Kevin Burton mused that not having a computer must be what quitting cigarettes feels like.  Well, it depends on whether you are quitting for the first time or the Nth time.  Last time I quit was January of this year as I welcomed my 40th year on this planet.  I quit smoking for 6 months.  I am back smoking knowing fully how bad smoking is.  Being a smoker is like being the guy in the movie Alien who had a baby Alien growing in his chest.  You just don't know when its going to 'say hello' face to face.  With supposedly 5% chance of success, quitting smoking at this point feels like taking Alka Seltzer to rid of the baby Alien.

Larry,

While I understand each of your arguments and respect everything you are doing for the public, your arguments are based on logic intended to appeal to the human mind, not the reality.

Kevin Burton found a funny picture titled "Halloween Flashers".  It could have been nicer with better looking pumpkins, maybe a Brazillian pumpkin for the left one.  Heh.

I heartly recommend that everyone read Kevin Werbach's working paper titled Open Spectrum: The New Wireless Paradigm (PDF).  Its carries a timely message that makes perfect sense on first read.  Very well written and enjoyable too.  Open Spectrum is the only thing I see on the horizon that could bring the Excitement back to the Web.

I can't understand why people are making so much noise over the use of clipart person pictures in the Microsoft testimonials.  Apparently, people are applying different standards to Microsoft than to breasts.  Hey, if it looks too good to be real, it probably isn't.  Besides, I don't think there was anything in the testimonials that said the picture was that of the author.  Its shabby practice, but I doubt anyone making noise now expected anything better from Microsoft before.

I hate XML Namespaces.  Its ugly and difficult to grep (pun intended).  Its also makes hand coding XML difficult since one has to remember those namespace URIs.  There can be no defense for XML Namespaces, for the controversies over it can not be denied.  While RSS 2.0 introduces XML Namespaces into RSS, I intend to present a simpler approach that does not use XML Namespaces.

In RSS, there are two areas where extensions are most likely, inside <channel> and inside <item>.  To support extensions in these two areas, we introduce three rules:

1. RSS parsers must ignore unknown tags.
2. Unknown RSS tags are opaque – this means you cannot enumerate its children.
3. Encapsulate custom tags inside a tag whose name starts with domain name.

Here is an example:

<channel>
  …
  <com.docuverse.daily.tags>
    <title>semantics of extension tags are context sensitive.</title>
  </com.docuverse.daily.tags>
  <item>
    …
    <org.slashdot>…</org.slashdot>
  </item>
  …
</channel>

This approach to extensions can easily be manipulated using simple regular expression based tools.  Its easy to read and write.  Its namespaces done right.  Its a solution that is willing to sacrifice that problematic 20% in return for simplicity.
   

RSS is currently used for syndicating unstructured textual data, but Web consists of wider variety of resources such as images (see my Syndicated Image and related use cases posts), sounds, movie clips, animations (Flash and SVG), PDF, packages (ZIP, gz, etc.), and structure data (XML).  How do we syndicate these resources using RSS?

Here is one approach.  Add 'type' and 'encoding' attributes to <item> for specifying item's MIME type and encoding method.  Default MIME type is 'text/html'.  There is no default encoding type and unspecified encoding type means it is unknown.  Alternate versions can be use multiple <item> with matching <guid> with order of appearance indicating the order of preference.

An RSS channel typically has one writer and multiple readers.  Some bloggign software allows multiple writers per channel, channel sharing is limited to the deployment site.  How can we have shared channels across sites and writers?

First, feed directory services like syndic8.com and weblogs.com must support multiple channel feeds per channel.  To identify channel, we can either use the channel title or add <guid> to <channel>.  With <guid> approach, title coherency is a problem.

Second, some arrangement must be made to make it easy to subscribe to shared channels.  Client-based approach could start with one feed and find other feeds for the channel either directly from a channel directory service or from the feed itself.  In later approach, each feed is responsible for finding other feeds for its channel.  Server-based approch relies on channel directory services like syndica8.com to provide channel feed aggregation service.

I am done with an initial pass over my Java RSS Parser.  Its supposed to handle all variations of RSS including 0.9x, 1.0, and 2.0.  Its a forgiving parser designed to handle the meanest and ugliest RSS feeds.  It still requires well-formed XML though.  I'll add a regular expression based version as a fallback parser to handle not so well-formed XML if there is a need.  I'll need more information on variety and quality the feeds out there though.  If you have a RSS feed, this baby will likely visit you sometime over next few days.  Its name is Daily, Docuverse Daily that is.

You can now put two spaces between sentences with Movable Type using a plugin by Kelsey Group, thanks to a suggestion by Scott Johnson.