myelin: blogging ecosystem - linking out

to Google. Typically these operators modify the search in some way, or even tell Google to do a totally different type of search. For instance, "link:" is a special operator, and the query [link:www.google.com] doesn't do a normal search but instead finds all web pages that have links to www.google.com.

, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing purposes. Equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.

Whether we like it or not Google has become the Microsoft of search — in the sense that they now have a monopoly on the business. Who would even bother to compete at this point? Not even Microsoft.

It's a good thing that Google remains a caring steward of the Internet superstructure they provide for us all. But it's not good for all of us to have this much dependency on one company, no matter how nice that company is.

Although we regard it that way in a de facto sense, what Google does isn't Net infrastructure, which is stuff 1) Nobody owns, 2) Everybody can use, and 3) Anybody can improve. They only meet the second criterion.

So let's take some of the infrastructural burden off Google, and start thinking about the infrastructural ideals we've ignored while we've watched Google do such a good job in their absence.

The Net currently conceives its directory no deeper than the top DNS level. Everything to the right of that first / is a free-for-all. All of us have our own schemas, and most of the interesting ones change all the time. So do the contents at each directory level. What's in each directory should be knowable and searchable, if the author wants it to be — and not knowable or searchable if the author doesn't want it to be.

Think of the Net's complete directory as a dynamic public library that is deeply part of the Net's infrastructure.

I want a public card catalog that knows the schema of this site, and is informed (by me, automatically) when I post this item, and that reflects the new facts immediately and automatically. Then I want it to automatically notify search engines like Google, which can then go crawl and archive the contents for listing in their own privately owned but publicly exposed readers guides.

As for the licensing issues, I think this system needs to respect intentions expressed by authors through tools like those recommended by Creative Commons.

This all seems very do-able to me.

And now I want Craig, who has forgotten more about directory issues than I'll ever know, to come in and tell me how it will or won't work. (I've gotta draw him back into blogging somehow.)

The rest of you, too. What do you think?

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

This Web Service takes a phrase from the plays of William Shakespeare and returns the associated speech, speaker, and play. [New Web Services from SalCentral]

Scott Loftesness: Perhaps we should start a new "movement": the Weblog Search Services Protocol — WSSP? Let's face reality: in the weblog community, search is much more important than identity.

I think a new protocol is a good idea. I should add that when I called for building out the Net's directory, I wasn't just thinking about Weblogs. I was thinking about the absence of more complete directory services for the Net itself. Bigger issue.

Scott also says Google needs to add a Weblogs tab (with up to the minute results) to the newly introduced Google News service. I have mixed feelings about that. Blogs are journals, but I'm not sure they're news sources in the conventional sense that Google seems to be assuming with its service. I recently suggested to Google that they add an online publication to their list of 4000+ sources. A human wrote back with a polite but negative response that suggested that the system wouldn't work if it assumed too wide a definition of what a news outlet is. Maybe that definition excludes anything with an inlet as well as an outlet, or that produces continuous unfinished work.

The human/non-human side of the question was visited by Steve Outing of the Poynter Institute and Rex Hammock back in September, when Google News was still new.

I think blogs are too personal, too conversational, too interactive — too human — to be considered "outlets" for anything. The journals we call "blogs" and the journals we call "publications" are very different in kind. Blogs are totally native to the world of ends we call the Web. Publications are native to the physical world. They are adapted to the Web, but not native to it. One way they don't adapt is in the permanent nature of their output. Once published, it's done. Unlike publications, blogs are subject to subsequent editing and re-editing. They also welcome edits by others. The are alive in the sense that they are, like their authors, unfinished.

That said, blogs still belong on the library shelves of the Net's directory, and of the readers guides provided by the likes of Google.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]