My introductory post last week about Microcontent Design
got such a good response that I need to pause and consider all the feedback, before I
move onto Part 2. Basically what I call 'microcontent design' involves:
...microchunking your content, taking advantage of open standards, employing microformats, letting users subscribe to all kinds of RSS feeds, freeing your content via APIs and other means, designing for re-use of information, monetizing it, and more.
Of those things, RSS, XHTML, APIs and microformats are key building blocks.
In the comments to my first post, several people noted that microformats and Structured Blogging are too hard for normal people to use - and that is true currently. But the goal of Structured Blogging is to provide easy-to-use tools for using microformats. Currently there are just two plugins available that achieve this (for Wordpress and Movable Type), but over time there will be more mainstream tools released - such as integration with hosted blog platforms like Typepad and 'instant blogging' web forms such as what edgeio recently introduced. Also some browsers are integrating microformats into their product.
Another concern raised was about the number of microformats that will be released - will a proliferation of microformats hamper uptake? For this I have to defer to Marc Canter, who went as far as to create a 'law' to address this. He calls it Canter's Law #1 and it basically says: support all formats and don't take sides, because the user doesn't care about your geeky format wars. As Marc put it :
"No human cares about what format is supported. Only us. Flickr proved that they could be completely format agnostic and provide a compelling experience to all."
Fred Simmons pointed out in his comment that we need structured microcontent in order to better filter and find the quality microcontent - and keep spam at bay. This to me has always been the corollary of microcontent: having good filters to sort it. It's why I declared 2006 to be The Year of the Filter. Currently tools like Memeorandum, Topix, TailRank, Rojo and Findory are doing a good job of tackling this issue.
Thomas Bate left a long comment, noting:
"This discussion needs to extend a bit further to include REALLY structured blogging via enclosures containing not just audio and video, but images, maps and detailed tabular structured data as well. [...] REAL business involves VERY structured data with no room for ambiguity...detailed product specifications, prices, serial numbers for instruction manuals, etc."
It's an intriguing analysis from Thomas, because he says that "Container design is far from dead, but it HAS moved away from the server-side web page as container." So in Thomas' view, although content has been freed from its website container - there are new containers to take its place in the form of "portable web feed enclosures". He calls it 'datacasting'. Interesting point and I will explore that some more...
Software developer Joel Hoard at Browserless Web wrote an interesting post in response to mine. I especially liked this point:
"My primary problem with structured blogging is that it’s a very powerful concept that doesn’t provide a lot of immediate value to individual bloggers. It’s what in VC terms is a “vitamin product” (as opposed to a “painkiller”) in that while it’s very beneficial, it doesn’t solve an immediate need."
That's so true and is one of the big challenges of the Structured Blogging initiative - to show users where the value is.
Sean McGrath, CTO of Propylon, wrote:
"The future of structured content in my opinion is content tunnelled inside human readable content. *Not* machine readable content that can be converted/published for human readability."
Sean thinks ODF and XHTML will play a big part in this new microcontent world and he has a theory about "Hi XML and Lo XML", which developers should read.
Finally we get to Ryan King's post. Despite the inflammatory title ("Richard MacManus gets microformats wrong"), what it boils down to is that Ryan thinks HTML is more important in the grand scheme of things than XML and its dialects. Said Ryan:
"XML has come no where near matching HTML in terms of distribution and interoperability."
Well firstly I don't see the point of an XML vs HTML us-vs-them conversation - that's format wars and I'm not interested in those. The Structured Blogging initiative actually spits out microformats in both HTML and XML (RSS etc) formats. Plus XML itself has wormed its way into HTML, via XHTML, so the two (xml and html) complement each other well.
Secondly I’m not saying HTML still isn’t really important, perhaps still moreso than XML. However I do think the future of data formats on the Web is XML and its dialects - especially RSS/Atom. As a delivery method, RSS has already proven itself and it will continue to be extended into a more general purpose content format on the Web - look at the developments around Atom for example, or at the things Microsoft is doing with RSS.
OK, that wraps up the responses to my first article. Next up: Microcontent Design in action at the BBC.
Photo: Dion Hinchcliffe (of Marc Canter and the microformats BoF at MIX 06)
First I noticed Paolo's post on 4 years blogging (via Dave), then Phil's post. The bizarre part is I started blogging on the exact same day, 21 March 2002, as my fellow kiwi Phil Pearson - we even blogged about the same topic, RCS (Radio Community Server). I didn't get to know Phil until a couple of years after that, so it was total coincidence we started blogging on the same day. It's no coincidence though that Phil, Paolo and I were all inspired to start blogging 4 years ago by Dave Winer - who's just coming up to 9 years blogging! Yikes, we're all pups compared to that.
