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I tried to find additional info about location embedding but haven't succeeded so far. From the wikipedia page, the XML code includes url type="http" location="uk" preference="90">http://www.example2.com/example.ex t /url, the part I don't get, as a geospatial professional (see sig), is why the location is encoded as the country code. What are the reasons? Does it make more sense to encode location with a simple lat-lon values (similar to, say, the georss standard do). Some countries being so large, I fail to see the country as a good indicator of distance between computers. What did I got wrong?

I don't know the answer, but I can direct you to OpenLayers.org and to the Open Source Geospatial foundation to look for answers. I'm interested to the answer because we want to geolocate visitors for slashcode itself, and I copied your question on Slashgeo.org, which may help attract more answers to this /. story.

While your at it, GeoRSS is also open and, in my opinion, the future of RSS. Learn more about it here.

The future of RSS is in GeoRSS and the Sensor Web. For an unknown reason to me, /. never had a story specifically on GeoRSS. Here's some stories taken from my sig's website...

First, the after years of work, the GeoRSS version 1.0 was released recently. Then you can read this excellent article on GeoRSS. Everybody is jumping on the GeoRSS bandwagon, even Microsoft and the huge blogging world.

The story is misleading. I feel like the submitter does not know what GeoRSS is. Which reminds me, there has never been any story on slashdot regarding GeoRSS at all, which surprises me (and yes, I did submit some but they all got refused :-)

The first place to start is on georss.org, but you can also read the buzzy OGC press release. From which you'll learn: "A number of organizations have already implemented GeoRSS in open source and commercial mapping, blogging and other software products. Yahoo and Microsoft have expressed interest. Raj Singh, Director of OGC's Interoperability Programs and one of the original team that created GeoRSS explains why, "We designed GeoRSS to be easily implemented in software. Once GeoRSS is part of an application, it allows just about anyone to point a GeoRSS enabled feed at GeoRSS enabled software and instantly make a map.""

But this doesn't tell you what GeoRSS is and why the story's summary is misleading. You can read this article about GeoRSS and read more about the georss standard woes here.

GeoRSS is geospatially-aware RSS. There is a lot of applications, see the links above, like geotagging news items or sensors or podcasts or... I haven't seen any georss in the links above, only mashups and funny pictures. (maybe I should look harder? :-)

Some comments here wonder what value RSS provides? RSS offers much more than syndicated news feeds, it helps control your information overload. Two examples follow. First, Dr. Dobbs article shows how to build your own RSS with Ruby to track information when certain events occur. Dave Thomas writes artcles and books about Ruby. He says "You can use RSS to collect and summarize information from your projects and from your life" in the Dr. Dobbs article.

Second, Yahoo maps documentation says, "The XML used by the Yahoo! Maps Simple API is based on geoRSS 2.0." Here is another link about GeoRSS and worldKit, a map built using shockwave flash. You publish your map content, and GeoRSS for every point you want on the map.

IMHO, GeoRSS is becoming a de facto standard, becoming part of many blogs, and content managment systems, like Plone. and, BTW, Good luck with all your adventures this New Year.

But...why? One of the great things about the internet is that, as a general rule, the geographical location of data is completely irrelevant.

If you go on the georss.org website, you'll understand there's plenty of potential applications. One simple example, you may want to tie news story to a place in order to get BBC news only for stories "located in" ro tied to southeast asia.

From their website: Perhaps all earthquake-related items within 20 miles of your home--delivered to your phone, or a feed of traffic accident items along your daily commute? Once RSS feeds contain geographic location, applications like these and more will be possible.

Not the first time I post about it, but I really see this as the future of RSS: GeoRSS. And you know what, if one company can push the georss standard to general use, yup, it's Google.

What's georss? From slashgisrs: A team is working on Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. From the overview: "GeoRSS is simple proposal for RSS feeds to also be described by location or Geotagged. We standardize the way in which "where" is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. [...] it should serve as an easy-to-use geotagging language that is brief and simple with useful defaults but extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated formats like the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) GML (Geography Markup Language)".

The Open Geospatial Consortium is really an important body in the geospatial community. They're the one whom just made WMS an ISO Standard.

I only quickly browsed MS's site, but I don't think they implemented something similar to georss.org.

From slashgisrs: A team is working on Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. From the overview: "GeoRSS is simple proposal for RSS feeds to also be described by location or Geotagged. We standardize the way in which "where" is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. [...] it should serve as an easy-to-use geotagging language that is brief and simple with useful defaults but extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated formats like the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) GML (Geography Markup Language)".

GeoRSS is really an interesting innovation from the actual concept of RSS.