a fresh blog andr3 . net

Yesterday was RSS Awareness Day and I forget to mention it here. Apparently we're supposed to give a push forward to RSS, make even more people aware of this centre piece of the Web as it stands today. So here goes my share, even if belated by one day.

The Video

If you don't know what RSS is, you probably haven't watched this yet. Please, do so now.

↑ Commoncraft: RSS in Plain English

More?

If you didn't get it, don't feel bad. Watch it again or if you don't understand english very well, back in the day (august 2005) I wrote a little piece about them in Portuguese. Introdução às Feeds.

Also, over at the Mobifeeds blog, I wrote Publishers who don’t understand the medium they’re in. Go have a look, if you're publishing feeds somewhere.

RSS, Atom or RDF?

Technically speaking, why do we refer to all feeds as RSS? There are other formats like Atom and RDF that, albeit offering more features in terms of describing pieces of information, are more complex. They are still used, but over time, RSS became synonym for "feeds". Thus, the KISS theory proves itself yet again. RSS established itself by its simplicity.

As a send-off, I'd like to share a recent quote that stroke home. Specially, given the slow pace of this blog.

I don't get why people unsubscribe from feeds that aren't updated often... that's when you SHOULD be subscribing so you don't miss the gems.

-- Simon Willison on twitter

I'm glad some of you are still around, thanks to this beautiful piece of the puzzle.

Happy RSS Awareness Day, everyone. Belatedly.

In CSS3 Selectors Working Draft

Editors

Daniel Glazman (Invited Expert)

Tantek Çelik (Invited Expert)

Ian Hickson (Google)

Peter Linss (former editor, Netscape/AOL)

John Williams (former editor, Quark, Inc.)

I've been meaning to write this post ever since Alcides wrote his post: Sorry Tumbleloggers. There, he wrote about the tumblelogs, which Wikipedia says is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging.

From where I'm standing there's a fine line between tumblelogs and lifestreams. Lifestreams are aimed at aggregating all content one generates throughout the web... while tumblelogs are aimed at gathering interesting stuff we find around the web.

My point is... since the dawn of time blogging that people have been spitting posts left and right and patterns are easily identified. Let's give it a shot...

• Link or Quick posts - those posts which are basically a list of interesting links.
• Listening to... - It was/is very common to find posts in which the blogger states what he/she was listening to while writing the post.
• Video posts - recommending one or more videos
• Pic Posts - showing off some impressive photo
• Quick updates (microblogging) - those one liners cursing at the skies for some odd reason a.k.a. ranting
• and so on...

The funny thing is... nowadays we can find one or more services on the web that provide a much more specific context - not to mention extra functionality on their own websites - than a generic blog post. Let's have a look...

• Link posts - del.icio.us (or my favorite, Ma.gnolia)
• Listening to... - last.fm
• Video Posts - Youtube's Favorite Videos example
• Pic Posts - Flickr
• Quick Updates (microblogging) - twitter/jaiku/pownce

As you can see, we are past the point were we must confine ourselves to a generic format, a blog post.

Put your content where it best fits!

Subscribing

Of course people don't want to subscribe to 10x different feeds just to know what you're up to. So, instead, setup a lifestream so that people who want to follow you everywhere, can.

One thing to bear in mind is, feeds have different paces. You don't want each song you listen to be published as one RSS item. That's what God invented daily digests for. Feeds with such high paced content, like last.fm and maybe ma.gnolia/del.icio.us should be bundled up so that the reader isn't overwhelmed with more than he/she can handle.

I, for one, wish I could follow some of you via a lifestream. Instead of watching 4 feeds for my pal Billy aka Pedro Eugénio (blog in Portuguese, blog in English, twitter, ma.noglia, etc.), it would be cool to have only one entry on my feed reader for him. From the top of my head, I can think of a dozen other people I'd be interested in subscribing to their lifestream. Of course others, like the great Zeldman, I'm fine having only his blog aggregated.

So, Alcides, it's ok for people to find other places to generate content (including tumblr), as long as that doesn't involve me having to add yet another feed to my reader.

Why don't you get a lifestream?

You think people don't care? You could be surprised. I'm very picky with my platforms, which explains why I've written two blogging platforms instead of using Wordpress. Thus, it won't come as a surprise that I've written a simple PHP5 platform to grab your content and show it like this (you can see it live at andr3.net/stream).

I have plans to distribute this openly, but it still lacks a touch here and there. If you're willing to try it out, beta test it if you will, contact me (sorry, no contact form for andr3.net yet). Requires PHP5 and MySQL 4.x.

If you don't want to run it on your own server, try lifestrea.ms. (You need an invite code first.)

Now we're talking. This is what I was hoping Open Social to be...

But I'll let Brad give you the introduction...

So that is what he's been up to! (makes sense)

Give the demos a try.

This is yet another great push forward to microformats (xfn) and the FOAF project.