My first Radio Userland blog was called 'Modern Web' and was short-lived (more info here). But about about a year later Read/WriteWeb was born. Here's a screenshot of the first blog.
- “We
need microformats‚Ä? - Bill Gates (Sez Marc: "Tim O‚ÄôReilly told me
that he had to clue Bill in on microformats the night before." -- lucky
Ryan King wasn't around, otherwise Bill would've copped
an earful...)
- Google bullish on Atom, Microsoft bullish on RSS? (Robert Scoble links to my thread about Google's Atom bullishness. Robert: "our RSS platform is reading in Atom too and we’ll support whatever the community adopts.")
- It's Giant Webpages in the Sky‚Ñ¢ (Best. Startup. Name. Ever -- it's a billboard tech company)
- Ben Barren hearts hListings (as do I -- Ben: "We'll be definitely deploying some of this krunk downunder.")
- Microsoft Outlines Its Windows Live Developer Strategy ("In Microsoft's world view, developers can build their own 'Windows Live experiences'")
- Web 2.0 Boom (from one of my fave new blogs, called A Startup Tale - Sprenzy: "Tomorrow is my last day of work for the "man". Then the real work begins.")
- New Tim Berners-Lee interview (security, mobile web and Web Services the three big issues of the Web, according to TBL)
- Jeremy Zawodny disappointed by Valleywag wit (tells Nick Douglas he must do better... hmm, snark baiting is a dangerous business)
The online classifieds edge
player edgeio has released an update tonight, that
points to the future of Structured Blogging. Now edgeio users don't need to physically do
tagging on their blogs, or in fact even be a blogger, in order to post a classifieds
advert. How does that work, seeing as edgeio is positioning itself as the antithesis to
the centralized eBay? Well it's essentially a web input form for users to enter their
listings, just like eBay has. Only edgeio has gone a step further and developed a kind of
'instant blog', to enable non-blogging users to input their classifieds listing and at
the same time create a personal blog. This blog has an RSS feed and the user can continue
to input content to it, whether it be edgeio data or anything else, if they desire.
How it works: new users click the 'Create listing on edgeio' button and are first invited to register for an account. After that the user is taken to a WYSIWYG editor to enter their listing:
Once they've entered their details, a new blog is created. Coming soon is skinning and personalized URLs. Essentially this is a blogging platform that non-technical people will find easy to personalize. Even so, it'll be interesting to see how many people do continue to use their personal edgeio blog. The jury is out on whether this will entice more people to be bloggers.
Another new feature is that old-hand bloggers can now add their posts to Edgeio, without needing to tag them in their own blog authoring tool. Users simply enter their blog URL into edgeio's 'Get listings' textbox (on the homepage), click the button and a list of their latest posts display. This is a useful feature for people like me, who don't bother tagging their posts - even though we know we should.
I think we'll see similar tools being created for the Structured Blogging initiative in future (nb: I'm currently re-designing the SB website). If you recall Structured Blogging supplies tools for people to create posts that have extra metadata, so that niche aggregators can automatically harvest them. For example, what if someone wanted to do a movie review - but they don't have a blog? A Structured Blogging aggregator that specializes in movie reviews could provide the same 'instant blogging' tool that edgeio provides its users, enabling non-bloggers to quickly create a movie review on their platform. Likewise the instant tagging feature that edgeio has can be applied to Structured Blogging aggregators.
When you think about it, edgeio is one of the pioneering Structured Blogging aggregators - even though they don't use SB tools or microformats such as hListings.
In my latest ZDNet post, I review a recent JupiterResearch Concept Report entitled Understanding
Google. Subtitle: Competing and Partnering with the Most Influential Company Online.
It costs $750 to purchase this report, so I asked Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg if
I could get it for free and blog about it - as I did almost 1 year ago with their report on RSS
Readers. Happily Michael agreed and so I've been mulling over the Understanding
Google report for the past few days and today I wrote up my thoughts. Among other things, the report warns that Google's insularity and intense focus on organizing consumers' information may not scale.
Photo: Jason Shellen
by Ajit Jaokar
(Richard's Note: Ajit is the second of my guest bloggers on Read/WriteWeb and he will be writing on Mobile Web 2.0 and digital convergence. Ajit runs a book publishing company called futuretext, which specializes in these topics. He also chairs Oxford university's next generation mobile applications panel and is a member of the Web 2.0 Workgroup.)
In the next
five years the number of global web surfers will quadruple from 500
million to 2 billion people. One billion of those people will come onto the Web
using cheap pocket and wrist devices running multimedia content.
