Category definition

Micro versus Macro

In a comment to one of my blog-entries, Ryan King says:

You suggest that we should have “separate MicroContent entries in separate well-formed XML files.”
I say, “what’s wrong with XHTML”? Its XHTML, you can have ‘microcontent’ in it. And the bonus is that you don’t have to maintain two representations of your data.

I guess that there is nothing wrong XHTML. The presentation of Tantek Çelik makes that clear. And XHTML is also XML. The point I want to make is it that it has MicroContent in it. When talking about XHTML one usually thinks of a web-page. And a web-page has a lot of different types of MicroContent in it. A web-page makes the connection (provides the context) for various types and items of MicroContent.
 
I think that each MicroContent Item should have it’s separate file with all the web-page fluff removed. And I really do not care which format is used. MicroContent can live on it’s own. Maybe that is even a defining property of MicroContent. But creating separate files should have value.  I found such value for instance in recipes. By just dragging&dropping the recipe-URI on a client, a new recipe can be added to your personal collection. And this idea can be done for other MicroContent types as well. But I guess it is not the way to go for all types of MicroContent. Only the ones that you would like to copy to your PC.
 
And I do not worry much about maintaining multiple representations. With a good CMS, it is no problem.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • definition , microcontent; macrocontent; xhtml
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What are blogs?

On Peer Pressure appeared a short take on the definition of blogs based on what happened at Les Blogs. It is funny that people have such a hard time at defining a blog. It shows that a blog can appear in many forms, which only has to make the definition broader.
 
Matt sees a whole continuum of blogs appearing, which will boil down to “plain old articles of news and opinion”. And then he ven does not take all the MicroContent types into account. The future will be even more complex than he suggest. I am not sure that there will be a definition that covers it all.

Categories/tags: definition
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MicroContent size

I agree with the comments of Ross Mayfield. Size should not be part of the definition of MicroContent. What we see now as small or large, is in five years time no longer a factor or importance.

Categories/tags: definition
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Microcontent definition

I came across this weblog entry by Nova Spivack on Micro- and Macrocontent. He offers another definition of Microcontent:

Microcontent is modular content. Each item of microcontent is an unique, individually addressible chunk of content defined by metadata focused around a particular idea or small set of related ideas.

He also describes Macrocontent, which is a collection of Microcontent items. And he suggests that a weblog, a wiki or even a webpage is a piece of Macrocontent.

And I agree with him there. I try to build my webpages out of multiple weblogs. So each piece is indeed a Microcontent item. And Nova says:

I think that in fact the microcontent paradigm will become a key element of next-generation Web publishing, and even of the desktop.

Good to hear. I was about to call Macrocontent Containers, but now I am not sure what to use.

Categories/tags: definition
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Field Classification

After looking at various namespaces, I think there must be four types of fields (is fields a good word?): core, basic, accepted and extended fields.

• Core - the core fields are common to all types of Microcontent. The fields in this class are the permalink and the title. And maybe some date related fields, such as creation date and/or last change date;
• Basic - the basic fields define a specific type of Microcontent. These fields are obligatory. For an OpenReview this would be an identifier field. And for an OpenBookmark the bookmarklink. For FOAF this would be the FOAFnet definition;
• Accepted - these fields are commonly accepted as part of a Microcontent type. These are the fields supported by most services that support Microcontent. For a OpenBookmark this could be description and categories. For weblogs this might be Typepad-exchange format;
• Extended - these are all extensions that one can think of for a Microcontent type. I would like to for instance put all FOAF-namespaces that go beyond FOAFnet into this category;

This classification of fields is not something static. As fields get accepted and adopted by the community they move up from extended to basic and might even reach the core.

I am not sue if this classification is important. It was just an observation that I made.

Categories/tags: definition
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Composited Microcontent

Inspired by the RVW-extensions of Alf Eating, I think his model for reviews can be explained more generalized. He had to solve the fact that the content of a review might refer to more than one item (book, CD, whatever). Instead of having a single item per review, the situation got more complex. I assume that this will not only happen to OpenReviews, but to other forms of microcontent as well.

For instance I can image that one needs something similar for OpenEvents as well. Say that I organize an event with all kind of manifestations and performances. Each performance will start at a specific tiem and at a specific venue. Everything combined will be the entire event. Event and performance have general content, organizer, etc. in common. And this information can be liften to a common event field. Each performance can then inherit this information if required.

For the moment I call this composited microcontent.

Categories/tags: definition
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Overview

Now that I read the first information on microcontent, I am wondering how I should analyse this stuff. How should I chop up the possible subjects. My initial thoughts are that I want to discuss the following subject:

• History - I want to say something about the history of the subject. This is supposed to place everything in the right context;
• Definition - The subject must be defined well;
• Namespace - A formal declaration of the microcontent namespace. If all goes well, this is common to all specific forms of microcontent;
• Examples - I want to give an overview of possible microcontent. This is supposed the make the subject less theoretical;
• Usage - An explanation how microcontent might be used by users and service providers;

For each microcontent type the following could be described:

• Definition - what is this type supposed to do?
• Namespace - the namespace elements of this type;
• Transformations - how could the formal namespace be translated to RSS, Atom, etc.?

And I guess there will discussions around everything, lists of links, etc.

Categories/tags: definition
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Model

In order to create good microcontent standards one needs to have some underlying models to base oneself upon. Recently I saw this drawing on James Seng’s weblog. Looks guite useful. I wonder what Logic could be in microcontent conext. I would like to have an explanation of this picture. Undoubtedly it can be found somewhere on one of the SemanticWeb websites. This model is very good to help define specific microcontent schema’s.

