Web Things, by Mark Baker

Wow, congrats Tim and Lauren! To think that we gave up on the idea of having any more at the combined age of 72! 8-O
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“Instead, standards such as Plain Old XML (POX) over HTTP and Representational State Transfer (REST) are asserting themselves as legitimate and very credible ways of delivering on the value proposition of Web services”. Who knew?! 8-)
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“I don’t know about you, but I am rearing my children to be prepared for a world that is not centered on America. Are you?”
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Damn, DanC is one productive mofo.
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Tres cool demo from Microsoft, as described on Ray Ozzie’s blog;

But each site is still in many ways like a standalone application. Data inside of one site is contained within a silo. Sure, we can cut and paste text string fragments from here to there, but the excitement on the web these days is all about “structured data” such as Contacts and Profiles, Events and Calendars, and Shopping Carts and Receipts, etc. And in most cases, the structured form of this data, which could be externalized as an XML item or a microformat, generally isn’t. It’s trapped inside the page, relegated to a pretty rendering. So, where’s the clipboard of the web?

If you take a look at what gets put in your clipboard on a “copy/cut” action, you see this;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><liveClipboard version="1.0"
xmlns:lc="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/live"><lc:format type="hCard">
%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22vcard%22%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22n%22%3E%3C
span%20class%3D%22given-name%22%3EMatt%3C/span%3E%20%3Cspan%20
class%3D%22family-name%22%3EAugustine%3C/span%3E%3C/div%3E%3Ca%20
class%3D%22email%22%20href%3D%22matta@microsoft.com%22
%3Ematta@microsoft.com%3C/a%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22tel%22%3E%3C
span%20class%3D%22value%22%3E425%20707%207716%3C/span%3E
%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22adr%22%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D
%22type%22%3EWork%3C/span%3E%3A%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22street-address%22
%3E1%20Microsoft%20Way%3C/div%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22locality%22
%3ERedmond%3C/span%3E%20%3Cspan%20class%3D%22region%22%3EWA%3C
/span%3E%20%3Cspan%20class%3D%22postal-code%22%3E98052%3C/span
%3E%20%3Cabbr%20class%3D%22type%22%20title%3D%22dom%22%3EUSA%3C
/abbr%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E
</lc:format></liveClipboard>

I wonder what purpose is served by the proprietary XML wrapper? The “type” doesn’t need to be specified. I suppose the relevant value of the HTML profile should be imported if present, but that could also be done by prepending the relevant snippet from the HEAD, no?

Tags: microformats

Justsystem acquires XMetal. Woot!
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Via Jim Webber, a really nice description of the differences between RPC and state transfer approaches using a uniform interface. “The message on the channel no longer represents an instruction but rather an event, a notification that something happened”
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Cutest video evar!
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Once again, I’m co-chairing, with Jeremy Carroll the developer’s track of the WWW2006 conference. Well, actually, if you’ve been paying close attention you’d recognize that last year (and in previous years) it wasn’t a track, it was instead a separate day. This year though, it’s a track like any other, with sessions on each day of the conference.

Believe it or not, there’s a significant enough of a difference between organizing a track and organizing a day, that we’ve had some troubles. Thankfully though, we’ve finally made our way past them and have just posted the Call for Papers. Please consider submitting. The deadline is March 19th.

Tags: web, www, microformats, semanticweb, mobile, webservices.

“Now, at last, we have tangible evidence of how useful Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP find it [WS-I] as a place to work together”. Ouch! Did I mentioned that WSI is my local waste disposal outfit? 8-)
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