Google, Search Tools and Difficulties of Studying Blogosphere Stories.
News on Google
Microdoc News has been studying and following the way blogosphere stories develop. Now, in review of the stories run on Microdoc News, we began studying what bloggers are saying about blogosphere stories. The problem we faced was how we could collect and organize more than 13,000 different blogger posts on this issue. Through this activity we highlight some of the difficulties of searching with Google. Essentially Google Inc's strategy of delivering relevant webpages for a particular search works when seeking a few webpages as a result, but when seeking thousands of web pages, our search queries look like contorted and abstract hieroglyphics and then we are unsure that we have actually located those we are seeking. [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines] 
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Keeping Up With New Web Stuff.
InfoSeeker News
Everyday there is new stuff being added to the web. Often, you cannot telll what is new when you do a Google Search. However, with some guidance of people who are constantly gleaning new stuff, you can find interesting sites easily. Most bloggers add their own posts each day. As bloggers we do not often lift our eyes to see what other sites are being added each day. Here is a list of sites I have found that are really good to keep abreast of what new sites are being added. [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines] 
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Tools reveal secret life of documents. Technology that tracks the changes made to documents is becoming much more widely used. [BBC News | Technology | World Edition] 
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Daniel Berlinger nails it twenty-five different ways. [Scripting News] 
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Ein Jahrhundert Zeitgeschichte auf Film im Internet [heise online news] 
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Blogalia.com : Blogalia [Daypop Top 40] 
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"Leave RSS alone" [Daypop Top 40] 
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Use XML-RPC.

It was disheartening to learn (via Brent, via Dave) that Blogger is planning on moving away from XML-RPC in favor of SOAP:

We are moving away from XML-RPC. If you choose to take advantage of the capabilities of the new API, you will need to use SOAP instead of XML-RPC. This was a difficult decision (made collectively by the designers of Echo), because there is a lot of investment in XML-RPC in the blogging tool space, and it is great for getting things done quickly. But we felt the technical advantages offered by SOAP were worth the effort. [their emphasis]

Here's my take on what this means for Blogger developers:

1. Everyone who wants to talk to the new API will have to find or write a SOAP implementation that works in the development environment they're using for their application.
2. Applications will have to be adapted to call through the new interfaces using SOAP rather than XML-RPC
3. Lots of interop testing will have to be done. This takes lots of time, which is expensive. I know from personal experience.
4. The capabilities (and usability) of available SOAP toolkits may vary widely. Whether the limitations of various SOAP toolkits will become apparent in the (N)Echo API remains to be seen, but my past experience tells me that there's often a lot more work involved in calling APIs using SOAP than might be apparent on the surface.
5. For the unfortuante developers who'll have to come up with their own SOAP implementation, there's an enormous barrier to entry, which will be especially difficult if not impossible for independent developers -- who if I understand correctly were supposed to be the very developers that the (N)Echo effort is trying to help the most.
6. Users will have to upgrade their applications to the new versions. In all likelihood, there will be bugs and some users will lose data. Who will take the blame for this? The developers.

Will it be worth it? Will what we have at the end of this process be better than what we already have? I don't have a crystal ball, but my fear is that we developers will have a large amount of work to do if we want to support this decision, and that the benefit to our users will be negligable.

A few other comments...

There are four reasons cited in the (N)Echo Wiki for not using XML-RPC. I'll go through them one-by-one:

1. "Serious historical confusion about whether string types supported encodings other than just ASCII."
   
   As noted in the Wiki, this has been resolved. As best I can tell, it was a non-issue from the beginning, and as on 6/30/03 Dave updated the XML-RPC spec to clarify that XML-RPC supports any string encoding that's valid XML.
   
   
2. "Doesn't support SSL. (HTTPS is not identified as a valid transport mechanism in the spec)."
   
   Dave says in the Wiki, "if you asked me if you can use HTTPS to transport XML-RPC I would say yes. HTTPS is HTTP." See also this message on the XML-RPC discussion group.
   
   
3. "Doesn't support timezones."
   
   As I noted in my comment in the Wiki, there's no reason that this problem isn't really easy to solve. Just express dates in GMT.
   
   
4. The fourth reason has been deleted from the Wiki since I started writing this. Basically it said that if the (N)Echo API were to send posts back and forth as XML, then they would have to be entity-enocded if it were to use XML-RPC, and that this isn't an issue with SOAP.
   
   I don't think the reasoning here is totally sound, which is probably why it was removed from the page. If SOAP is used for passing posts back and forth as XML, then they'd still have to be encoded. As I recall, SOAP does have a provision for transporting XML documents, but I'd venture to guess that support for this feature is not available in many of the current implementations, and even then, there are probably huge interop issues looming, since it's one of the more advanced features of the SOAP specification.

Evan cites Ben Trott's "Why we need Echo" reasoning for not using XML-RPC. Ben has updated the page since it was originally posted, with a note that the internationalization issue has been resolved -- basically the same resolution now listed in the Wiki's first reason for not using XML-RPC. As far as I can tell, this is Evan's only reason for using SOAP over XML-RPC, and it's a red herring.

Lastly, Evan notes parenthetically that the decision to use SOAP over XML-RPC was "made collectively by the designers of Echo". As far as I can tell, no such consensus has yet been reached, and SOAP isn't even the only alternative to XML-RPC. To say now that Blogger will favor SOAP over XML-RPC is at least jumping the gun.

I wonder what other motivations are behind this statement. We know that Google has SOAP server-side tools, since the GoogleAPI uses SOAP. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Google's engineers have done a lot of fine-tuning on their SOAP implementation. Could this have had any influence on Blogger's decision to move to SOAP?

