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Google Finally Moves Toward RSS Standard
declan writes "My News.com colleague Evan Hansen just got his hands on an internal email thread revealing that Google is planning to embrace RSS. Evan's co-authored News.com article quotes from the email (sent to Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt) confirming that Google is rethinking only supporting Atom. Slashdot covered Google's purchase of Pyra Labs and Blogger.com/Blogspot.com last year that made it a fan of the Atom standard. Does this news mean that RSS is now viewed as out of Dave Winer's control? Will RSS and Atom finally converge?"
...it'd become an RFC at some point.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
RSS and Atom files provide news updates from a website in a simple form for your computer. You read these files in a program called an aggregator, which collects news from various websites and provides it to you in a simple form.
the IETF just approved a new WG whose charter says:
The working group will use experience gained with RSS (variably used as a name by itself and as an acronym for "RDF Site Summary", "Rich Site Summary", or "Really Simple Syndication") as the basis for a standards-track document specifying the model, syntax, and feed format.
The name of the group is ATOMPUB, so you see where the rest of the experience being considered comes from.
Why did atom even come into existance? Was not RSS already established, or is there some kind of deficiancy in RSS that i'm missing here?
Will RSS and Atom finally converge?
HOPE SO! Blogging has moved so fast that the tangled web of RSS protocols is confusing to RSS publishers and users alike.
Far more important than their individual features would be a single standard, so that publi7shing tools could stop bothering about compatibility issues and get on with features people care about.
Only Google has the power to create an RSS standard. Google, you're our only hope!
If they do, then the [trekmode]Universe will come to an end![/trekmode]
Oh, wait, that's matter and antimatter. Never mind. False alarm. Boy, I'm embarrassed now.
Yeah, yeah, the story's about Google, but Slashdot's probably the second most popular website with an RSS feed, and it, um, sucks, to put it bluntly. It's updated infrequently, you're banned if you accidentally load it every 40 minutes instead of every hour, there's only one flat feed for all sections, and so on and so forth. Taco, can you fix your RSS? Setting a good example and all...heck, it's because of Slashdot that we have an additional RSS module!
Hopefully google will adopt RSS rather than Atom. I don't know why but I've always preferred RSS. Incase you are thinking WTF here are some links courtesy of Wikipedia:
RSS
Atom Note: These pages are a bit thin on detail but contain some useful links if you want to find out more
Microsoft, are you watching?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I do some website development and have actually gone out and looked for decent Atom newsfeeds just out of curiosity. I have never found any (yes I know how to use google, teoma, dogpile, etc...) worthwhile newsfeeds using this standard. Perhaps some of the readers have seen such feeds. I would be very interested to hear of good technical feeds using the Atom standard. Also why Atom? I might be ignorant of what makes Atom a good alternative, RSS seems to work well, but I am new to the scene maybe someone could enlighten me as to why we need the Atom standard.
AC
This is probably a good choice. I mean, the W3C uses RSS to syndicate their page (see the bottom).
As the state, RSS is based on RDF, which is an approved standard.
Based on the coverage at ZDNet, it seems that Yahoo! also goes RSS...
Why would the two merge when so many major players are leaning towards RSS already?
No, they're not "moving towards" an RSS standard. They're merely supporting RSS as well as Atom. Doesn't seem like they're moving towards anything, they're not moving away from Atom.
I've tried several of the clients and have tried to add as many news feeds as I could, but it all seems the same. Little content and just a link to a webpage. I could just go visit the webpage and see the same summaries.
I was expecting something like an AP newswire, with interesting stories from all over the world that I could not find on a standard website. If there's something I'm really missing here, then please let me know.
During the recent call for comments over changing the RSS 2.0 specification, Mark Pilgrim supplied a test case to show that it was a non-backwards-compatible change.
While Dave Winer is supposed to not control the RSS specification, he managed to delete Mark Pilgrim's comments as he has control over the server the comment system runs on.
Mark and Dave don't get on; that's no big secret. But Dave interfered with feedback because of his grudge against Mark. I don't think anybody should claim that RSS is not under Dave's control.
RSS isn't too bad if you ignore all the Dublin Core additions.
