Sunday, May 18, 2003

If you want to be in Google DaveNet: If you want to be in Google... [Scripting News] 1:18:03 PM  comment []       Technorati API 0.9 Technorati API 0.9 - first published May 12, 2003 I'm proud to announce the first public release of the Technorati API, the application programming interface to Technorati's weblog index and search engine. [Sifry's Alerts] Looks pretty simple to me. I find the following attribute or this variety of attribute interesting: "type: Set this to 'link' and you'll get the freshest 20 links to your target URL.  Set it to 'weblog' and you'll get a reverse blogroll - the last 20 blogs who linked to the target URL." I guess other types will be defined in the future.  The question is by who and what matter? We really do need to move beyond the weblog or just decide to make it the root of all types of memes (text, photo, audio, video, etc.) and define varieties of it. It's like the weblog field or idea is stuck in the mud.  This is not because of a lack of good ideas and possibilities.  Just the opposite.  I usually try to stay out of the politics of it all.  But, it is becoming evident more and more everyday that the field needs something or some group to push it out.  Hopefully it's not too late. There needs to be a official roadmap of where the weblog field is going.  Also a official method needs to be implemented that enables real constructive feedback into the official weblog roadmap without being a member of the so called A list or having the feedback somehow interpreted as being from the other camp or the group that creates all noise and bad feelings. My comments should not be taken as a negative refection on the Technorati API (I actually think it is as great as the service) but on the whole "who decides what's important and what's not important in weblogging" discussion. H.G. 8:54:14 AM  comment []       Weblogs in Research Weblogs in Research - first posted Thursday, 15 May 2003 As I write this, we're seeing a burst of useful, practical innovation in the engineering practices that underpin our community's Web tools -- the things like Radio Userland, Technorati, Tinderbox, and NetNewsWire were use to keep in touch. I'd like to step back and show the non-technical audience what's going on, to the limited extent that I see it -- and to show why the digital arts must learn how to do this. This week, I'm in Maastricht at the wonderful Jan van Eyck Academie, an advanced school for the study of arts and theory, talking about Personal Publishing Pandemonium and participating in a roundtable on the nature of the book, where my talk is titled Not Chopped Trees. So, I'm even further from the center of things than usual; at least, this lends perspective. The core question is a very technical one, about the best way tools like Tinderbox should talk to Technorati, a service that keeps track of who is linking to your weblog. Sifry, the guy behind Technorati, added a new communication method early this week. Winer, the guy behind Radio Userland, said "hooray", and arranged for Radio Userland to use this new communication channel. But, he observed, this was harder to do than he thought was necessary. The difference of opinion was interesting to a bunch of people because it touches on two things we all suddenly need to do. Things that each of us has done, but that are still new enough that nobody is completely sure how to do them best. How should we best talk to Web servers when we're asking questions, not just fetching pages? Web servers let us do two things; we can GET something or we can PUT something. PUT was really intended, way back when the Web was first designed, for something else that never worked out, but the street finds a use for things. So, which should we use, and how? Nowadays, what we send to the Web server is often XML, and what we get back is bound to be XML. This has lots of advantages, but it also takes some work. One of the reasons Winer complained is that the new Technorati approach meant more work for him. So, we have lots of discussion amongst technical people all over the world this week on these two interlinked questions. Some of it shows up in weblogs. Lots of it happens over email. Still more, I'm sure, happens around water coolers. But a few years back, it would have been water coolers all the way down, and you wouldn't even know it was happening. ... [Mark Bernstein] 7:45:42 AM  comment []

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