Ben of Six Apart explains why Six Apart has pledged support for Echo.  Unfortunately, his list of reasons are mostly resolvable technical complaints against RSS.  For example, Ben writes that Dublin Core elements are technically superior.  I'll agree with that.  If you would like to use Dublin Core, use it to supplement the existing elements, meaning add them alongside <pubDate> and <author>.  Even better, I would insert them under a single element.  That is how RSS is supposed to be extended.

While I understand his enthusiasm for Echo, I don't think attacking your bread-and-butter format in favor of a format that hasn't even been defined yet makes much business sense.  Just saying that the Echo is a good project and Six Apart will implement it if and when it becomes available should have been more than enough.

Ben, Echo is no excuse to stop enhancing and supporting interoperability of RSS.  Since I doubt this was your intention, please make this clear because your list of RSS problems seems to imply that RSS is a deadend for Six Apart.  If you need an MT template that uses Dublin Core without being funky, I can help you with that.

The question of whether Echo will succeed in replacing RSS seems to be on many bloggers' mind just now.  Scoble thinks Echo has no chance.  Many people on the Echo supporters list think otherwise.  I put my name on that list as well, but I don't think the chance of Echo replacing RSS is very good.

RSS is far more than just a spec as Scoble explained, but engineers tend to focus only on technical side of things so it is no wonder most Echo supporters don't see it that way.  Just looking at the process of picking a name shows clearly how naive most of them are.  I meant naive in a good way so I hope they don't take this comment as an insult.

Although I don't think there is an optimistic future for Echo, I signed up as a supporter because, as I wrote before, I think it is a Good Thing.  There has been pent-up energies among developers that demanded something like Echo.  I don't mean Echo the spec.  I mean Echo the project.  Echo project is a good outlet for all that creative energy which could be destructive and chaotic if applied wrongly.  In my opinion, funky RSS was an example how destructive and chaotic creative energy can be.

I am happy that the funky RSS storm seems to have passed for the most part and creative energy has been released toward more constructive path via the Echo project.  Just as I think Dave is trying to Do The Right Thing, I believe everyone working on Echo are trying to Do The Right Thing.  Even if Echo the spec end up a dud, I think the effort is worth doing and was inevitable in one form or another.

History will happen as it does and not as it should.  Questions, discussions, and predictions are, in the end, no more than memories of turning pages.  So there is no point of asking who will win nor whether it should go on.  Besides, good ideas from Echo can be incorporated into RSS eventually so the users will win no matter which format wins.

The ((Echo)) project is moving along.  Frankly, I find it difficult to keep track of what is going on in the ((Echo)) wiki particularly because contents are being changed all the time without any warning or explanation.  I wish there were pages that showed what people are looking at and where changes are being made.  Sort of like a radar except it shows the activity history for the past 24 hours.  Little footprints and color hints on the map can provide that sort of full-court awareness.  As it is now, wiki is extremely disorientating.

In case you are wondering, I proposed "((Echo))" as the project's textual logo so the name will stand out.  My also proposed that the graphical logo match the textual logo and came up with an ((Echo)) hand-sign just for fun as you can see on the right.  Yup, its me with my eyes crossed although it is kind of hard to see.  My wife and I had a great time taking the picture although my son got another evidence of his dad's crazyness.

"PIE (aka Echo) – Formed as a result of accusations of funkyness. Well, theres a bit more to it than that but it is definitely the result of ongoing confusion in the RSS format(s). This is definitely a work in progress at this stage but is gaining support from many popular blog engines and sites." – Neuron #9

My rant was just the last stone thrown before the landslide called ((Echo)) started, so I don't quite deserve the link there.  Besides, I am riding the landslide down as well.

Darshan Singh, managing editor of PerfectXML.com, announced on XML-DEV the release of RSSConnect, an open source .NET news aggregator.

"PerfectXML.com team is pleased to announce RSSConnect: A C# .NET application that primarily allows reading RSS feeds. Other features include: XSLT skins, ability to export to any OLEDB/SQL Server/MSDE database and search this database, check for new feeds, OPML support, Integrated Internet Explorer Favorites view, Web search functionality, and more." – Darshan Singh

RSSConnect has two neat features:

• XSLT Skins – HTML is rendered from RSS using a user-selected XSLT file inside a Skins directory.
• Export ot Database – articles can be saved to a database.

While RSSConnect is less polished than projects like RSS Bandit, I think some of the ideas in RSSConnect are stepping stones to some really neat stuff.

For example, one of the common complaints by client-side aggregator users is that they like the unique looks of each blog.  Extending the XSLT skin idea one more step, each RSS feed can specify the XSLT files the news aggregator should use to render the feed content into HTML or other output types like PDF.

If you have a blog with RSS feeds, make a habit of checking it regularly (once a week should be enough).  Blog tools are often lax on character encoding and bloggers' tendency to copy-and-paste across tools can occasionally result in illegal characters seeping into your feeds, making them unparseble.  If you are using IE, just clicking on the feed link should be enough since IE will barf on illegal characters in XML documents.  Thank you for listening.  Good day.

Well, the name for the initiative led by Sam Ruby to create a new syndication format from scratch is … [drumrolll] … Echo!  Looks like they are going to use it as a brand of sort: Echo API, Echo Enabled, etc.  I proposed Wide Open Syndication (WOS-Up!) last night, but most people wanted to go with Echo.  Yeah, people will have a lot of fun Googling with 'Echo' as keyword, but then it is a sign of child-like innocence that I like so much in engineers.