That's what an aggregator is for. The idea is that you subscribe to a bunch of feeds, and you are notified when a new story is published. It simply lets you handle more information sources in less time.
When google news first emerged I thought hey, I wish I could just get the headlines as links. Later after I discovered and starting heavily using RSS I e-mailed google and told them that. Then when googles blog came out I was suprised to see it was syndicated. But not with RSS, heck their blog was made with blogger. I expected more from great google. Maybe now they will actually give me my RSS world news headlines I've been waiting for. But hopefully they wont point to news sites that need registration :P
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
hey Google, how about creating a website that is standards compliant, before worrying about RSS feeds and minor sundries, good to see the W3C reccomendations and all that hard work in creating standards in the web browser are not going to waste.
why bother ? its not like it matters right ?
The RSS 2.0 specification is frozen and no new development is allowed under the RSS name. The specification states that any new development must happen in namespaces or in new specifications with new names. Funnily enough, when people actually do that (with Atom, and with "funky" feeds), they are still criticised for it by the people who wrote that part of the spec.
I'm a member of the RSS Advisory Board along with Dave Winer and several others. What do we have to do to convince people that it isn't controlled by Dave Winer or anyone else? Read the license for RSS 2.0. The specification is released under a Creative Commons license and no ownership is claimed of the format embodied by the specification.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
http://www.petitiononline.com/googhtml/petition.ht ml
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
RSS is winning. It doesn't matter if Atom is technically superior, or if hating Dave Winer is fun.
Atom is simply wasting space at this point. Sure, the RSS spec sucks. I can't even tell you exactly what an RSS feed is supposed to look like or what all the different versions are. And Dave Winer can't write a well-defined spec to save his life (apparently doesn't understand ISO8601 dates, or Unicode, or that XML defaults to UTF-8). (He views this as a feature, not a bug.)
But in a few minutes I can write a program that generates an RSS feed that works in most aggregators. I don't understand all the vagueries of Atom, and I'm not going to bother learning. I have enough trouble trying to get non-geeks to understand RSS and how it works.
The next step is a big company like Microsoft or Google adopting RSS and accurately defining their own version of it to clear up any remaining confusion. Neither Winer nor Ruby nor Pilgrim have the power to set a standard like that. For instance, we need an easy way to click on an RSS link and have it come up in the aggregator. Radio Userland does it a certain way, NetNewsWire does it another way.
RSS is going to win, if you like it or not.
I can appreciate what the Atom folks are doing, because I like to masturbate too.
Pretty handy.
This discussion of Google using RSS for Blogger is all well and good, but what about the broader question of integrating RSS into their mainstream search services? By comparison, Feedster searches RSS, and provides its results in RSS. But to get an RSS feed for a Google search you need to use the 3rd party GoogleAlert. Not to mention that Google recently shut down a third party news-to-RSS service. Aren't the guys from the Googleplex supposed to have technological vision or something?
The "RSS 2.0 format is by far the most widely used format. There was a time when it looked like things would coalesce, but then things started to fragment, largely due to Google," Winer said. "RSS deserves Google's respect, and it's not getting it."
Ah yes. Let's translate the first sentence, "RSS 2.0 format is by far the most widely used format. There was a time when it looked like things would go my way, but then people started to use a competing syndication system, largely due to Google"
The line about RSS deserving respect from anyone much less Google just cracks me up. Regardless of which is "better," Google made a business decision to focus on one. RSS deserves nothing from Google or anyone else. It's a specification for crying out loud.
Keeping this in mind, let's now translate the second sentence, "I deserve Google's respect, and I'm not getting it."
That sounds about right. If you are so tied to your creation that you cannot seperate yourself from it then you need take a step back, take a deep breath, and avoid making decisions for your baby until it, and you, have matured.
-Adam
There are some really nice/creative feeds out there that push the limits of RSS.
Amazon for example has a TON of feeds showing what the current top sellers are in virtually every category. Those at the top of the list are the top sellers and so forth.
That's one interesting way of imbedding information into a channel without actually adding textual information. I could forsee a script that takes that (easily parsable) data and turns it into a regularly updated graph. The same thing could be done with screen scraping and the HTML page, but RSS is so much easier to deal with.