It's been a long while since I've shared my views on a movie (last one was Narnia), but if you'll indulge me, there's somethings I need to say about this movie. If you want to have a look at the spoilers, bump up the text size a notch or two and don't read this inside feedreaders. Some of them strip down style information. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The buzz, the hype

Last summer, there was a huge buzz online about this weird, eerie trailer that had preceded the Transformers movie. The trailer surfaced online a bit later and everywhere around the web you could see people speculating about it. That's where this whole hype started. And rightly so... what's better than to have every thrill-seeking movie-goer biting their nails off for six long months?

The juice

I'll only scratch the surface to avoid spoilers, but I'd like you all to know that the best thing about Cloverfield is not what it does... it's what it doesn't do. That would be explaining. Just like you wouldn't know much if you were caught in the middle of all that, the screenplay isn't guided so that the viewer understands what is happening, where the threat came from and what exactly are the military trying to do to protect us. None of the usual clichés of disaster movies.

You're not watching a movie, you're experiencing the disaster with them. specially if the theatre has loud speakers and make the room rattle a bit.

Oh! Speaking of that... I don't believe this movie would be half of what it is if it weren't for the sound. It was astonishingly good. <tiny spoilers!> The monster muffled stumps when they're in the subway, the military sending a rain of rockets towards the monster, helicopters flying over their heads, a tank being squashed like a bug... I could go on. Seriously. </tiny spoilers!> It all made a lot of sense when I noticed during the closing credits that the sound effects were done by Skywalker Sound, a LucasFilms company. That explained a lot.

I have to say, before watching this, I thought it would be Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project. Now, I know, it's Children of Men (character pov) meets Godzilla (monster) meets 9/11 (mass hysteria).

<tiny spoiler!> Also, to conclude, it was remarkable how they found a way of telling a love story without much whining. By letting us know that the documentary was being taped over some kind of romantic memories, throughout the movie they throw us quick glimpses at their previous lives. Remarkable touch, I tell you, remarkable. </tiny spoiler!>

My final advice is, if you can handle great suspense, sudden rushes of adrenaline and loud bangs, you're in for a treat. Not only is it scary, it's clever too. You might want to stick around for the closing credits. It features an amazing overture performed by the Bratislava Orchestra, which compensates for the required lack of musical score. And if you can, stick around to the very very end. ;)

(pardon me for the string of negativity)

As soon as I started reading Aaron Gustafson's article on ALA #251 Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility and IE8 I knew this wasn't just another "best practice article". This was going to throw the entire web-constructing community into an uproar.

Ever since I got into the web standards groove, circa 2003, I remember finding experts blogs (for example simplebits, mezzoblue, meyerweb, etc.) great places to find insightful comments on best practices and real world code, embedded on their own sites. A List Apart, a magazine, has always been a the beacon of excellency throughout the years. That was why today's issue has created - and will continue to create - such an echo!

Aaron announces a feature that will be a part of IE8 called version targeting that basically allows developers to "freeze" their websites in a given version of a given browser - they expect to have other vendors implement this. This was driven by the fact that many websites "broke" when IE7 saw the light of day. Not because IE7 was worse, but because websites were custom-made for IE6, which included several bugs. When these were corrected in IE7, websites broke.

Now, Microsoft doesn't want the same to happen again with IE8, so their "vision" is to give the option to the developer to choose which render engine his/her website should be rendered with. By spitting an HTTP header (or meta tag) with X-UA-Compatible: IE=7, IE8 will load the IE7 engine and ignore the improvements made in the newest version of their browser. At least this way, websites won't break.

Despite some criticism, it's basically the reverse of the hated browser-sniffing of the late 90s. It's actually forcing the browser to adapt to the code in the page and not the other way around. Despite all this, I honestly think that's not the answer. Freezing browser engines in time cannot be the answer.

For the sake of keeping my sanity, I won't even touch the subject of IE8 behaving like IE7 if you don't opt-in using the HTTP header or the meta tag, I'll let you follow that link and read what Jeremy had to say about that. Please, do.

I just think we could use what we have instead of creating more mechanisms that will generate more entropy. We already have Conditional Comments and to be honest, out in the field, at work, I've frequently felt we could use the same mechanism for other browsers (Firefox, Opera...). Why not use that for fixing the "broken" websites by newer versions? Use a stylesheet specific for IE8 and fix your mess! Pronto.

I just can't get behind this concept. But I'm open to discussion, if you think you can persuade me, please do so in the comments. Even if Eric Meyer comes out in Aaron's defense, I see this as a huge blow to the web standards effort. It's like saying ok, we lost the war, let's just find a way of saving everyone some time and be done with it. It's making each render engine their own little standard and allowing lazy developers to get away with it. Is this the web we want for our children??

Also, I can't see a future where every browser out there has to carry their old render engines on their backs.

Can you?

Further Reading

If you want to know more, read this:

• Microsoft's Version Targeting Proposal @ Webstandards.org
• IE Lock-in @ Annevankesteren.nl
• Compatibility and IE8 @ IEBlog

First of all, have yourself a wonderful 2008! Now, with that out of the way, let's get down to the matter at hand...

