Re: [syndication] XML-RPC and the Need to Cash In

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>]

Morbus,

+1

There was a nice thread here for a while about evangelising RSS,
getting the word out, etc. I like that. I want to make it easy for
anyone to say "yes, there's an syndicated feed for the web page I'm
looking at right now, and if I click this button, it will be added to
my aggregator". 

We seem to dive into the gee-wizzery of the newest technology, and
how we can combine it. This is good, in that it pushes the envelope.
However, the envelope is getting pretty thin; basic syndication (the
original topic here, natch) isn't widely deployed; most Web sites
don't know what it is, and users don't demand it because they don't
know what it can do for them.

Perhaps it would be good to splinter a bit; to have a group that
focuses on evangelising and making it simple, and another that lives
on the cutting edge.

Thoughts?



On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 08:10:10PM -0400, Morbus Iff wrote:
> I'm about to be sacrilegious, I suppose. Other people may call it inept.
> I've also got to preface this with a few notes (in Dave Winer style):
> 
>  - "I love XML-RPC." Yes!
>  - "I like and use Blogger." Right on!
>  - "I like and use Jabber." Good morning, innovators!
>  - "The recent developments of the Blogger API, the Manilla and Jabber
>    BloggerAPI additions and so forth are wonderful. I love those
>    as well." What a community!
>  - "AmphetaDesk has always been targeted to the stupid idiotic user.
>    My mom, my dog, my mistress. The stupid people of the world. You
>    know, the ones who send you those emails. Oh yes, THOSE emails.
>    AmphetaDesk is an RSS reader here: disobey.com/amphetadesk/"
>    Share the love!
> 
> One of my problem is this (and I know this is an age-old complaint that has
> not aged well): All of these technologies are for geeks. Geeks, geeks,
> geeks. Repeat ad infinitum. Sharpie "I AM NOT A REAL PERSON" on the top
> frame of your computer monitor. It's important. Mayer-Briggs says we think
> we're smarter than everyone else, and goddamit, we're proving the damn
> pigeon-hole test right.
> 
> Where are the end users? How can my dog get in on this crap?
> 
> Now, sure, XML-RPC is not for end users - my dog could gleefully lick his
> dogbowl, ignoring the fact that I'm SOAPing the amount of water in his bowl
> so that I can be Jabber'd when he needs more.
> 
> And Blogger has done a wonderful job of getting the end user into the realm
> of nice and easy weblog updating. Hell, I even wrote a "meant to annoy
> people for the sheer enjoyment" article on it [1]. (And yes, that was an
> admission on the state of this email).
> 
> And Jabber, well, sure, Jabber is a nice thing, but I can't find a single
> client on Windows that is worth using continually (WinJab just kinda
> stopped working for me). And I'm surprised that there haven't been a wild
> influx of Jabber servers appearing. If O'Reilly thinks this is the greatest
> thing in the world, why aren't they running a public server? How come the
> only servers that JabberView.com are from people I've never heard of (and
> thus, can't trust with my data - "all your data bel... <bang!>"). All the
> geeks are using this nice tool, but not the core of the population: the
> moronic end users. [2]
> 
> Now... now, we have all these nice integration techniques. Now, I can
> chumpbot posts onto the #rdfig archive page. I can Jabber the cybersex
> transcript immediately over to the erotic fiction section of ClubLove.com
> (no, I don't know if they had one - there was an article on the
> ClubLove.com owner in the latest PC Magazine). And I can Manilla my
> interface to Blogger as well. I bet within a few weeks, we'll have a means
> of blogging a note through Manilla whilst simultaneously cc'ing it to three
> people on various IMs through Jabber.
> 
> What does all this junk replace? If we take the core value: updating a
> website, then we're replacing FTP. If we take dummy FTP, its like copying a
> file on your computer to another location on your computer.
> 
> I work for an ISP as a system administrator. We also host websites. And boy
> oh boy, everytime I send an info packet to someone about hosting a website,
> the inevitable question of "will you teach me FTP" arises. Or how I have to
> explain that the user's ISP doesn't have reverse DNS configured correctly,
> and no, we won't lower our defenses for an MSCE certified ubergeek who ran
> through a wizard.
> 
> If people can't understand FTP, then how in lord's name will they
> understand all this crap? Even if we info hide everything, there will still
> be a need to explain it along the way.
> 
> Imagine I implement the XML-RPC BloggerAPI in AmphetaDesk. To make it
> flexible, I'd add an account system, where a person could create accounts
> for their Manilla site, their Blogger sites, their LiveJournal
> implementation, a Jabber account and buddy list, or what have you.
> 
> The first question is always the hardest.
> 
>   "Enter the name of the server to post to:"
> 
> No, that won't work. "Welp, I post to disobey.com, so d-i-s-o-b-e-y.com.
