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RDF Specs

Necho update

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m off to walk around favorite places today, but first an update on what was Echo and now looks to become Necho by default.

I tried to catch up on the wiki, but a couple of days on the road has put me hopelessly out of touch on this project. However, there seems to be a move towards a new name, a syndication format, and an API. I don’t like the new name – Necho for Not Echo. I’m indifferent to the syndication format, and there seems to be a couple of variations on the API. Still digging through this info.

Danny praises me for creating an RDFOWL vocabulary of N/Echo. I wish I could take credit for this, Danny, but someone else wrote these vocabularies – or demonstrated using existing vocabularies for the second example.

My biggest concern with this effort is not that the name will stay at Necho, or that the syndication feed and API won’t work. My biggest concern is that there is a small core of controlled data forming the current effort, while a lot of other people are slamming stuff together for ‘extensions’.

The first draft of the data model for N/Echo was a great version 1.0, but we should be looking at version 2.0, which accounts for things like categories and threads – the information that is the semantically rich aspect of a weblog entry. After all, there is little to be learned about recording that this entry was published on this date by this person. Where’s the category, or topology associated with the entry? How do we record that my previous entry was about traveling, San Francisco, photographs, the fact that dogs are no longer allowed on dog beach? How do we record that this item links to a post by Danny, and references a wiki, and that I’m sending a trackback ping?

We can record the N/Echo data in RDF/XML, but it’s really not going to extend the semantic richness of what is fairly simple data: entry by person on this date and with this link and of this type.

We can forgo all that boring data model stuff and just go to the extensions to the XML – but for what? The syndication feed? The API? And do we all agree on what we mean by category?

The core effort will be a success, of that I have no doubt. And that’s a good start. However, this core effort is surrounded by chaos, and that troubles me.

Regardless, good job to the people who work so hard, and seemingly do not sleep. Or eat. Or make love to their significant others, and play with the kiddies and poochies. And I know you all love me, which means you must not hate me, even if my interests do diverge at this point from the majority of the people forming the XML and creating them RESTful APIs.

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