Last week Alex Faaborg broke the news to the Microformats-Discuss mailing list:

In order to maintain the current ship schedule for Firefox 3, we won't be exposing microformatted content in
the user interface.

—Alex Faaborg

*gasp*

He went on to say, though, that Firefox 3 will have a Microformats API implemented by Michael Kaply, who brought us the beloved Operator extension. For more on the mentioned API, you can take a peek at the Draft document.

<rant>Lots of people were/are expecting Firefox 3 to be the release where Microformats made the jump to an even bigger audience, so I'll try to be fair here; This sucks. Bad. I know it's not the end of the world, as there will be further releases and Alex said they wouldn' take as long as milestone 3, but after seeing some of the suggestions presented to the team (via uf-discuss), I was really anxious to see any of it coming in a browser out-of-the-box, because believe me, it makes a huge difference having to install an add-on.</rant>

Still, there's tremendous work being done to make FF3 a hell of a release, so don't give up on the Fox just yet. I know I won't.

They even got Mr. Hicks working on a new logo, again! Yay!

Just in case you've been living under a rock, I'll break the news. Opera announced last week that they have submitted a complaint to the European Comission against the ever-so-fashionable-to-hate Microsoft.

The reason? Internet Explorer aka the Devil's Offspring: Microsoft's monopolist strategy to limit the users' choices and also their Web Standards support... or lack thereof.

Opera requests the Commission to implement two remedies to Microsoft’s abusive actions. First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.

Read the full press release.

In short, they want Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or supply alternative browsers. They also want Microsoft to put their money where their mouth is and start supporting standards, for real. I, for one, am still waiting on a fully XHTML capable Internet Explorer. Maybe in March.

Whoa! Can't go wrong there, can you? Who doesn't love to see any given corporation sticking up to Microsoft?

Well, it's not that simple.

No matter how much you curse at Microsoft every time you bump into a bug in IE. Neither does it matter how much you support webstandards. I'm not questioning those things. Despite all that, this action cannot be taken lightly. Just like Andy Clarke points out in his CSS Unworking Group, Opera and Microsoft are both in the CSS Working Group, which is currently working on the CSS3 specification. Are things going to be affected by the outcome of this legal action? Who knows... And are the browser vendors the people we want in charge of building the next batch of standards for our dear web? Makes you think, doesn't it?

Furthermore, the whole press release stinks of a cheap publicity stunt. Right on the first paragraph they call themselves the only company that can put the Web on any device. Not only that, they also sprinkled the press release page with links to their products. To top it off, the "About Opera" text they have been including in their previous Press Releases has been re-done.

They have every right to brag. They have, indeed, been doing remarkable work in bringing the web to mobile devices and game consoles. Well done there... but those are just some of the reasons why this whole thing makes me suspicious.

As far as the complaint goes, I still think an operating system without a browser is incomplete, specially nowadays. Either they start carrying binary versions of other browsers in the OS installation disk -- which would get stale very fast -- or they force the user to download the latest versions, which adds a requirement to have internet access before having a browser.

Regardless of the technicalities... I'd like to leave a question for you all to think about.

If the lack of choice in Windows environments are annoying them so much, why aren't they filing the same complaint, only targeting everyone's beloved Apple?

Last post on the subject of Codebits, I promise.

I'll dive right in. Here's a basic overview of what I did over there.

First, I'll leave you a quick index, to help you navigate through the post: Mobitags — GeoTourism — Estante.
(be careful when using inside an RSS reader, it will take you to my website)

As soon as I sat down in front of my trusty laptop (soon to be replaced, sorry dude) I went through my notes to see what idea I would pick up first. I had scribbled down on my moleskine a couple of ideas I had had through the previous week. First up? A very simple script that grabbed a feed from a user of SAPO Tags (sort of del.icio.us or ma.gnolia, the latter being my favorite) and display it using QR codes. Thus came to be...

Mobitags!

I'm not very imaginative when it comes to names, I know.

You can see it working here: http://codebits.andr3.net/mobitags/.

Here's a screenshot:

Click for a bigger version. Use it with a Phone + Kawya Reader to see it action.

read on about: SAPO Codebits: it's all about the code!

It was 2.5 days of pure geekness. The event ended yesterday, but I couldn't come straight to the computer and blog because, well, I only ended up sleeping for 1 or 2 hours. I must admit, the practice given by the University projects, all-nighters pulled until the deadline of many a project came in handy yesterday.

As an Internet event, it's safe to say it was the best ever. There's more to us - Portuguese - than just plain gamers that fill LAN Parties ever since the 90s. We saw many projects presented at a fast pace (90seconds), with some unavoidable technical glitches.

But before writing about what I did, let me give you my overview of the event. I'll try to keep it short.

read on about: SAPO Codebits ended, echoes will continue