Category: Closed Course

First Atom, now this. Quite the exciting week in feed land. Maybe I’ll write up a spec over the weekend, something like RSS 2/3.1. I wonder how to get Eweek to report it as if it were news? Anyway, I wonder what Dave will have to say?

Lightweight Version of RSS Released
“Shouldering past the community fear and loathing over Microsoft’s supposed plans to co-opt and rename its first implementation of the Web publishing technology, RSS editor Jonathan Avidan released a third, fully XML version of RSS for review and comment on Thursday.

The RSS (Really Simply Syndication) 3 specification aims to fix perceived problems of inadequate documentation and “lack of concern towards modern necessities” in RSS 2.0.“

This is one of the more reasoned reactions to the news that Google is slowing down its digital library plans in the face of complaints from copyright holders. Turns out the folks holding copyrights on works in those university libraries area bit skittish about having their works scanned by Google.

John Robb’s Weblog: Google vs. Publishers
“This battle has major repercussions. So far, it is being characterized as the classic x vs. y, that the media likes so much. It is more nuanced than that. It’s my understanding that Google is going to digitize and index all works, including copyrighted works not specifically excluded by the rights owners. If a work is copyrighted, Google will only display a short snippet and a link to a book store (or perhaps local library) where you can buy/borrow it. This is hardly “posting the work to the Internet,” and more like an upgrade to the Dewey decimal system.“

Law students wanted to blog… Neat idea. Jurist has certainly evolved into a great source for legal news and this year’s team of student editors has done a great job.

JURIST – Paper Chase: EDITORS WANTED ~ Research, write legal news in real time…
“JURIST is looking for talented, public-service oriented law students from law schools in the US and abroad to join our team of real-time legal news editors this fall. “

Note: I had mistakenly implied that this was a ‘blog for money’ situation when, in fact, the student editors of JURIST are a group of dedicated volunteers. Prof. Hibbitts reminds me “[t]he fact that JURIST student staffers work so hard, so long (days, evenings, weekends), and so enthusiastically *without* pay is the real story here. It’s a testament to their dedication, their commitment to public service, and their sense of what they get out of the good work they’re doing!”.

This article by Mark Sigal disucsses 2 compelling applications that have RSS at their heart and demonstrate how RSS could/should be at the center of the new web.

Envisioning RSS as a Web 2.0 platform
“RSS began its life as a really simple way for content providers to syndicate their content and for content consumers to subscribe to their favorite providers. When the blogosphere emerged, RSS really took off. Now, just as its “simple” technology cousin, HTML, provided the underpinnings of the Web 1.0 technology platform, RSS is emerging as a platform for delivering the broadband and mobile ready applications of a Web 2.0 enabled world.”

So the Mozilla Foundation passes control of development over to a for-profit subsidiary, citing financial and tax reasons. Sounds a bit odd. I work for a non-profit and we would never turn development over to a for-profit, at least not directly. We would setup a for-profit subsidiary and license it the code to exploit commercially outside of the range of our non-profit charter. I’m thinking these boys either got bad advice or they aren’t explaining it very well. Either way, we’ll certainly be hearing more about this.

InformationWeek > Open Source, Mozilla > Mozilla Creates For-Profit Unit, But Insists It’s Not ‘Selling Out’ > August 3, 2005
“The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday launched a for-profit subsidiary that will take over the development of the popular Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client, but assured its supporters in the open-source development community that it wasn’t “selling out.”“

The Future of RSS is Not in Blogs
“Even now, businesses that were initially reluctantly evaluating RSS are beginning to realize the power and benefit of the RSS information avenue. The inherent capacity for consumers to select the content they wish to receive will be the driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and content quality consistent. “

This is quite true. It has been apparent to me for quite some time that RSS goes way beyond simply delivering news headlines. Podcasting is certainly evidenc of that, as is the recent Longhorn RSS lovefest from MSFT. The power of RSS lies in its simplicity. It is a simple XML spec that allows the easy and fast dissemination of information. Really Simple, Sure.