Well, I've updated the Info Bite List specification again, based partly on some of the issues mentioned at the end of a recent posting here. Today, I'll talk about the changes and why I made them as a round-about way of discussing issues facing all RSS-like formats.

First, I changed the default mode for content...
[read more]

The electronic crystal ball has shown me two words: "silent fuse". I see nothing. I see something. The future becomes clear.

French and Swiss astronomers claim to have found the most distant galaxy ever seen, 13.23 billion light years from earth. The light from this galaxy is said to have been emitted when the universe...
[read more]

One of the challenges facing users of RSS and Atom feeds is finding feeds worth subscribing to. If you're lucky enough to be looking for a feed on a subject addressed by a major news organization, and you can find a major news organization that publishes newsfeeds, life's not so bad (except that it's still...
[read more]

The electronic crystal ball has shown me two words: "agrarian daughter". I see an oriental countryside. I see a carrot. I see a ballot. The future becomes clear.

Park Geun-hye, daughter of former military leader Park Chung-hee has been elected leader of the Grand National Party, South Korea's main opposition party in an attempt to...
[read more]

Yesterday, Israel assassinated one of the top leaders of Hamas. Hamas has promised to retaliate. If they do, Israel will probably retaliate. Then Hamas will retaliate, etc. ad nauseum. While I can't say that I think Israel has handled the situation with the Palestinians as well as they could have, the indiscriminate killing killings perpetrated...
[read more]

One source of email addresses for spammers is email messages that have been sent to groups or forwarded from one person to another. Today, I'll talk about how to avoid giving out your friends' email addresses when you email them.

We'll start with forwarding. When someone sends you a message and you forward it to...
[read more]

I've written before about how to market newsfeeds to consumers. Today, I'll discuss marketing newsfeeds to webmasters.

To illustrate some of the motivations and challenges relevant to marketing to webmasters, I'll relate my entry into the newsfeed world. I took my first steps into the world of RSS about a year and a half ago....
[read more]

The electronic crystal ball has shown me two words: "Athens environment". I see the Olympic flame. I see a police officer. I see a duck. The future becomes clear.

To allay any fears that a police officer might use the Olympic flame to roast a duck, let me first say that I do not foresee...
[read more]

The electronic crystal ball has shown me two words: "declaration sufficiently". I see a country. I see an island. I see a dissertation. The future becomes clear.

Taiwan's recent presidential election, where for the first time voters chose a candidate in favor of formal independence from China over a member of the Kuomintang, which favors...
[read more]

One problem that can plague tools for building or processing any standardized type of document, whether it be RSS, Atom, Info Bite List, web pages, etc., is the question of what to do with invalid documents. Because so many people learn by imitation, the internet is a fertile breeding ground for incorrectly coded documents. What...
[read more]