> Whoo! Kickass. This is easy!" Failure. Ok. More finite:
> 
>   "Enter the name of the XML-RPC server to post to:"
> 
> I'm sure everyone on this list knows what that means. But my dog? Nope, my
> dog is gonna lick his nuts in feverish confusion. And I don't even have a
> dog, so that means an awful lot of confusion. "What's an XML-RPC server? I
> should call up Morbus's ISP and ask for help!"
> 
> Sure, I could make a popup menu: "Choose a server to connect to:" and
> include predefined defaults for Blogger, Manilla, and so forth. But what
> about Jabber? I can't define a Jabber preset because jabber servers could
> be anywhere. The fix, of course, would be to add a second screen: "Enter
> the jabber server to connect to:", but that's a second screen. And even if
> that's the last screen, my dog's face has gone from elated happiness to
> "the daunting task of screen flipping". This, of course, ignores the need
> of ever changing the Jabber or Manilla server names. It also ignores a
> possible simple/advanced configuration system.
> 
> Ok. So we make the perfect UI. Something fails. But what? The XML-RPC
> gateway? The Jabber server? The webserver? My internet connection? The
> Delete key cos my cursor is at the wrong end of the words? If we hope for a
> perfect world of no errors, then we'd ha... no, wait, that'd be stupid. The
> world is full of errors, and we're all gonna find them two seconds after we
> should have been out the door.
> 
> Everyone has been talking about simplicity. But simplicity is a very
> relative thing. We all know XML-RPC, we all know some aspects of XML, we
> all know how to code in something or other. But we're not recognizing the
> person who just called me and said she never knew her mouse had a right
> button for clicking.
> 
> If all of this wonderful technology is intended for writers to send
> themselves screaming across the airwaves, welp, we're not making it very
> easy for them to do so. We're making them THINK of writing, and not FEEL
> for writing.
> 
> My argument is defeated rather easily two different ways:
> 
>  - in fifty years, when the next generation takes over, none of this
>    stuff will matter. our child grow up on this stuff. and don't forget
>    to recycle. in 300 years, some guy I doesn't know will thank me.
> 
>  - writers stayed away from typewriters when they were first introduced.
>    ever tried to install a white out ribbon on a Brother typewriter?
>    yeah, well, I returned mine. I couldn't figure it out either.
> 
> We're fighting two different audiences. We're happiest with the audience
> who can beam with pride at our intellect: the geeks, the bootstrappers, the
> people who work with this crap every day. All this tech is very cool - I
> know, I'm one of them [phear my regexp skillz: s/them/you/i].
> 
> Again, we're totally ignoring the audience that could give a crap less
> about integration, failsafes, decentralization, xml, or any of the other
> stuff that rolls off our tongues. They just want to get stuff done. I'm
> constantly around these sort of people - my girlfriend rarely uses the
> computer. Rarely. She never sends email, she rarely browses the web, and
> she gives a big sigh of derision when I point her excitedly to the latest
> Flash animation that circles the airwaves.
> 
> Likewise, the billing person at my work knows how to use the billing
> program. Lord almighty, she tried to sign up for a UBB forum recently. She
> asked me every step of the way. She had no clue what the difference between
> username or public name was, much less how private messaging versus email
> messaging differed. UBB! "The world's most popular message board!" Add
> "confusing as hell to someone who doesn't know that she needn't register to
> read posts!" She works at an internet provider. Wait. Again. Slowly. She
> works at an internet service provider. And it's not like she's lost in the
> shuffle - it's a mom and pop. She's the mom.
> 
> I'm a geek and I don't find Radio Userland very simplistic at all (no
> offense, Userland people). I don't "get" the purpose, the menu items are
> confusing, and I know very little about this outlining crap. I just wanted
> to read news, I guess. Instead, I can include mp3s and let other people
> know what I'm listening to. Um. Alright.
> 
> Dave and the Userland people have the right idea: "increase the amount of
> people broadcasting to no one in particular". But it seems they're only
> catering [3] to the people who have plenty of time to learn new concepts,
> to learn confusing UIs, and to figure out a bunch of new terms they've
> never heard before. Upstream? You mean, upload? My dog still tells me he
> downloads files off his floppy disk and then uploads them to his email
> program.
> 
> Today, someone called me and asked where the JPEG program on her computer
> was so she could open up a picture of her children. I spent fifteen minutes
> with her. She could not cross the bridge, no matter how I described it:
> "file format", "not a program", "type of image file", "double click the
> file and the correct program will open", "no, not in your Programs Files.
