This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Phillip Pearson. Original Post: Structured blogging, so far Feed Title: Second p0st Feed URL: http://www.myelin.co.nz/post/rss.xml Feed Description: Tech notes and web hackery from the guy that brought you bzero, Python Community Server, the Blogging Ecosystem and the Internet Topic Exchange Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Phillip Pearson Latest Posts From Second p0st

"Structured blogging" is what people are calling the ongoing effort to make weblog content along specific lines machine readable and aggregable.

"Aggregation" in its current form means bringing a bunch of posts together from different places and showing them in a convenient way - usually either on one page ("Dave Winer" style), with three panes (like an e-mail client - many desktop aggregators do this) or two panes ("Bloglines" style).

Structured blogging is about letting the aggregator understand what you are talking about, and present things more intelligently. For example if you blog an event notification - maybe you're talking about a concert next week - it might be shown on a calendar along with everyone else's events. Or if you review something, it can be shown in context. I run a coffee review site, and you might be able to aggregate my reviews with some other local ones. Or perhaps my site could aggregate your reviews, from your blog, and you could see everyone's coffee reviews in one place.

Or perhaps your digital lifestyle aggregator could aggregate all the reviews of your favourite cafes? Maybe those within walking distance, or on the way to work -- and show them to you on Monday morning, right when you need coffee the most? How about that?

I could implement that in my site - if I could get everyone to leave their reviews with me. But maybe you don't want to do that: maybe you want to review things on your site, so they become part of your portfolio rather than mine. And if I can aggregate them still, then I can still offer the features, while you get the credit you deserve.

A lot of people are thinking about structured blogging - and how to do it. So of course there's a bunch of proposed standards.

Some time in 2004, Alf Eaton put out RVW so you could represent reviews in RSS.

This year, PubSub introduced StructuredBlogging.org, which came with a Wordpress plugin that would output a different XML format ("x-wpsb") for both events and reviews.

And then there's the "microformats" - hReview and hCalendar.

So far I like hReview the best - it's nice to use, and you can use it both in your content and your feed. It's still very new though, so not widely adopted.

And then today Russell Beattie came out with this: Blogging Evolved: Application Aggregation. Suggesting a standard "general field" extension to RSS or whatever, so you can produce stuff that an aggregator with no knowledge of the format can consume. Interesting, but hReview/hCalendar let you do this and make it human-readable too, which seems nicer to me at this point.

Some other references:

Seb Paquet: Towards structured blogging (March 2003; soon after he designed and I built the Topic Exchange).

Bob Wyman: When the Gray Web meets up with Structured Blogging and Prospective Search (May 2005; talking about how the 'you keep your data' idea can kill centralised servers).

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