Last month I posted an entry here about Promoting valid newsfeeds. For the past few days, a discussion has been going full steam on the Atom syntax mail list about what to do with invalid feeds. The discussion began with the suggestion that Atom feeds include a URI that client software can contact if it...
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From the what is it good for? department: might there be a use for digest formats as a software delivery mechanism, for example, for updating virus definitions, updating SPAM filters, and delivering software patches? The idea sounds useful, but there would be a few requirements to make it work.

First, the vision. Digests could easily...
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When defining a file format like Atom, a balance must be struck between simplicity and power. If the format is too complex, people will have trouble making tools to use it. If it's too simple, it won't be useful for the things people want to do with it. Good design will yield maximal power with...
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Version 1.3 of the Info Bite List specification saw daylight on Saturday. Along with a few other tweaks, I removed support for multipart content types as a result of some research prompted by an entry on Tim Bray's blog.

On Friday, Tim raised the issue of how one goes about posting, for example, an image...
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Yesterday was the deadline for those of us in the United States to file our tax returns for last year. As I looked at that date, April 15, on my blog, I had an idea. An idea of April Fools magnitude. Rather than filing a tax return every year, we could just put our tax...
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A few days ago I read that someone is integrating Bayesian filtering into a newsfeed aggregator (sorry, I can't find the reference). Last month, I wrote about the difficulty of finding quality newsfeeds and proposed some ideas for creating a better newsfeed directory (and then built a newsfeed directory based on those ideas). Bayesian filtering...
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A few days ago, I mentioned in passing the idea of referring to RSS, Atom, Info Bite and such as "digest formats". The idea has grown on me.

What does "digest" mean? A few relevant definitions include: "a periodical that summarizes the news", "something that is compiled (as into a single book or file)", "make...
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Last week, I wrote a post titled "Why you shouldn't offer a newsfeed" that garnered a bit of attention. The entire post was written from the point of view of someone opposed to and annoyed by newsfeeds as a way of introducing the kinds of objections people might raise. It seems I should have included...
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In the beginning, web pages were text-only. They had a few options for styling, but nothing too fancy. Then came images, tables, Flash, Java, JavaScript, CSS, and oh, let's not forget everyone's favorite: the blink tag! Thus arose the occupation "web designer", the one who specialized in making web pages look great in every version...
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Are you sick and tired of people telling you to publish a newsfeed? I sure am. So today, I'm going to give you a break and discuss why you shouldn't publish a newsfeed. Feel free to use these arguments to tell people to shut up and mind their own business.

1) It's too much trouble...
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