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15 Aug 2006
Hybrid Analysis 1: Feed enabling
Following Marc Canter's words, I will start to call the client applications that incorporate Internet in some way hybrids. For me it was logic that modern clients should incorporate Internet. On my Client Checklist there were several points related to this. However as this Internet-enabling of clients might not be obvious to everyone, I will discuss the possibilities is several posts.
The first and most obvious example of hybridising, is to support iCal, RSS or Atom in client applications. Examples of MacOSX-X applications that do this are NetNewsWire, iPhoto, Democracy, iCal and iTunes. The basic idea is that the application can read RSS-files and incorporate the data in the RSS-file, as it was it's own. The use will no longer see the difference between local and internet MicroContent. The user can vie and manipulate the data as he wants.
The only difference between the mentioned applications is the supported MicroContent Types. NetNewsWire supports blog posts and in a very limited sense enclosures. iPhoto supports image enclosures in feeds. Democracy supports video enclosures in feeds. iCal supports events in iCal feeds. And finally iTunes supports audio and video enclosures in feeds.
One can find another feed type in Google Earth for locations. And there are probably more examples of other feed types.
Using these examples one can point to some features of a feed enabling. The user can or remove feeds in his Client. The Hybrid Client should regularly check the feed in order to check the availability of new Items. The user should have control of this feature. The user can not edit Items in a feed (other than making a copy).
One can extend this feed idea to any MicroContent Client. Think of recipes, bookmarks, etc.