A number of blogging, feed reading, and other tools have implemented support for Atom already, although we haven't yet generated an official standard version. Most implementations appear to be using version 0.3. While some have responded with excitement to the growth of Atom even before the creation of an official specification, the Working Group's mailing...
[read more]

Does it matter whether Atom IDs are URIs or simple strings? Does it matter whether the creation date of Atom feed entries is published? How about the last modification date? Does it matter whether all kinds of links go into the a "link" element, or into various elements of different names? Interestingly enough, after intense...
[read more]

The Atom API will specify an open standard for editing blogs, Atom feeds, and other such resources. Any program or device will then be able to interact with any Atom server software that supports the API. As long as it meets the minimum technical requirements, that is. In the past, we planned to build in...
[read more]

You may be shocked to learn that not all feed reading and feed producing software adheres strictly to the RSS and Atom specifications, nor to the recommended practices for the use of them. Yeah, right. I doubt that comes as a surprise to any of you. Perhaps the best way to convince software vendors to...
[read more]

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...
[read more]

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...
[read more]

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...
[read more]

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...
[read more]

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...
[read more]

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...
[read more]