Here’s Dave Winer spreading the OPML word to Matt, Tony, Eleanor and Josh at the TechCrunch scene last night.

Dave discussed the difference between what he called ‘time based’ subscribed to content, versus data which more or less doesn’t change very often - like the Planets.

Suscribed to stuff is all about RSS, while static data is OPML - or at least snapshots of slowly changing data.

I myself think of OPML as ’structured data’ - and we’re making sure that all our micro-content is available in OPML and can use OPML to move it around. It’s yet another feature of the compatiblity box known as Structured Blogging.

Let’s say a large legacy site - like ‘All Consuming’ or ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ wanted to contirbute their ‘Reviews’ to the world? How would they do that?

Since all the Reviews have happened already - just providing an RSS feed (of stuff moving forward) ain’t gonna be enough. What are you gonna do - download the entire database of Reviews?

There not only have to be core dumps or files full of these Reviews - but there also have to be APis to reach into the databases and retrieve these Reviews. The world is NOT just search engines! We want all that structured data available via APIs - too!

So we’ll be working on standardizing on what the attributes should be in an OPML file for micro-content, so we can use OPML to export ‘All Consuming’s’ Reviews - and put them:

- onto a shared public server

- into one’s ’search engine’

- or even import them into a test app or service I was working on - for my college programming course.

Anyway I’ve always thought of OPML as a structured data file format - so it just seems perfect for me for micro-content.

We then went to dinner with Dave and Matt and others and I was struck with the fact that we’re (BBM) developing products for BOTH OPML and Wordpress. So it was coolio.

I was sort of the like the developer and here I was - schmoozing with the platform vendors. Over spicey Dan Dan noodles.

Dave told me I’d get everything I want.

I smiled.

BTW Lisa and I were the only ones wearing costumes. “Come on people, it’s Hallwoeen - this is California for Christ Sakes!”

I’ll have the full official Casanova costume next week.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 11:12 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.