Comments on: A SSAPI Christmas Wish

by: Mark Woodman

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 03:59:29 +0000

Randy points out that NewsGator, BlogLines and Yahoo have proprietary APIs for this functionality.

But, no standard.

Without a standard, can we hope to get most readers to implement a bunch of proprietary APIs?

by: Mark Woodman

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 18:30:43 +0000

John Scoble was a slavery abolitionist in the 1850’s and as such does not have a blog. Robert Scoble is a Microsoft blogger and the victim of a typo. Fixed!

by: Randy Charles Morin

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 17:31:51 +0000

Who is John Scoble?

by: Mark Woodman

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 06:09:47 +0000

Stephen,

I should have brought up why OPML doesn’t do the trick; thanks for mentioning it. Aside from being a problematic format, OPML is just a means of listing feeds in an organized manner. OPML is about format, not function. (See Kevin Burton’s discussion on the pitfalls of trying to manage OPML via an API.)

There is no defined protocol or API for adding/updating/deleting feeds from a canonical list. And there is no means of tracking which items have been read within a given feed. These functional points exist inside every reader — what I’m suggesting is a standard way to do this outside the reader. Think IMAP, but for feeds.

by: Kenneth

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 16:57:02 +0000

I’d like to wish for a Coffee Drink Size Standard - CDSS. I mean, is a Grande bigger than a Large? Where does Venti fit in? I doubt we’ll get the big boys of coffee to get together on this.

Another aside, OPML has it’s own set of problems

by: Stephen

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 04:34:29 +0000

Would you be surprised to know that you are using the API at the moment. No need for it to be ‘invented’.

It is called OPML and you can access your own by looking at http://inkblots.markwoodman.com/wp-links-opml.php

No need for URL’s go and search the web for OPML.

Stephen