In parallel, as web 2.0 starts to become mainstream, browser technology is becoming pervasive. In the PC/Internet world, the browser is fast becoming the universal client. However, there is a crucial difference between the PC world and the browser world.
In the PC world: for desktop apps we need one type of program to run a specific type of application (MS Word to view word documents, Excel to view spreadsheets and so on). In contrast, we can use the browser to view any type of application - i.e. one client for many applications. This makes application development more optimal and less susceptible to the vagaries of software running on the client, in this case the PC.
So with higher spec mobile devices and greater bandwidth, let us consider the question: can or should ALL mobile applications be implemented using browser technology?
After all, the browser works well on the PC as a universal client - why not on the mobile device? A corollary to this question is: are there fundamental differences with browsing on a mobile device vs. browsing on the web?
To understand the differences between browsing on the web and on a mobile device, we have to consider factors such as:
a) Intermittent connections - unlike on the web, the wireless network
connection is relatively unstable and is affected by factors such as coverage (e.g. you
lose your connection in a tunnel);
b) Bandwidth limitations - for example even when 3G coverage is available, the
actual bandwidth is far less;
c) The need for data storage on the client - if the device has no (or little)
local storage, all data has to be downloaded every time. This is not optimal given
intermittent and expensive bandwidth;
d) Finally, and most importantly, a local application provides a richer user
experience - especially for applications such as games.
There are other factors such as limited user input capabilities, screen sizes and so on.
Some of the above factors are getting better, for example coverage blackspots are decreasing. But the overall user experience remains one of the most important factors.
So, to answer our question - no, we cannot develop all mobile applications using the browser only. However, as we shall show in subsequent posts, these limitations are being overcome through Ajax and mobile web 2.0.
Ajit Jaokar's blog about mobile web 2.0 is Open Gardens.
Web design firm 37Signals has kindly given me 5 copies of their 171-page PDF book, Getting Real, to give away. Retailing for $19 on the 37Signals website, the book is sub-titled 'The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application'. Given that I named 37Signals my Best Web LittleCo of 2005, I think it's a must-read for Web 2.0 designers and entreprenuers.
What I'm going to do is give away a copy to the first 5 people who leave an informative comment on my previous post, Microcontent Design, Part 1. I don't get as many comments on my site as I'd like, so this is a chance for me to milk it and get some (hopefully) great feedback on that post :-)
If you want to be in to win, click here and leave a comment - and either include your email address in the comment or send it to me privately, in order to qualify for a free 37Signals book.
UPDATE: Wow, that was quick! Here are the 5 winners of the 37Signals book. These are the first 5 who posted *informative* comments (1-liners and generic statements don't count, sorry):
Comment #1: Michael Fagan
comment #3: David Berube
Comment #5: Jackson
Comment #7: Jack Chou
Comment #8: Steve C
Thanks all for commenting and apologies if you missed out this time. Even though the books are taken now, please feel free to comment more! :-)
This is the first post in a series in which I will explore microcontent design.
"...content will be more important than its container in this next phase.
That's a big shift for old media to come to grips with. Killer apps, such as search, RSS and video-capture software such as Tivo -- to name just a few -- have begun to unlock content from any vessel we try to put it in.
Who needs to bookmark and surf a bunch of Web sites anymore, when you can search or monitor several RSS "feeds" much more efficiently?"
When Associated Press CEO
Tom Curley spoke those
words in a November 2004 keynote speech to the Online News Association Conference, he
also struck at the heart of a paradigm shift in web design - from designing for the page
to designing for microcontent. Put another way: when a Web ‘site’, or
'container' to use Curley's lexicon, is no longer necessarily how users will experience
your content – what does that mean for web designers? It essentially means taking a
microcontent view of design.
As I’ll outline in this series, microcontent design involves: microchunking your content, taking advantage of open standards, employing microformats, letting users subscribe to all kinds of RSS feeds, freeing your content via APIs and other means, designing for re-use of information, monetizing it, and more.
"The Semantic Web is just the application of weblike design to data; it will be many more decades before we will be able to say we have really implemented the Web idea in the full, if ever we can."
Tim Berners-Lee, October 2004
While Sir Tim Berners-Lee was referring to the grand notion of the Semantic Web in the above quote, in many ways his vision of applying “weblike design to data” is already being implemented in the form of technologies like RSS, APIs, XML.
XML has largely lived up to its promise of being the data format of choice for the Web 2.0 era. And by far the most widely deployed format is RSS 2.0, which is a loosely structured XML dialect. Sir Tim Berners-Lee would probably prefer that RDF, a much more rigorously structured form of XML, were used instead. But that’s another story!
