Last night, Tim Bray posted a request that 'for the next few months, whenever we're talking to a co-worker or a journo or from a conference stage, to say never say "Atom" without, within the next 45 seconds, also saying "which as we all know must be served as application/atom+xml or it won't work"'. We're...
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This blog entry will be dated Tuesday, July 13, 2004 at 8:51 AM, MDT. What does that mean? Can it change? Should it change? What should be required before it is changed? Is it the "right" date? What other dates might be associated with this blog entry? Are there dates associated with it that no...
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Yesterday, I had the RSS Weekly webcast running in the background as I worked. Since I was only listening with half an ear, I probably got the wrong impression, but one of the guests or callers sounded like they were trying to shoehorn data into RSS that just didn't belong there. How far should a...
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In case that headline caused anyone's heart to seize up momentarily, let me say first that Atom will have some sort of linking capability. It just may not be found in an element named "link". Objections are raised from time to time that the link element, with it's seemingly constantly expanding list of @rel values...
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A while back, I read somebody's blog entry proposing the idea of "AdFeeds" as an alternative to putting ads into existing newsfeeds. The idea is to generate feeds with nothing in them but ads on some focused topic, and use those to generate revenue to support free feeds. If people want to try that, more...
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When you click a link to a webpage, your browser doesn't automatically bookmark it, right? So why should clicking a link to an RSS feed automatically subscribe you to it? It shouldn't. It should show you the feed, which you could then subscribe to if you like it. How many times have you subscribed to...
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A few weeks ago, the US Supreme Court threw out the case of a man suing to have the words "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. But they left unanswered the central question of whether having those words in the pledge is a violation of the separation of church and state. Their ruling...
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A question was asked on the AtomPub WG mailing list to the effect of "what is an entry?" With a conceptual model for what it is that we're trying to create a format for, we can decide what elements and attributes it needs. On a number of occasions, differences of opinion have had at their...
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Referring to Steve Jobs' keynote mentioned in my last entry, The Register notes that "Safari will get Arse-Feed support (both RSS and Atom) in the next version, which the audience met with a stunned silence." The article then proceeds to be stunning silent on the question of what an "arse-feed" is. Was the article's author...
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I read that Steve Jobs made mention of RSS in his WWDC keynote and it sparked a thought. When you get mentioned by important people, you know you're on to something important. When you get mentioned by self-important people, you know you're convincing people that you're on to something important.

Before I get completely misinterpreted...
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