Simon Phipps's Blog

Web Services and XML Archives

Open Design

I have commented to a few people that Blogging is a Big Deal. Not, I hasten to add, because I think that anything more than a core of special people (special can have many meanings, but I like Halley's article...) will ever decide to participate in a meaningful way in that specific activity. Rather, it's because of the work that it's catalysing, both extending blogging and going way beyond, as Jorgen Thelin hints and Tim Bray explains.

Weblogs are, in my opinion, the most successful application of web services to date. They have been successful because a combination of social factors and sufficiently OK technology have come together at the right time, and because they have a universally almost-agreed format for the content of the conversations. Most of the fuss in the world that calls itself web services has been about the plumbing, and no doubt one day there will be wonderful things happening there, but for now the big win has been for the application with a standard content format, transferred using whatever communications method comes to hand (for the most part, HTTP - XML-RPC has and continues to be crucial too, and while I don't share Tim Appnel's distaste for mentioning it I do share some of his reservations about its future).

That's why I consider the current online debate about whether XML-RPC should be used for nEcho divisive (Update: and is seems Sam agrees). It does a great job baiting certain individuals but fundamentally nEcho has to be about a content description first and then later about a way of communicating it.

Blogging was already a fascinating social crucible, empowering millions to express themselves and thousands to engage in distributed, accountable conversation. Now it's spawned a unique technology encounter. Open source has given us a development methodology for the massively-connected era. We now see the spontaneous formation of a potential design methodology for the massively-connected era.

[Also posted to Webmink : the Blog]

Storm in a Soup Bowl

While totally invisible to the bulk of humanity, there's been a storm in a soup bowl of late as the Great and Good of blog-tech have been focussed into a Wiki to design a successor to RSS and the Blogger API - the name 'Echo' has been mooted as a placeholder. The choice of a Wiki is itself interesting, as Clay Shirkey notes, and from the messages its host has added to many pages the soup bowl has been straining at the seams. I've tried hard to keep up with the discussion, as has Norm, but the sheer pace of the hive mind is too much for anyone with a day job to cope with.

The reason for the storm? Well, As Clay hints, one or two of the well-known figures in blog-tech have taken the creation of a personality-reduced space as a personal affront. I really don't want to get into the personality side of things, although I have been surprised and saddened to see the venom that's been expressed in some postings by people I respect.

One issue that needs considering though is whether this project is there to offer an agreed unification of RSS 0.9x, 1.0 and 2.0 (and stop there) or whether it's there to go further. The project's motivation page says a lot on this, and comments moving towards each extreme have been popping up all over, but I think it's clear the answer lies between the extremities. I completely agree with Sam that seven elements is the magic number for things people can manage to agree about in one breath.

But when it comes to not inventing things, I'm not so sure. Mark Pilgrim is on the ball as usual, and the point here is that there are so many exciting things that will come from an agreed content format for this slice of web services. I don't just mean threading and other features for blogs either. If we don't co-operate now on defining the format, someone will inevitably come along and lock us in. So I still support 'Echo' and I hope you will too, preferably by actually joining in.

[Also posted to Webmink : the Blog]

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