We have the local dining services create the week's menu as an RSS text file. It is a simple 10 minute cut and paste job and it appears in our portal almost as soon as it is updated... no more emails telling what the week's menu is and no need having to visit (yet another) web site for the info. I just log into my account (something I do daily) and it is right there.
NASA's earth observatory has a really cool RSS news feed. What I like about their feed is that the tiny (only allowed to be 144 pixel wide x 500 pixel high) image that is usually reserved for a site banner/icon has been co-opted as a snippet of their picture of the day. If you click on it, you are taken to the site with the full image.
I know of a couple of places that are starting to post team scores as rss feeds. I could forsee the ability to do play-by-plays with rss.
A lot of people are doing really cool things with RSS that are outside the bounds of simple headlines. You just have to think about them in a different way.
actually that's a great idea. A 500 LB gorilla like google could really serve to keep all the big players honest! Google has nothing to loose by adopting web standards and everything to gain. MS key bargining chip is OS integration...If Google tries to play in that space they will loose. They need to ensure they create their own space to play in. Open and vocal endorcement of W3C standards as well as implementing them to the fullest is one way google can keep the playing field level. Their Primary market is internet searching...not web services...but keeping MS from fragmenting that market is a very important goal. Even MS is not big enough to deliberately break Google in IE... the uproar would be huge!
Surprisingly, none of them are that great to use IMHO...
I like Amphetadesk myself though. It basically combines your feeds into a simple webpage and views on whatever browser/OS choice you use. (Well, Windows, MacOS and Linux at least)
That if you add a h to David's last name that his name aptly matches his behavior?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I am not a blogger but I have been a reader of weblogs for a while now, (I have used many aggregators and have settled on Bloglines a web-based aggregator that is awesome with a tabbing browser like Firefox.) I have been following the Atom/RSS dispute for a while but have never seen the answer to the following question: What does this syndication war mean to me as an end user?
A few others in this thread have asked a similar question but the answer always seems to do with how its beneficial to the blogger or content provider. Now this is important of course but as a geek I have learned to be wary of such arguments, the first time I fell for it I ended up with blinking text in my browser. Maybe I'm too cynical but I'm comfortable being cautious and indeed a little skeptical of the latest and greatest technological innovations.
That being said: What will Atom do for me, Joe Blogreader, that the defacto standard RSS does not? Feeds and aggregators have changed how I use the net, my bookmarks menu has shrunk significantly and I'm on fewer mailing lists. What does Atom have to offer ME that I should bug my content providers to offer Atom feeds in addition to or in place of RSS?
XML is a standard from the World Wide Web Consortium.
Some RFCs are standards published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Some are not.
Most of the standards document protocols of some sort. Some document tools used to describe protocols, and some of these are languages (ABNF, RPSL).
Some RFCs document protocols that use XML to represent their syntax.
Some of these RFCs are IETF standards.
As Tim Bray has pointed out, the RSS discussion has ended by rule of Godwin's Law. Dave was the first to bring up the Soup Nazi, and so he has therefore lost.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
my newsfeed site saves me a ton of time every day
check it out here: http://fooey.net/Newsfeeds.cfm
just one big page with all the news sites I like where i can see at a glance anything new that pops up
i'm currently working on making it more database driven so I can search for those rouge articles you can never seem to find
something like this one that i'm working on for fark: http://fooey.net/Farkives/
As I've said elsewhere: The difference between a completed technical standard placed under the Creative Commons and a truly open one is the difference between being allowed to scribble over the President's name in the newspaper and being able to vote for his opponent in the first place.
I could take the CC-licensed RSS spec and change it however I wanted, and it wouldn't help things one bit because it wouldn't be an accepted standard any further than my own hard drive. It would just be another incompatible spec calling itself RSS 2.0 that developers have to deal with.
RSS is being used as a way to broadcast a notification that something has changed. You post a new article to a site, and all the people who have subscribed to your RSS feed get notified.
But RSS is a polling mechanism.
I'd much rather see something like the IRC protocol or NNTP used, where the publisher posts one message and it propagages through a network of servers to everyone interested. The way it is now, if a million people subscribe to your RSS feed, that's a million aggregators polling every 15 minutes. Ouch.