Atom

I Enjoy Particularly Rigorous Specs

James E. Robinson III has a confession to make: I read specs. While sometimes messing with specs turns into a waste of time. Many times understanding the spec can keep you out of trouble. The problem is that specs are tedious, but the reality is that they have to be. Nothing is worse than a poorly written spec. Being patient and weeding thru specifications helps you understand not just how something is designed to work, but why. I used to read specs because i had to; now i read them because i ... (read more)

2006/05/19

Google Calendar Makes Date with Atom

Google Calendar can import and export calendars created as Atom feeds but does not support RSS, according to Byrne Reese: Only a small minority of people will care about this obscure technology fact, but in the syndication community I think this is tremendously significant. To an engineer, adding RSS support is trivial, so the syndication industry must ask themselves, and the RSS folks especially, why did Google only support Atom? Google also introduced their own proprietary Atom elements or ... (read more)

2006/04/13

RSS: I'd Rather Switch Than Fight

Jason Young posed a question on Workbench recently: I have followed the whole RSS soap opera from even well before Mark Pilgrim was writing snarky posts about Winer numbers. I've actually taken more than one opportunity to call it "Internet Jerry Springer" among my IT colleagues and others that I was evangelizing syndication (and RSS) to -- and that was prior to the 2006 events with the Advisory Board and what I feel is inexplicable behavior from Winer. The whole hullabaloo has the group of ... (read more)

2006/03/31

RSS Board Supports Common Feed Icon

The RSS Advisory Board proposal to support the common feed icon has passed 5-0. In an effort to make the concept of syndication easier for mainstream users, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera will all identify RSS and Atom feeds with the same icon: Subscribe The board has adopted the symbol on its site and encourages its use on web sites, browsers, and syndication software. Additionally, the board encourage web publishers to use the icon on any feed, regardless of whether it employs ... (read more)

2006/03/20

Support the Common Feed Icon

A recent Yahoo study reported that four percent of Internet users have jumped on the RSS bandwagon and begun subscribing to syndicated feeds. Considering the number of ways that web publishers show their readers they offer feeds, it's amazing we've gotten that many: In an effort to make the concept of syndication easier for mainstream users, the next versions of the Internet Explorer and Opera browsers will identify RSS and Atom feeds with the same icon used in Mozilla Firefox. Since the market ... (read more)

2006/03/03

Opera Subscribes to Common Syndication Icon

Subscribe Opera has embraced the common syndication icon adopted by Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, lead developer Trond Hansen announced Thursday: Yes, we're adopting it too, and it will be in the next weekly build. Thanks to www.feedicons.com for making it so easy! Oh, and in case you haven't seen it before (what are the odds). I've attached a large version to this post which you can make love to. The icon, which makes it easier to find syndicated content in software and web ... (read more)

2006/02/17

I'm On Board with RSS

I've accepted an invitation to join the RSS Advisory Board, the group that evangelizes the RSS 2.0 specification. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, RSS 2.0 isn't owned or controlled by vendors. The specification has been released under a Creative Commons license and the format it represents has no trademark or copyright claims. My new job has very little actual power associated with it, sadly enough, and only one groupie. The Advisory Board's primary task is explaining why the ... (read more)

2004/05/12

Google: Don't be Evil to RSS

Jeremy Zawodny reports that Yahoo has added Atom support to My Yahoo: Since everyone's jumping up and down about the Atom vs. RSS (or "Google vs. RSS" if that's your paranoia) debate, it's probably worth pointing out that My Yahoo's RSS module also groks Atom. It was added last night. It took about a half hour. Yahoo's ability to add Atom support that quickly demonstrates why Google is wrong to mothball RSS. As the 600-pound gorilla in weblogging, the company ought to support an established ... (read more)

2004/02/13

Name the New Syndication Format BikeShed

The expression bike shed discussion, which comes from a FreeBSD mailing list post by Poul-Henning Kamp, describes the experience of being bogged down by interminable debate on a subject where everyone feels comfortable in their expertise -- such as the building of a bike shed. It also can be stated as a law: ... the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change. Looking at the naming effort for the new syndication and weblogging format briefly ... (read more)

2003/08/11