Category format

NetNewsWire Drops Microformats Support

NetNewsWire drops support for microformat. I am afraid that is a right decision. NJobody seems to use microformats within feeds/blog posts. So deleting this code will speed up NNW, which is of greater importance.

[Inspiration Chris Casciano]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • format • hformat • type • blog , netnewswire
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MicroContent and DRM

I think I never commented on DRM on this MicroContent blog. I am not sure why I did not, but the open letter by Steve Jobs is a good start. Basically I do not like DRM and so I do not use the iTunes Music Store. Naturally I did buy some things to check it out, but that is it.

For me the fight against DRM and piracy is a lost cause. Just like the fight on drugs by the way, but then I am Dutch. I assume the subject just goes away with a big bang. Audio is main subject where DRM plays a role at the moment, for all the other MicroContent Types DRM is a minor subject and thus not worth discussing.

Although one can see the use of proprietary formats as a form of DRM. And that surely hampers the exchange of MicroContent Items and so I included the formats in the discussion of MicroContent Clients. So I am aware of the subject and have my eyes reasonably open.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format
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Lyrics aggregation service missing

I have been playing a bit with lyrics of the music I play. The metadata in iTunes have a field that allow to store data. The ID3v2 tagging system of MP3's allows to store these lyrics.

Unfortunately when you rip a CD, download it or buy it from the ITMS one does not get these lyrics. This implies that one has retreive these from the Internet, via a search engine. I came across a widget, Harmonic, that retrieves the lyrics of songs that are playing and paste them automatically into the right iTunes field. It works pretty well, but I have to do the search by hand quite often (European issue?).

This brings me to two things. We really need a lyrics aggregation service with a good API. I have the impression that the data is out there, but is not aggregated. And probably a microformat to go with it. And why do we not get all this information when we get something from Internet. Publisher should pay attention to the metadata of music. (there is a similar problem with CD covers).

And why are the lyrics so hidden. I would like to see the lyrics moving by while the music is playing. I assume that this is partly due to the use of MP3 and other formats that do not allow this. And the applications do not allow this either.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • hformat • type • audio
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Geonames ontology

Danny Ayers points to the ontology of geonames. Interesting. I like ontologies. But how should I use these in practice? Convert to a microformat somehow?

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format
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GoogleBase dichotomy

I agree with Microformatique on this. Where is the dichotomy that Read/Write thinks it is?

GoogleBase is about storage and management of structured data. And Microformats are about embedding structured data in MacroContainers, such as web-pages. It is still to early to judge. Googl Base can adopt microformats for embedding the search results of a GoogleBase query into the web-page. They might adopt microformats or not. But there certainly will not be a dichotomy.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format
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Techcrunch UK supports microformats

Nice, Techcrunch UK added events as microformats in their feeds.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • hformat
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My hCard

Time to publish my hcard on my blog:

name

Arnaud Leene

email

aleene@gmail.com

AIM

arnaudleene

Yahoo!

aleene_97

skype

aleene

Next step is to embed it in my templates. The formatting of the card is lousy, so I have to work on that.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • hformat
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Extract Microformats Script For NNW

Chris Casciano created a script for extracting micformattd items from blog postings for NetNewsWire. This is great, this will make it easy to save hcards and hevents into your local applications. I tried it out, but had some trouble getting it to work. I pinged Chris. I hope he can clarify it for me. Update: I got it working now. The microformats.org scripts did not work (at least for me) and I had to find alternative ones. I also adapted the AppleScript in order to extract cards and events from an Omniweb-page.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • hformat • mashing
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PeopleAggregator

Maybe the readers notices that I did not yet comment on the PeopleAggregator service. When the service appeared on the market, I logged in and created my personal page, created a small network, created some blog posts, etc. It all looks very slick, the ability to create and host multiple MicroContent Types is nice, also the cross posting is great.

While the service is already pretty good for hosting MicroContent en creating networks, I still have a feeling that it is a work in progress. I miss the RSS for output and input for instance. And I like to see better ways for traversing tag clouds, people clouds, blog posts, etc.

