RE: [syndication] Is a Feed the right place for your Data?

["Danny Ayers" <danny666@virgilio.it>]

> I'll probably keep pushing this notion wherever it comes up (so forgive
> me if you've seen this before), but these syndication formats make good
> encapsulation formats, but they start to seem cumbersome because we only
> think about content that is tied down to an URL.  If the (micro)content
> isn't tied down having microfeeds like these starts to make more sense:
> give each chunk of content an URN that globally identifies it,
> encapsulate it in a good syndication format, and drop it into a network
> that can return content by URN alone (where the URN doesn't depend on
> DNS for locating a resource).  I feel like BitTorrent is a starting
> point for such a network -- though probably the URN scheme would need to
> be changed.

RSS 1.0 syndication gives each item a URI. URLs are just so last century!

See http://www.w3.org/Addressing/

> When we're talking about syndication I think it's ironic that everything
> syndicated is pegged down to somebody's web server and subject to the
> problems of DNS, bandwidth, and personal whim.  Truly syndicate the
> content and we'll have something worth getting worked up about.

Certainly DNS has major drawbacks. Fortunately the move to URIs liberates
the content and logic of the web from specific protocols, so current work
isn't necessarily tied to DNS. Bandwidth problems may well be eased by
BitTorrent-style techniques, though this is probably orthogonal to the
naming issues. Personal whim is another matter...

Whatever, there's plenty to get worked up about ;-)

Cheers,
Danny.