Do gophers make good stuffing?
More hubbub about OPML. More people getting excited about a way to express things being pushed by a guy with a lot of enthusiasm and a following. But, XOXO offers all the expressive bang for your buck that OPML offers, but with less crud. There are more tools using XOXO than OPML, right now.
The pervasive deployment of this format is so widespread that it's boring—and sometimes I think that's why OPML gets interest: That is, because it presents as novel and is presented by a guy with the energy and interest to evangelize. HTML's what we're all already soaking in, so why talk about that?
I'd seriously be working on an XOXO-based outliner of my own, if I wasn't wholly tied up with a dayjob and writing. On the other end of things, I think some very cool things could happen if we had a Google or a Technorati start harvesting <ul> and <ol> tags from the general HTML population in order to give some sort of tangible reward for all those sidebar link lists people have been using in their blog templates for years.
We're all still waiting for the full arrival of Gopher NG.
Archived Comments
Isn't Google Sets already a working example of Google harvesting <ul> and <ol> tags from the general HTML?
Oh yeah! I forgot about Google Sets.
I'm not sure I agree about there be more tools for XOXO, esp if you focus on finished packages usable by non-techies.
Dave, having provided a good-quality weblog authoring tool and aggregator on the same integrated platform, is in a position to leverage new ideas more easily than everyone making their own little custom tools that never get integrated easily into WordPress or Bloglines.
Or am I missing something?
Bill, maybe for tools Les is referring to every single (X)HTML editor ;-)
Hmm, that Dave has those tools to build on must be useful, but I'm sure there are equivalents in the rest of the open source world. But it is interesting that Dave has this stack of (moderately) his own making: XML/RPC, OPML, RSS 2.0, Frontier/Manilla and whatever its scripting language is called. So in a way every one of his new developments is an addition to his own world, before it's an addition to the world at large. I could imagine that being pretty motivational.
Dunno, or maybe it's simply the time and enthusiasm bit that makes the difference. Like Les I've got plenty in my in-tray already, and when I've got time of my own making a decent standards-based outliner is low on the list, even though it'd be very nice to have.