> oh. you don't know where you saved them? open up Windows Expl... you don't
> know what that is. OoOkkk." It got worst. The sad thing is, she could have
> been a brilliant writer.
> 
> Before I get looped into the "We Hate Jakob" fan club, I'm going to move on.
> 
> Recently, Dave posted the following:
> 
>  >Basic advice, if you do a desktop aggregator, please look at supporting
>  >XML-RPC, both server-side and as a client; if you're not already doing so
> 
> First off, yes, AmphetaDesk will support XML-RPC. I'm still debating
> on whether it will be a plugin or part of the standard distribution.
> 
> First question, Dave: what would be the purpose of a server-side XML-RPC
> AmphetaDesk? I don't get what an XML-RPC server would do. Accept
> subscription requests from afar? Mirror subscriptions amongst like servers
> running on different boxes? Send aggregated usage information?
> 
> If cable, DSL and always on connections are getting more prominent, and
> AmphetaDesk (and Headline Viewer, and Radio Userland) create servers on an
> always-on Internet connection, then we've just devised another way for
> crackers to buffer overflow. Another avenue of attack. And now we want to
> want to add yet another public interface of communication into a user's
> computer? I'm not sure this is a good thing [4].
> 
> As mentioned, AmphetaDesk will eventually support XML-RPC posting.
> I sometimes wonder though, if it should. Details are explained below.
> 
>  - if AmphetaDesk is a news READER, then why should it write?
>    i made a conscious decision in the beginning that AmphetaDesk
>    would NOT write. That this was a simple application for people
>    to READ the news with. That large mindless corporations and
>    researchers could use this tool to KEEP UP on the world around
>    them. in some cases, I had envisioned that companies or users
>    could use this as a possible corporate tool - that the data
>    they gleaned by reading MORE would give them a corporate
>    advantage. so, why should they write?
> 
>  - let's make some quick assumptions here:
> 
>      - "syndication" is commonly associated with news.
>      - 90% of the RSS feeds are link-and-comment related.
> 
>    and throw in a fact:
> 
>      - I rarely see journalistic or diary feeds. i do not
>        count "news, news, news, my dog picture, news, news,
>        met dave winer, here are some pictures, news, news".
> 
>    along with an observation:
> 
>      - "via" groups exist. dave links to craig, craig links
>        to the same thing, cam adds just the link without
>        the verbiage, doc connects it with how his sister
>        died (but of course, I don't read Doc cos of his
>        damn broken permalink craptacular), and then three
>        weeks from now, some clueless blogger happenstances
>        across an archive and his little via group starts
>        it all over again.
> 
>    In other words. I'm sick to death of the duplication that
>    is become more prevalent in feeds. Everyone who loves
>    everyone else needs to stop it. If I read Craig and Brent,
>    I probably read Dave too. If I read Cam, I probably read
>    Tomalak's. Stop linking to them. I don't want to read
>    their site before I get there.
> 
>    This all comes down to:
> 
>      - why should my own program make my life more repetitive?
> 
>    Maybe before I allow a user to turn on the feature, I can
>    ask a question like "Are you adding more than three sentences
>    to someone else's posts?" or "Hey! In your current listing,
>    thirteen other people linked to this site. You're not
>    being very original, binky. AmphetaDesk will now crash in
>    a fit of Koontz inspired anger."
> 
> I'm certainly prattling alot. I should stop now, rather abuptly. Send it
> off before you bore them some more. My pizza is now cold anyways (you DO
> read footnotes, don't you?). I also know this is a long email. But I have
> decided NOT to break it up into two parts to alleviate your "must ... go to
> ... bed!" needs. Because we all know that no one reads the second email [5].
> 
> [1] http://disobey.com/devilshat/ds011101.htm
> [2] I continually deface the moronic end users in this discussion. There's
> a specific reason for this - you must must think end users are stupider
> than a rock before you develop something. Else, they will surprise you
> rather rudely.
> [3] I should get offline so I can get a pizza catered. I'm hungry!
> [4] I, for one, have a 56k modem. I didn't appreciate all the Code Red
> scans. I didn't appreciate having to tell my moronic NT users that yes,
> indeed, they were running IIS without having a clue. But my hermit-self is
> shining through. Communication is for my invisible dog. Bah!
> [5] http://cms.filsa.net/archives/cms-list/2001/Aug/0071.html
> 
> -- 
> Morbus Iff ( i am your scary godmother )
> http://www.disobey.com/ && http://www.gamegrene.com/
> please me: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/wishlist/25USVJDH68554
> icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus
> 
>  
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 

-- 
Mark Nottingham
http://www.mnot.net/