS tends to bring me out of my quiet corner, where I sit filing my nails while Burningbird does her thing. So, while she’s off cleaning house and trying to get the next episode of that RDF Poetry Finder finished, I thought I would just sneak in here, and add a new post. Just for fun.

There’s been considerable discussion about RSS for Weblogs, and RSS profiles, and XHTML in RSS and RSS and FOAF, and so on lately. In fact, if RSS were chum, you could walk on water, there are so many sharks circling about. Sam’s is a good place to track most of the discussion, so start here, then here and here.

Much good input, lots of great ideas from smart people. However, it struck me as I leisurely meandered through all of the juicier bon mots, that what the discussion needed was a little perspective.

I got to thinking about the possible impacts that could occur if the same level of energy applied to the discussions of RSS were applied to other areas of human interest such as science and the humanities. Based on this, I came up with the following, my list of things we’d be doing now, if only RSS energy was universal.

 

1. Next vacation I’d just hang about in the next neighborhood. Andromeda.

2. We would have a cure for the common cold. Unfortunately, 1 out of 20 people who take the cure die.

3. Men will finally understand why they’re from Mars and women are from Venus.

4. We’ll be using cold fusion devices to chill our cans of beer.

5. We find Schrödinger’s Cat. His name is Bob.

6. The next blogging get together will have 200,000 people attending, all teleporting in. The remaining 300,000 will just pick up the details from their minds.

7. Virtual sex would no longer be so virtual. No, I’m not giving details.

8. Our SUVs get 1000 miles to a gallon of gas.

9. New techniques can compress 1000 gallons of gas into one, which will cost about $2,345.56 at the station.

10. Lie-detecting glasses will enable voters to see when politicians are lying.

11. New political laws will be created to allow governments to exist without politicians.

12. Computers will be smaller than a speck of dust, and hard wired directly into our brains. We think, we blog.

13. Weblogging tools will incorporate a new feature called the “Oh Shit! I didn’t want to print that” quick erase.

14. Someone invents a penis stretcher that really works, and a pill that melts fat. Not long after, Vogue begins to feature plump, voluptuous women as the new sex symbol, and men start wearing dresses. Loose dresses.

-and finally-

15. Time travel exists. I have seen the future. I know how RSS ends. I’m not telling.