I would like to have some similar model for publication of microcontent. I assume that nothing new has to be invented on this subject.

Categories/tags: definition
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Example Overview

Microcontent has been defined very generally and many pieces of content can fall into this category. In order to get some idea, I give here an overview of examples that I have found until now (I will expand as need arises):

• OpenBlogroll - A blogroll is a list of URL’s pointing to blogs. I am not sure whether this can be generalized to someting like OpenBookmarkList or just OpenURLList.
• OpenBlog - the content that started it all.
• OpenBookmark - allows someone to publish his bookmarks.
• OpenComment - any weblog entry that references a website or weblog entry
• OpenEvent - for the publication of events. This has relations with a Calendar.
• OpenListing - a descriptive of a company, i.e. it’s address, phone number, service category they are in, etc. This might be viewed as an advertisement, but I see it as more general company information.
• OpenMedia - I am not clear what this is exactly. It might be an audio or video file that is published. Check out Marc’s picture.
• OpenMusicPreferences - List of music tracks with ratings
• OpenPerson - information related to a person. The FOAF-standard can be used for this;
• OpenPicture - an image that is published;
• OpenPlaylist - a list of audio tracks;
• OpenRecipe - as in cooking. There was work done on RecipeML, but I do not know what the status is.
• OpenResume - a description of a persons career and interests. Mainly for job seeking purposes;
• OpenReview - This might be used to write a review of a book, a CD, an article etc. An important field of an OpenReview is the URL of the content/product that is reviewed. I wonder whether this can be used for comments on a blogentry for instance. The timestamp of the comment will then create the necessary thread.

While I was writing this I noticed several things. Should we use plural (OpenEvents) or leave everything in singular? Should the definition be based on the purpose of the content (Review, Bookmark) or should it be based on the structure of the content (Picture, URL, Recipe)?

Categories/tags: definition
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Characteristics

Now that we got the (vague) definition out of the way, we need to specify more. Marc Canter often defines microcontent by some examples. I do not find this enough. I think there must be more in common. I see microcontent as a family with some common characteristics. In this post I want to discuss those common characteristics.

First of all there is the common definition.

Microcontent is structured content. It is like a record in a database. Microcontent has one or more fields and each field has well defined semantics. A record in a database is not really a good comparison as structure might become very complex. Only think of a list of ingredients in an OpenRecipe. Each ingredient is already a record in the database sense.

Each member of the microcontent family has the same common fields. I am not sure what these fields must be, but i am thinking of the author_name, creation date, title, summary, author_address, foaf_address, etc. These fields all relate to general characteristics of the content. (Does the Dublin Core help here?)

Another important aspect of microcontent is its openness. Microcontent is open to be used by other people and this requirement has several consequences. This aspect is Marc Canter’s subscribable to.

Microcontent is content that is published. And this publish events requires several fields, which are common to members of the family.

As Marc Canter already stated, every piece of microcontent must have a unique URL, the permalink. This allows others to syndicate the microcontent. Note that this will exclude a lot of content. For instance if I add a blogroll to weblog, but do not offer it also as a separate URL, it is not Microcontent. Although it could be.

Other fields can probably be found in the RSS-standard or in the Dublin Core. One can think of publication date, expiration date, etc.

And there must be technical requirements that are common to all members. I guess XML is a good one for markup. And there might be requirements about the publication method (HTML, RSS, Atom, Email, etc.)

Categories/tags: definition
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Definition of Microcontent

Flemming Funch discusses the definition of Microcontent and Marc Canter has added his ideas to that. If this subject wants to get any further a clear definition is needed that is supported by most people. Although using the word Microcontent a lot will also help. Otherwise people will start using new words, such as digital artifacts (Jon Udell). As Funch already points out the history of the word has no meaning anymore.

The definition of Anil Dash comes already a lot closer:

I think this definition adds a lot of unnecessary burden to the definition. I think that presentation should not be part of such a definition. Microcontent should be independent of presentation limitations, presentation is up to the client. The idea that Microcontent has a unique identifier, such as an URL is important.

The idea that microcontent should convey one primary idea or concept sound interesting. Does this contrasts itself from content proper? The Wikipedia-entry for content does not help much. It gives the synonym Creations. A comment by Richard Stallman notes that there are three types of content, which does not help us a lot. Relevant to this is the Wikipedia-entry for Open Content:

Which basically says that content equals creative work. Isn’t that too restrictive?

The definitions from Google do help us more. I find there:

I like this one best, as it covers any information.

Now we have give a meaning to the adjective micro in the context of content. Google does not find a definition, so we have to do with the definition of micro: extremely small. We are thus left with extremly small (piece of) information in computer data format as a working definition.

This definition only starts to live with examples of microcontent, such as a blog-entry, a review, an image (think Flickr), a bookmark (think Del.ico.us), etc. These microcontent examples only get a purpose / meaning in another context. An image is part of a photo-book or a ‘rate-this’-service. A book-mark only has value in your personal bookmark-list or in a category of an aggregator, such a Del.ico.us. A review is related to the book or CD and gets more meaning in the list of reviews at Amazon. I think that this lack of context for microcontent might be a good distinguisher from content, although I doubt that it is enough. The idea that microcontent is small as in the number of bytes has not much relevance.

Categories/tags: definition
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