APML 1.0 Initial Draft

Cross-posted from the Particls blog.

The APML community has been itching for the APML 1.0 Specification for a little while now, and Paul, our resident genius; has spec’d out the initial draft for community discussion.  You can find the intial draft, at http://groups.google.com/group/apml-public/web/apml-1-0-draft-1

From the Public Google Group:

This comes with a very large fore note: This is a very early draft only, and nothing is set in stone. Given that the community is obviously itching to start seeing APML 1.0 progress, I felt that it would be an appropriate time to release this and assist in structuring the discussion. I intend to follow this with a few more emails that detail individual sections I believe need substantial addressing.

APML version 1.0 proposes a number of substantial changes over the previous 0.6 version, with some of the changes including, but not limited to;

  • The Addition of an ‘Entity’ node to describe (People, Businesses and other non-metaphysical interests.
  • The Addition of a ‘Location’ node to outline places of interest.
  • The inclusion of an rdf:about node attribute to allow for richer RDF-type ontologies without reducing the “simple” nature of APML.

APML has come a long way since its inital conception a little over 2 years ago.  And I am very proud to be involved with a community of people all dedicated to creating an open format to give attention back to the people who own it.

The APML Workgroup is committed to ratifying this standard as soon as public commenting is evalutated, and is tasked to provide a smooth transition to the new version; so please feel free to head over to the public Google Group and put in your 2c.

What's My Server Doing Anyway?

Cross-posted from the Particls blog.

While sitting at my workstation, working away (and listening to Alex Barnett’s PodCast on Attention and OPML) – I realized that my system uptime screensaver for my Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Server was doing many things I want to know about, behind an otherwise black screensaver.

It got me thinking another PERFECT job for Touchstone.

There are RSS, ATOM feeds and other things going on (such as the current state of my Azureus downloads, sever up time and load etc) and Touchstone provides the ultimate engine to bring these together as a screensaver visualisation!

I can imagine, in the near future, LCD screens scattered around a house, streaming attention information to a person based on their current physical location (if I’m in the kitchen I might want to see feeds related to food and current events, while in my living room, my wall is showing me productivity and work related items).

With the ever decreasing price of LCDs and the power of Touchstone, the on-going effect of an attention engine could be greater then we ever imagined.

I just did something very stupid but Chris still loves me

Cross-posted from the Particls blog.

I just opened a .vb file from another project, and upon closing the window (and subsequently not saving) I realised all too late, that Visual Studio had in fact oped the file inside the Touchstone project. You can probably guess the outcome. So off I go again, recoding the complete structure of the BagItAndTagItParser class – be assured that I wont be opening any “stray” .vb files for the rest of the day! Chris is ok with this though, because we just implimented the first ticker system and its actually reasonably functional!

It’s interesting, starting this project has opened my eyes to a whole subculture of RSS, which I was previously unaware of. I think that reading the excellent intellect of Nick (from FeedDemon) and others regarding some sort of solution to the growing ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is inspired.
With the rapid expansion of content sources, the more ways we can think of to manage this content without hindering productivity (I am a pragmatist after all) is where we need to redouble our efforts. This is the philosophy behind Touchstone – and I’m coding as fast as I can. Aside from the heavy setback today, I should have the Bag it and Tag It Parser complete before the coding marathon tonight. If you feel inspired enough to chat with us through comments on this blog, please do – we like to feel popular.