But it is a great start and I am very curious where things are going to.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • format • struct. blogging
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To Embed or Not to Embed

Craig discusses some pro's and con's on embedding MicroContent, and then he means in web-pages. He sees the usage of i-tags as a solution (have to dive in that).

I agree however that individual MicroContent Items should have their owm URI (read permalink). The question is however still what format should hide behind that URI, although probably one will get multiple formats.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format
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Yahoo Local adds support for Microformats

The blogosphere is buzzing with the announcement of Yahoo that they will support microformats in Yahoo Local.

A great announcement, I hope that others will follow. And the the Microformat Aggregators may come.

[Inspiration Kimbro Staken]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • format • hformat , Kimbro Staken
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Microformats and Structured Blogging are not competitors

Kimbro Staken explains the difference between Structured Blogging very well. They are not competitors, but needs each other. It is good to see this distinction well explained.

I get the impression that there is enough force behind Structured Blogging to continue after the demise of PubSub.

And indeed the formats without the tools amount to nothing.

[Inspiration Kimbro Staken]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • struct. blogging
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Physical permalinks

I talked with Roger Fischer of Kaywa about the QR codes he has been playing with. Basically the Q-codes are two-dimensional bar-codes. These bar-codes can contain various-kineds of data, such as an URL. Using a mobile reader, such as a mobile phone, one can extract the data and do something with. Thanks to three prominent dots in the code, the recognition process is much more easy than other codes. Roger showed various examples from Japan, where it seems heavily in use.

This approach would allow us add URL's to any physical object, by adding this QR-code. One can see this barcode as a format. The question is more what one should encode in it.

• Physical Permalink - this could should be some unique ID, which refers to an object in the physical world. A sticker with a QR-code should be placed on that physical object. And when we blog about that physical object, then we should include the same QR-code. I am not sure what should be encoded in the code, but surely there will be some ideas out there. One could see blog items about physical objects as reviews;
• Internet Permalink - the QR-code that I added to this blog-post is in fact the permalink of this blog-post. So if you print out this blog-post and forget to add the URL to the post, it will still be available. This might be useful when you start mashing with your scissors. When you always keep the QR-code with snippet that you are mashing, then you can always get back;
• Address Card - in practice the QR-code will be mostly be use as Address Card. The URL contained in the code will refer to the company web-site. The URL could also point to a product-page, a campaign-page or whatever.

The code that I used initially turned out to be wrong, the app required a serial number before I worked. There is however a QR-code generator on the Net available, which created the image I show here.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • general
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Microformats are not MicroContent

I have been waiting for someone to say this. And I am afraid that I agree. Frederick Giasson laments that microformats do not have an URI. Giasson tries to make links between specific hreviews and hcards, he wants to create a MicroWeb. And in order to do that an URI is needed. And in my definition that makes microformats not MicroContent. I listened well to Marc Canter, so I added addressability as a key characteristic of MicroContent.

However this does not matter at all. Just see MicroContent as a future and microformats as an essential intermediairy. I see microformats as a great step to introduce structure on the web. Live Clipboard adds possibility of manipulation. Once I will be able to copy an hcard and put it in my local addressbook, I will have introduced some addressability. Maybe they can add anchors to an hformat in order to add addressability. (maybe it is possible to do this, I did not yet dive into it)

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format
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Structured Blogging next step

Rod Boothby wants to take the structured blogging idea a step further. Instead of recplacing ablog post with a specific MicroContent Item, he wants to be able to embed multiple MicroContent Items in a single blog post. This takes the idea of mashing a step further. This will imply that a web-page can contain multiple blog items for multiple weblogs and each blog item can contain multiple MicroContent Items. Certainly things become much more complex in this way. But a web-page is already a MacroContent container, so why not? Not sure whether a blog item is then still a MicroContent Item. In this way the blog-item becomes a MacroContent container. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe we should give it another name then.

[Inspiration Marc Canter]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • general
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