Re: [syndication] (unknown)

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

Ian Graham <ian.graham@utoronto.ca> wrote:

> For example, some want to use RSS to syndicate site summaries/metadata,
> ScriptingNews for content syndication, and outLiners for (I think)
> 'richer' content syndication than is possible with ScriptingNews.

Hopefully we can combine the latter two into a rich format for content
syndication. What would really be nice is a weblogs format, which I have
some ideas on, but that's another letter.

> * distribute web site/page summaries -- reason:
> summaries posted in a syndicate subscriber's site
> will drive user's back to the originator's site.
> (cross marketing)
> 
> * distribute news article summaries -- reason: as
> above, but data content may differ. Other reasons?
> (e.g., sale of syndicated summary data to a consumer?)

These two cases are pretty much the domain of RSS.

> * re-distribution of summaries/content: aggregator collects
> syndicated data from multiple sites and redistributes a
> composite set of syndicated data.

This is also being done with RSS, but not very well.

> * distribute full text of news articles -- reason: for
> synchronization of news content across multiple
> sites (e.g., across an organization, where portal sites
> are run by different units).
>
> * distribution of full web article content. Reason:
> time limited sale/distribution of syndicated content
> with licensed consumers (e.g., information portals, etc.)

I think these are taken care of by XMLnews and others. HTML is a decent
language for this kind of thing, although a more specialized format with
title/author metadata would be useful.

> * distribution of event information (conference, concert,
> etc.) reason: reliable synchronization of 'events'
> calendars; improved, reliable marketing of event
> information across different public calendaring systems.

Now this is an interesting field. I don't know if it falls under
syndication, but there's a lot of possibilities here. I remember hearing
something about an iCalendar project trying to create an XML protocol for
calendar negotiation and synchronization, but I was never able to find a
URL. If no one else is doing this, I'm very interested in starting a format.

> If we could find some place to post these and build up a collection, that
> would serve as a useful reference for future work.

How about an EditThisPage site? Are there any yet? Any volunteers? Dave,
would this kind of thing be appropriate for backend.userland.com, since
that's what's currently hosting the RSS format? Perhaps we could create a
new site that would cover work on RSS and other syndication formats. Since
the RSS Modularization stuff is already in Manila, it would be nice to have
these kinds of things all in one place. If you get it set up, I'd be happy
to be an editor.

> i) generic part metadata (assembly date for message, last-modified date, info
> about provider; URL references to provider; URL referencing this message;
> ....) This would be data common to any type of syndicated data.

Can I also request persistent IDs? I'd find these very useful for many
tasks.

> Obviously you wouldn't need all of this in all cases, but I think,
> by looking at the use cases, it is clear that they could all be
> useful in one or more of these instances. Also, this structure
> would make it possible to distribute different types of syndicated
> data in the same overall wrapper, which might have some advantages.

I think this is definitely the way to go -- interchangeable content formats
with a single delivery system. We'd also need a push/pull/publish/subscribe
protocol, which I'm trying to create with changedPage. I was very careful
about not specifying any data about content in the spec, only having it
point to a URL which could be of any format.

The problem is this would be difficult to make backwards-compatible with
RSS, since it already specifies so much of the metadata. It's probably time
to move on to something new, that uses similar syntax to RSS for the
content, but a new distribution system.

Let's get a Manila site set up for this -- I'm anxious to begin!

-- 
        Aaron Swartz         |"This information is top security.
<http://swartzfam.com/aaron/>|     When you have read it, destroy yourself."
  <http://www.theinfo.org/>  |             - Marshall McLuhan