September 2003 Archives

Summarizing the discussion on a more advanced RSS auto-discovery format that was recently started by Jeremy Zawodny, Diego Doval writes:

if Tima or someone else would have a bit of time to re-write my mock-up structure using WSIL, it would be most welcome!

Done. Here is a quick mockup of both approaches Diego used to representing hierarchical content in RSS.

The first is a single file example were I use the dc:subject element to define the category in which a client could group feed pointers.

http://www.timaoutloud.org/files/diego/index.wsil

I think this example is pretty self-explanatory. service is the equivalent of RSS's item.

The second example I constructed uses multiple files and WSIL's ability to point to feeds and other WSIL files.

http://www.timaoutloud.org/files/diego/index2.wsil
http://www.timaoutloud.org/files/diego/tech.wsil
http://www.timaoutloud.org/files/diego/world.wsil
http://www.timaoutloud.org/files/diego/various.wsil

index2.wsil contains links to the other files (I used the fictitious news4humans domain in the URLs so you'll have to do the mappings.)

I think the second option is the way to go because it scales for sites like Yahoo though I don't have a problem with looking at supporting both. I added a latest news feeds to index2.wsil just to demonstrate that services and links to other WSIL.

There are a few caveats to what I did here.

• Took a few liberties with the WSIL 1.0 spec, but are completely legal XML. Mainly I used RSS modules to bring in additional meta data where ever needed instead of making up my own tags.
• RSS 9x and 2.0 doesn't have am official namespace which continues to be an unfortunate and continuing design flaw. I made up one for the example – http://purl.org/rss/2.0/.
• dc:anguage should probably be on a per service basis, but for the sake of replicating Diego's example I left it were it was.
• service.dc:date should probably be dcterms:modified
• Added an abstract, error reports to the examples.
• I could have very easily added pointers to web services via WSDL files or UDDI directories. I could have very easily have added Atom feeds or archives or OPML files for that matter.

I'm pretty convinced that WSIL is along the lines of what would be optimal in creating one scalable format that can be inclusive to handle many formats in addition to web services. This said, I think WSIL in its current form has much to be desired. For instance, I think supporting extensiblity through namespaces is the way to go, but there are probably too many elements with namespaces in my mockups. Some of the tags names area a bit off and could be better. Let me go out on a limb here – I'm also not sure the RDF syntax is really much value in this non-RDF format. Could use to factor those out. (I'm sure the semantic web mob will be on me for that.)

Yahoo! techie Jeremy Zawodny has posted his thoughts and suggestions on RSS auto discovery stating It has occurred to me that there's some non-existent infrastructure that we (whoever 'we' really is) need to build if RSS is going to really, really take off the way it should. He has also started threads on the syndication and aggregators mailing lists. Diego Doval contributes with some experiments using OPML and RSS.

I think whatever becomes of this directory format be inclusive of many of the formats that feeds exist in RSS x.9x, 1.0, 2.0, Echo in addition to Web services.

From my own experience and others the OPML/blogroll formats are all over the place. (See Meg Hourihan recent post on the subject for more.) There really was never a specification to my knowledge. Being frozen and not supporting proper (read: determinable) extensibility, I'm not in favor of pursuing anything based on OPML or existing blogroll formats.

Joe Gregorio posted a suggestion to use link tags which seems fine, but it doesn't seem scalable. Won't I have to repeat all of that information in every one of my HTML pages? Won't that be a major pain for some like Yahoo that could have hundreds of these? Perhaps I'm reading it incorrectly.

While everyone is throwing out ideas I figured I may as well unearth this post for some additional food for thought: WSIL meets RSS.

WSIL is Web Services Inspection Language. It seems right in line with what Jeremy and others are talking about. WSIL may not exactly be the ticket since its an under utilized and seemingly abandoned specification – then again wasn't that the case for RSS?

Here is a topline of the case I made then:

• I have asserted that RSS syndication feeds are Web services and perhaps the most widely deployed Web services across the Internet.

• In many ways, WSIL is like RSS for Web services. RSS is a file format with pointers to published content that can be syndicated and aggregated. WSIL is a file format with references to published Web services that can be discovered and bound.

• I find WSIL intriguing because of its simplicity and lightweight implementation is more RESTful then UDDI. WSIL leaves the processing logic to the developer and makes its information trivial to access creating the potential for innovative and novel applications arise.

Back when I wrote the afore mentioned post I created a few quick and rough samples to get my point across. Here are the links:

http://www.timaoutloud.org/index.wsil (Extended)
http://www.timaoutloud.org/index2.wsil (Traditional)
http://www.timaoutloud.org/index-rsd.wsil (RSD-like)

One of WSIL's nifty traits is that it can point to other WSIL files which can be helpful with large and distributed sites. For example using Troy Hakala's case Yahoo! could have a main WSIL file, www.yahoo.com/index.wsil, that cover their primary feeds and points to other sections WSIL files like sports.yahoo.com/index.wsil and finance.yahoo.com/index.wsil and so on. Another benefit, if Yahoo! would introduce some Web service interfaces, they too could be included in these files for applications to auto discover.

Just thinking outloud.

via Anil. MTV is reporting that the Pixies have settled their differences and will reunite for a tour and perhaps a studio album.

Yipee! The only reunion could please me more would be The Smiths getting back together.

The Pixies put on a great shows so I'm really looking forward to coming out of my retirement as a concert goer. I have many fond memories involving the Pixies. Here are a few that come to mind:

• Their Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim is one of my top 5 all-time greatest rock albums.

• Many moons ago, during their Bozzanova tour, I caught them in NYC where they opened playing their first song extremely slow. The next a bit faster then normal. They continued doing this until the fifth or sixth song was at their normal tempo. (Classic Pixies humor.) They continued for a couple hours more to play every song they've every recorded except for a few. I was terribly exhausted, but happy. But there is more…

• Incidentally I went with some chick I had recently met and found interesting. The night before we sat up all night talking about music after she had sprained her ankle at a frat party. After attending classes and not getting any sleep, she stuck with me at the front for most of the show nursing her sprained ankle before moving to the back. She fell asleep sitting in chair. She really got teased for that. I ended up marrying her. I still tease her about it.

• One day walking by the local awesome indie record store in town, Pier Platters (now sadly closed), I saw a sign Black Francis @ Maxwell's Solo Acoustic. The Pixies frontman was known to throw his guitar in his car and call up people to play in an impromptu tour. Maxwell's is an ultra small, but famous club in Hoboken. He put on a great show doing a lot of early Pixies tunes will lots of commentary. (Steve Albini said this verse totally sucked and took it out of the song.)

• A funny story about Frank Black (Black Francis' solo career psudeonym) and bassist Kim Deal who later fronted the Breeders. Their break-up on less then friendly terms was saddening because I never thought this would happen. A couple of years later I was walking to dinner with M. Doughty of Soul Coughing just after the release of their first LP (another top 5 of mine) Ruby Vroom. He was talking about how fun it was to get the SoundScan that reports the previous week's LP sales and in what parts of the country etc. Doughty said you want to hear something funny? A person at Warner told me Kim Deal has her weekly Breeders report faxed to Black Francis. Ouch. For those not in the know, a feud between Black Francis and Deal over her dwindling vocal parts and difficulty in getting any of her songs recorded as Pixie tunes was one of the major issues in their breakup. Frank Black's solo album had only sold a few thousand copies and was panned by critics while Deal's recording with the Breeders had sold a few hundred thousands and was at the top of the indie college music charts. Their live shows were drawing audiences as big as the Pixies also.