Metametametadata: A Public Service Announcement

February 03, 2004

A Public Service Announcement

From the "I really don't have enough ways to waste my time" newsdesk.

--Some websites/blogs that I follow and an introduction to RSS.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is metadata scheme that defines a standard way to format the contents of a website or weblog (using xml) so that any number of different programs can access and understand this content. When RSS is universally adopted by the publishers of websites and weblogs, a program that can read RSS will be able to find the content of any site/log, get that content and republish it however it wants.

Programs that read RSS (called syndicators or aggregators) come in the usual two flavors. They are either web-based and client-based. The difference is just in the display medium. Web-based programs transform the xml into html. Client programs have their own graphical-user-interface(GUI), into which they plug the xml content.

Most well-run blogs (including this one) offer an RSS version of their content. To see this blog's RSS, just click on the link "Syndicate this Site (XML)". If you look at the rdf for this weblog, the rest of my website will start to make more sense. I'm applying xml to format the display of information, in addition to its intended use to format the organization of information. You can make your own decision as to how successful I am.

Once you install a syndicator, or sign up online for a web-based aggregator, then all you have to do is travel once to all the blogs you want to follow (including this one) and gather the http addresses for the RSS xml (you can cut and paste this from the address line). Then whenever you run the syndicator it will read these files (which are automatically updated by each blog's content management system) and prepare a list of the current entries/articles.

In the future when we all have mulitple personality disorder and our own reality tv show, everyone will be able to speak the Advanced Really-simple Syndicated Expression language (ARSE). Implants will enhance our ability to code our thoughts in ARSE, allowing us to publish our unvarnished (or varnished) mental states (with video!) straight to the infernet where we will all use our ability to speak ARSE to aggregate each others thoughts by sorting through the noise on the radiation band specifically designated for mass telepathic communications.

We're talking everyone knowing what everyone else knows in real-time, the collective subconscious, learning through osmosis.

Were all gonna be syndicated, baby.

In the meantime, here are some aggregators that will have to do. I like Amphetadesk.

--In the newly established Metametadata tradition, the following are not links to the actual aggregators, but links to lists of links to the aggregators (you know, for context). Some of the links are other blogs that you may want to aggregate. Isn't aggregating fun!