August 26, 2002

RSS or Nowheresville?

Christian Crumlish

inessential.com says that RSS is where it's at:


I think I've seen the future, or a small part of it, regarding weblogs. Two things:

  1. If you're not syndicating your site as RSS it might as well not exist.

  2. If you don't include a <link...> tag in your home page that points to your RSS feed, then you might as well not be syndicating your site, and therefore it might as well not exist.


This Pirate Kills Fascists disagrees with this news-is-all vision, seeing blogrolls and other blog content elements as equally compelling (in IE5.1/OSX right now, though, his design is overlapping, making some of the content illegible):
Again, I don't see it. While I do agree that the web browser is not the most efficent means to read a large number of weblogs, I don't think that RSS fits the bill as the best means to read them either. I've already voiced two complaints against how RSS is currently used, and I don't see any good solutions for these two issues.


Images, blogrolls, discussion links, all of these are key components of many weblogs. I've often hit up the "say what" link on Radio Free Blogistan alone. RSS syndication hides all that.

Maybe the best solution is RDF. You can define custom predicates to link your object with resources. So an item could be given a discussion link, or a channel could have a blogroll list, and a smart RDF reader could show all that.

Here's my question. Where do I snag the correct syntax for the link tag in my head. I guess I can copy almost anyone and replace the URL?

Posted by xian at August 26, 2002 12:34 PM
Other incoming links (via Technorati)

Hosted by Mediajunkie.

Sponsors
On this day in 2006
Blogging the MDP Convention: We're not quite there after all; blogging has not yet arrived as the political force it is elsewhere in the rest of the country. The first clue should have been the locked door to the caucus room upon arrival this morning.... (Blogosphere)
On this day in 2003
Yahoo blog rumor: Noticed in my sidebar, The Blog Herald (which needs an editor as bad as I do), reports that undisclosed sources inside Yahoo! say "that the company is already in talks with a number of blogging firms, looking for the right acquisition vehicle to integrate into the Yahoo! stable of sites." It... (Products)
Cowgirl's bo-hunk's robots 'n' stuff: Last week I went to SF and finally met the honest-to-god Amazonian bitch-queen of the blogosphere, the Reverse Cowgirl her ownself, squiring her aptly named boyfriend, Christian Ristow around the grungy tearoom teabagging and teaspoon-heating' Tenderloin Rx Gallery, where three diabolectronicoes were showing off their kinetic art. A daily self-portrait for... (Blogosphere)
Summaries of candidate blogs: Niel Palleck is posting hilarious excerpts from the Democratic candidates campaign blogs: JOHN KERRY, August 8--I took the bus to Springfield today because my best friend got tickets to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who were supposed to open for the White Stripes until Jack hurt his finger. I was pretty pissed,... (Blogosphere)
Semantic blogging white paper: An HP Labs article called Semantic Blogging for Bibliography Management argues for piggybacking semantic metadata on "a very successful paradigm for lightweight publishing."... (Weblog Concepts)