OPML Reading/Listening/Viewing ‘Lists’ and ‘Trees’ = ‘Treedia’

OPML webDave on Scripting News and Mike over on Techcrunch post their views of OPML used for ‘reading lists’.

This is an important discussion and one close my heart. I commented over on Dave’s (wordpress) blog , but I thought I’d add to it over here:

Re: OPML lists and ‘trees’ – etc expect some along these lines soon:

The system developed behind podcast.com enables just that, it’s just that naturally with podcast.com we are only interested in feeds with audio or video enclosures.

So, podcast.com is a ‘client’ of this larger system which will be able to support all types of ‘types’ – all supporting OPML inclusion.

I don’t think you should call them ‘lists’ – I think ‘trees’ is more descriptive. ‘Reading trees’. People can either ‘climb’ up then to find the ‘fruit’ (content) they want, or they could wait for the most popular to drop into their lap. Also through looking through ‘leaves’ (tags) they can be sure of following the right branches, as they ‘climb’ up the tree, deep and deeper into the directory/tree. (’directree’? ;) )

OPML is the tree
FEEDS are the vines
TAGS are the leaves
ITEMS/ENCLOSURES are the fruit.

The coolest thing about OPML inclusion, is you could think of it like climbing up a tree, going along a branch, and then ‘zap’, you’re in another tree. Like magic. Painless. Rewarding. ;)

Telepordata?

Semantics. Taxonomy. Folksonomy.

Now that’s what I call a ’social media network’ ;)

I hope to be able to let some users in to try out the system in the next 4 weeks.

Then people could create something like : http://my.podcast.com/kosso , which is my ‘listening tree’/ podcast folders/ ‘tree of sound’

One reason why I think there are more OPML ‘lists’ than ‘trees’ out there is that there are too few tools out there to effectively manage an OPML file. Your apps have been the best to date (once we got the rss attributes sorted)

I mean managing OPML folders/nodes effectively, over import/export of ‘flat’ lists. So many systems eith dont ‘do’ folders or destroy them on import/export.

Also, I think we really need to evangelise the concept of ‘OPML subscription’ .
OPML files are so often used as static files to import/export bunches of feeds. It is indeed great for backup in that sense. But I believe that ‘OPML Subscription CONNECTS’ all these trees/branches out there. When one branch changes on one tree – if there is an ‘inclusion’ (think of it like a shortcut/symbolic link to a folder) then the other will be able to reflect that if one was to climb that branch.

The trees are ALIVE! So subscribe to them! Watch them grow ;) Feed them, prune them and ‘graft’ ‘cuttings’ to their branches.

We like to call it ‘treedia‘ 🙂

Clearly for this to work, we also need well defined standards to make sure the data out there is well-formed – or we’re screwed ;) but let’s not make the same mistake the web browsers did, by just displaying html if it was broken or not.

I feel like doing another podcast ;)

Forums, Blogs, Threads, Comments… Structure!

Over on the Web2.0 Show blog, Darren Stuart asks ‘Are Blogs The New Forums?’

“Lets look at the function of a forum.

Users post messages for discussion. Users post messages discussing other messages. These discussions are normally in categorised in to sub forums.

Now lets look at the function of a Blog

A Blogger posts something interesting. Visitors post comments on the Blogger’s post. The Blogger’s posts are normally categorised and tagged.

As you can see the core functions of both Blogs and forums are almost identical.”

I totally agree! I too love forums. From usenet groups to phpBB. IMHO, the thread structure of forums are perfect for almost all communication and publication online.

Now pause for a moment to think and have a look at an OPML file 🙂

I often say that the only web software we (almost) ever needed was the remarkably influential ‘WWWBoard’ perl script, from a place called ‘Matt’s Script Archive‘. (I’m amazed it’s still there! – looking different though 😉 )I cut my coding teeth on that lot, years ago. Even hacked it make a flat-file content management system too 😉 WWWBoard was one of the earliest examples of an ‘open-source’ script that I ever encountered. Matt had other scripts too, for voting and the like. All very useful stuff. Until I found PHP 😉

Any post of anything online has certain basic attributes – a title, body text, author and date.

Having a post exist within the structure of a ‘thread’ – ‘a reply to reply’ or ‘a sub category of a sub category’ – the content immediately has context, reference, ‘a place’ – based on the details of its ‘parent’. It could be a comment to a post, a post on a forum, a reply to that post, a new user submitted script in code documenation, a comment on a comment on an area of a photo, a threaded discussion of experiences at a geographic location. Anything!

I’m actually working on something interesting in this area (I think!) – based around the upgrade to podcast.com which I am (still!) working on.

Let me say it again : It’s “OPML PLUS RSS TO THE POWER OF USERS!” 🙂

Do you catch my drift? 😉 Look up the tree!

Update: It looks like Dave Winer gets it too! !