The "Structured Blogging Initiative" is an attempt to jump-start the "semantic web," the idea of giving deeper meaning to the Internet advocated by World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee. By incorporating descriptive information into the code of web pages, laypeople will be able to designate their content as a movie review, an event posting, or an item available for sale.
The idea is to spark massive amounts of web pages using these formats so that companies and applications can be formed to make use of the information; for instance, an alternative to eBay that collects listings from blogs rather than requiring sellers to sell within the confines of its marketplace.
"If you've got something to sell, you put that on your own blog," said Bob Wyman, CTO of PubSub, which has spearheaded the initiative. "What we're looking for is a world in which you own your own data."
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PubSub's main project is a kind of search engine that focuses on the newest information on the Internet, letting users subscribe to keywords they're interested in so they can stay on top of the information.
PubSub hired Marc Canter of Broadband Mechanics, who founded MacroMind, to develop plug-ins for the widely used blogging platforms WordPress, Movable Type, and Drupal.
The idea is to spark massive amounts of web pages using these formats so that companies and applications can be formed to make use of the information; for instance, an alternative to eBay that collects listings from blogs rather than requiring sellers to sell within the confines of its marketplace.
"If you've got something to sell, you put that on your own blog," said Bob Wyman, CTO of PubSub, which has spearheaded the initiative. "What we're looking for is a world in which you own your own data."
...
PubSub's main project is a kind of search engine that focuses on the newest information on the Internet, letting users subscribe to keywords they're interested in so they can stay on top of the information.
PubSub hired Marc Canter of Broadband Mechanics, who founded MacroMind, to develop plug-ins for the widely used blogging platforms WordPress, Movable Type, and Drupal.
It seems this is another variation in the age-old question of pre-determined vs freely assigned indexing:
Figuring Out Categories
Though Mr. Wyman blasted the “walled garden” approach of today’s web—where local restaurant reviews, for instance, are replicated on multiple sites but can’t be viewed together—he said he supported Google’s new database project, Google Base.
Google Base has been criticized for trying to collect information in a closed system. However, the free database could provide a way for users and companies to get by without paying for or building a database of their own, said Mr. Wyman.
But how will Google’s categories be reconciled with Structured Blogging’s, or anyone else’s for that matter? What if one user’s movie reviews are on a scale of four stars, and another user’s on a scale of 10?
Mr. Wyman insists that some core categories and templates will emerge. He is working with Google to make sure the “schemas” are aligned.
But while top-down categories undoubtedly make things easier to combine, they are at odds with the emerging bottom-up categorization systems like tagging (user-generated labels created in free association with an object like a web page or a photo).
The interplay between categorization systems is likely to be increasingly important as online content proliferates.
Though Mr. Wyman blasted the “walled garden” approach of today’s web—where local restaurant reviews, for instance, are replicated on multiple sites but can’t be viewed together—he said he supported Google’s new database project, Google Base.
Google Base has been criticized for trying to collect information in a closed system. However, the free database could provide a way for users and companies to get by without paying for or building a database of their own, said Mr. Wyman.
But how will Google’s categories be reconciled with Structured Blogging’s, or anyone else’s for that matter? What if one user’s movie reviews are on a scale of four stars, and another user’s on a scale of 10?
Mr. Wyman insists that some core categories and templates will emerge. He is working with Google to make sure the “schemas” are aligned.
But while top-down categories undoubtedly make things easier to combine, they are at odds with the emerging bottom-up categorization systems like tagging (user-generated labels created in free association with an object like a web page or a photo).
The interplay between categorization systems is likely to be increasingly important as online content proliferates.