[Jake's Radio 'Blog] 
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On Social Software. A must read by Clay on how blogs and wikis differ as tools for getting things done, using the Echo wiki as an ex... [thomas n. burg | randgänge] 
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Textile: Wiki-style Moblog Editor?.

Suman Park [Korean] wrote today that Wiki-style editing used in Textile might be a great way to write blogs, particularly for moblogging.  While I am too lazy to remember or look up those Wiki-style formatting special characters, I think it does make good sense for moblogging.  Now mobloggers can be really bold.  Maybe they are doing this already.  By the way, Texism blog looks good.  Classic use of whitespace.

[Don Park's Blog] 
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AdSense Trial Update #1.

After twenty hours of AdSense trial, the ads have gotten over 1000 impressions and almost 20 clicks.  Hmm.  Isn't 1.6% clickthrough rate just a little on the high side?  I thought it was around 1%.

My AdSelect idea will probably result in much higher-clickthrough than AdSense, particularly if greater flexibility in layout and personal comment via tooltip is allowed.  I am now thinking about making it happen, maybe co-op style or through a partnership with Google or DoubleClick.

AdSelect can become more of an endorsement network and product quality filter.  Another crazy angle is that it has the potential to turn into an identity/reputation network.  How about this weird piece: You Are What You Recommend?  Reputation network is, in essence, distribution of reputation.  But reputation must radiate from somewhere, meaning you need a starting point.  Interesting thoughts.  Need more thoughts though.

Another thought.  AdSense ads don't appear in RSS feeds because it is just plain irritating when ads follow you around.  If AdSelect thing works out, it might make AdSelect RSS feeds (a channel of just ads for products I endorse) worth subscribing to so people can learn about what new products I like.

These kind of ideas are what I was after when I started my AdSense trial.  Good ideas are linked by dumb ideas.

[Don Park's Blog] 
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Japanese company trademarks "Blog". A Japanese company filed for a trademark on the word "Blog" on March 6 and received it from the Japanese trademark office on June 28. This trademark would be utterly bogus in the US, but I don't know enough about Japanese trademark law to figure out if it's enforceable there.

Link

Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 
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Scott McCloud launches online micropayment comic. Zed sez, "For years, Scott McCloud has been lamenting the lack of a good micropayment system for ecommerce, which could make paid web comics viable. Well, he's finally giving it a shot, releasing a comic (the first chapter of what will be a 3 chapter work) for $.25 through BitPass, a service by which you purchase a credit of at least $3 by Paypal or credit card, from which micropayments can be deducted. This could be huge."

Link

Discuss

(Thanks, Zed!) [Boing Boing Blog] 
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Validator documentation. It seems the W3C have made some changes to their beta validator's XML output option. The bad news is that this has (temporarily) broken my web service interface, but the good news is that the feature is now documented on the W3C's site. Hopefully I'll get a chance to fix the web service interface in the near future, but it will remain a toy rather... [Artima Web Services Buzz] 
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RESTLog. Joe Gregorio's RESTLog is a fascinating piece of technology and a great example of the RESTian model of web service in action. Everything is built on XML and HTTP - new blog entries are POSTed to the index page as RSS 2.0 item elements, edits are done with the little-used HTTP PUT method and the DELETE method can be used to delete items. Content... [Artima Web Services Buzz] 
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The Way Forward. Dave Shea: The Way Forward: HTML will die. Today's internet is obsolete, and anyone still coding in HTML 4 is planning the obsolescence of their own code. The big picture says that if, and this is a big if, but if we can move to an XML-based internet, then revisions to markup languages, existing and new, don't require browser updates. Once we... [Artima Web Buzz] 
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obscure, unKnown & little-shown Movie Database. unknown movies ~ database of the obscure, unknown & little-shown movies. [MetaFilter] 
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Micropayments may be here.. Bitpass.com: A micropayment service for content providers. Many many worthy sites have been lost because they could not afford to continue, even though users would have been happy to pay for their service. Unfortunately, a system has not been in place to service the small transactions (paying fifty cents for a ten cent transaction is the opposite of making money). Enter Bitpass. Facilitating transactions as little as one cent, maybe online artists, cartoonists, pundits, humorists, etc, can start making money. [MetaFilter] 
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Beautiful, open source creativity at levitated.net. Walking Things is an environment that generates small, walking computational organisms. "Each walking thing is built up from totally random conditions. Appearance, behavior, and walking characteristics are all assigned from a range enabling effective, functional mobility. Click on a walking thing to permutate its characteristics".

Just one of the very many wonderful (open source) creations at levitated.net (more bugs with bling here). Kick off your shoes, fill your coffee cup or wine glass, and dip in. [MetaFilter] 
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Welcome back, Jorn. Welcome back, Jorn -- The host of RobotWisdom and coiner of "weblog" has been on an unexplained break since mid-May, leaving some to wonder if it was for good. But he's back. Now if he would drop the Iraq-protest-black background so we could actually read it . . . [MetaFilter] 
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Celebrity caricatures by Piven. Piven World - a fun flash portfolio of celebrity caricatures and portraits. I like his witty technique of incorporating "defining" objects. (via oink!) [MetaFilter] 
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Howard Sherman: "About.com, a network of more than 400 sites and one of the largest producers of original content on the Web, just relaunched those sites as Weblogs... There will be some, undoubtedly, who will look upon it as another attempt by big media to co-opt the best form of individual expression on the Web..."

[Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
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Case Study: Triple Point Technology, Inc.. via Column Two: News Gator has published a case study of the implementation of RSS at Triple Point, a commodity trading company. To quote: Triple Point started with a simple goal: "The idea is to free some of our content, expose it via [Channel 'blog_network'] 
4:29:32 AM      comment []   trackback []