Microsoft and Yahoo are two big Internet companies putting their weight behind RSS 2.0, as I've documented at length over the last couple of years. But there are also a lot of advocates for Atom, an alternative RSS format that is said to be more extensible. Indeed at the Microsoft Mix '06 event yesterday, Google employee Patrick Chanezon (an Adwords evangelist) said in an interview that Google is "very bullish" on Atom. Patrick said:
"Instead of taking Atom as the rich content model for feeds at the implementation layer, you [Microsoft] took RSS 2.0 - which obliges you to do all kind of translations. [...] I really think this [Atom] is the future of syndication. At Google we're very bullish for Atom. [...] As Gates said in his speech, feeds usage will skyrocket in the next few years - but Atom is a much more solid format for that kind of growth."
The Microsoft interviewer retorted that RSS has the same "good enough" attribute that drove the adoption of MP3.
Either way you look at it, RSS (including Atom) and XML are the de-facto formats for data in the Web 2.0 world. If you release your data in those formats, that’s step one in the data design process.
Step two is standard ways of representing data, to enable people (and machines) to find and consume it. In an era where a veritable glut of media is available online, from both professional and amateur content sources, it’s become very important to make sure your data is easy to find and use.
Structured Blogging and microformats are two relatively geeky topics at this point in their evolution, but they are significant developments in terms of representing data.
Structured Blogging is an initiative launched in December 2005 by small RSS-driven companies PubSub and Broadband Mechanics (disclaimer: I work for the latter). Structured Blogging is a set of formats and plugins that enable blogs to publish different kinds of information - like events, reviews and classified ads - in a 'structured' format, so that aggregators can pick up the data from all over the Web.
It’s that ‘re-use’ of blog content via aggregation that will be where the real value lies in Structured Blogging. As of writing there are no Structured Blogging aggregators available, but a hint at the value that it could provide in future is the independent company edgeio – which was launched in February 2006. Sellers can get their data listed on edgeio’s website, simply by posting an item to sell on their own weblog and tagging it “listings”. Buyers are able to search and find goods and services at the edgeio website. How it works is that edgeio aggregates goods and services data by scanning over 25 million RSS feeds, looking for the tag "listings".
This is a great example of how data you publish on your own weblog, or at a specialist service such as the jobs listing site SimplyHired.com, can be ‘re-used’ by a service like edgeio – simply because of the way the data is marked up. Whether you use Structured Blogging markup, or simple tagging that edgeio will recognize and pick up, either way you are in a very real sense designing your microcontent for re-use.
Microformats is the generic name given to
any format that builds on XML (X)HTML to provide additional metadata about web objects. This is the definition on the microformats.org website:
"Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards."
A good example of a microformat is hReview, a format that provides a common markup for reviews (of products, services, etc). Check out Phil Pearson's NZ Coffee Review site for an example of hReview in action. Also it's great to see Microsoft embracing microformats, as announced at Mix '06.
It’s important to note that microformats and the Structured Blogging initiative are both open standards and complement one another. The Structured Blogging toolset outputs reviews in the hReview format, for example. So essentially Structured Blogging provides tools to publish structured content, which formats it nicely for users and marks it up with microformats.
To be continued...
Update: microformats actually build on (X)HTML, not XML as I originally wrote in the first sentence of the last section. Thanks Ryan King for correcting me and Phil Pearson for confirming it.
...you have lunch with The President, er I mean Bill Gates. Mike Arrington as snapped by Robert Scoble:
AOL has just released a new site called
I Am Alpha, which is their version of Yahoo! Widgets or Microsoft Gadgets. Google has modules and all the smaller players have
similar widget featuresets - PageFlakes calls
them "flakes" and Goowy calls them minis. All of these things are
basically little web apps that can be integrated into your desktop or a webpage (e.g. a
personalized homepage such as live.com or PageFlakes). Here's how AOL defines its
modules:
"A module is a "distinct piece of content or functionality." That's a fancy way of saying it's a very small web page that can be embedded easily in another web page."
Screenshot from the intro video
As SiliconBeat noted, this is "another departure from AOL's infamous "walled garden'' days." Although I would add out that none of these widget or module platforms is yet interoperable. Especially not the big companies, although of the smaller players PageFlakes and Netvibes seem very keen on developing an open API platform.
I am Alpha is focused on the AIM product right now, although I imagine this will extend out to AOL's portal products in due course:
"I Am Alpha is a site for developers and other curious folks to play around with the underlying technology behind a whole new crop of cool AIM products."
I have to say this announcement by AOL looks promising. They're talking of developing a microformat called AOL ModuleT: A Module Transport Microformat Profile. The documentation for the modules is well done too and all in all it's a promising addition to the Web's growing widget ecosystem.
