microformats and the future of syndication
DESCRIPTION
Apr. 23, 2006. A talk given at the CM Pros Summit in San Francisco, CA in connection with the Gilbane conference on content management. This talk discusses RSS and it's limitations, explains microformats such as hCalendar and hCard and why they are beneficial for providing structured data about events and contacts. It covers several applications of microformats (upcoming.org, meetup.com, flock.com) and demonstrates how support for microformats can be added to blogging tools such as Wordpress and CMSes such as Plone.TRANSCRIPT
www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06)
AdaptiveWave
Microformats andThe Future of Syndication
Nate AuneAdaptiveWave, LLC
CM Pros Summit, San FranciscoApr. 23, 2006
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Agenda
• Introduction
• Applications
• CMSes
• Questions
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Nate Aune• Founder & Chief Technologist, AdaptiveWave, LLC.
• B.A. Computer Science & Music Minor, Pacific Lutheran University (1991-94), Berklee College of Music (1997-99)
• Boston Plone Users Group (Founder)
• Plone Foundation (Member)
• Content Management Professionals (Member)
• Frequent Speaker at non-profit and technology conferences
• Grassroots Use of Technology ‘05/06, Plone Symposium ‘05/06, EuroPython 2005, Plone Conference 2005
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
AdaptiveWave, LLC.• Hosted content management solutions (on-demand Plone)
• Other Services
• Content Management Systems consulting
• Intranet / Knowledge Management / Document Management
• Development, training, support, hosting
• Company
• Offices in Boston, Sacramento and Canada
• international network of partners
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Content is king• Content published to website
• must visit website (limited audience)
• Content published as RSS feed can be:
• syndicated to other websites
• viewed in RSS reader / aggregator
• pushed to mobile devices
• sent to email inbox
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
RSS lessons
• Content wants to be free
• Presentation is less important than substance
• Really Simple Syndication really is simple
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Limitations of RSS• Limited metadata
• only Title, description, URL
• No way to give the data meaning
• what kind of item is this?
• a link is a link is a link
• No way to integrate this data into my existing tools (Bookmarks, Addressbook, Calendar)
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Example: event listing
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Syndicating events• Using RSS feed
• provides title, description and url
• but not the critical info such as:
• date / time
• location
• important metadata is:
• embedded in the description
• not easily parseable by tools
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Microformats intro• Microformats solve a common problem:
• data in HTML is easily understood by humans but difficult for tools to parse
• Microformats are:
• based on open standards
• a way to structure data in an XHTML page
• structured so that data can be easily parsed by tools
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Building blocks of microformats
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Concrete example:What a human sees...
The next CM Pros Summit will be held on April 23-24, at Sheraton Palace Hotel, 2 Montgomery St. San Francisco, CA 94105
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
What a tool sees...The next <span class=”vevent”>
<a class=”url” href=”http://www.cmprofessionals.org”> <span class=”summary”>CM Pros Summit</span></a> will be held on <abbr class=”dtstart” title=”20060423T1300”>April 23</abbr>-<abbr class=”dtend” title=” 20060423T1900”>24</abbr>, at <span class=”location”>Sheraton Palace Hotel, 2 Montgomery St. San Francisco, CA 94105</span>
</span>
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Structured datahCalendar microformat• Highlighted CSS classes identify this data as:
• belonging to hCalendar microformat
• intentionally similar to the iCalendar format
• allow easy conversion between the two
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Conversion
• Convert pages with microformatted data to other popular formats
• hCalendar -> iCalendar
• hCard -> vCard
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Interoperability
• Can then be imported into:
• familiar desktop apps
• Outlook, iCal, Address Book
• emerging web-based services
• Google calendar
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
hCard microformat
• Represents a person or organization
• Specify relationship to another person using XFN (XHTML Friends Network)
• Easy conversion to vCard for import into desktop apps
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
My hCard
<div class="vcard"> <a class="email fn" href="mailto:[email protected]">Nate Aune</a> <div class="tel">+1-617-820-5113</div> <div class="title">Chief Technologist</div> <div class=”org”>AdaptiveWave, LLC.</div></div>
Make your own hCard at http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Example hCard
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
hCard converted to vCard
www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06)
AdaptiveWave
ApplicationsHow microformats are being used
Flock, Meetup.com, Upcoming.org, Kritx, SimplyHired
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Flock: Emerging browser• Auto-detect microformats on a webpage
• Utilize structured data to aggregate and contextualize favorite content:
• events
• people
• reviews
• multimedia: music, video, photos
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Who’s using microformats?• Meetup.com - hCalendar
• Yahoo
• Upcoming.org - hCalendar
• yahoo.co.uk - hReview
• Microsoft
• LiveClipboard - hCard and hCalendar
• Eventful.com / EVDB - 100,000 events/venues
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Beyond technology companies
• Avon.com
• 40,000+ agents - contact info as hCards
• University of Bath
• thousands of contacts
• SimplyHired
• Using hResume to aggregate job seekers’ resumes
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Benefits of microformats• hCard - peer to peer contact sharing
• hCalendar - peer to peer event subscribing
• As with RSS, this depends on:
• Publishing tools (CMSes?)
• and Aggregating tools
• Addressbook and Calendar apps
www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06)
AdaptiveWave
Integration with CMSesA look at Wordpress and Plone
www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06)
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Structured blogging• Normal blog post
• no structured data
• Structured blog post
• machine readable format
• other services can understand it
• web services
• search engines
• aggregators
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Wordpress• Structured Blogging plug-in for Wordpress
• Lets you make structured posts about:
• events
• reviews
• audio/video
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Structured Blogging Benefits
• Give bloggers tools to create & syndicate stuctured info such as events and reviews
• Leverages the decentralized nature of blogs
• Aggregators: Exposes data in blogs to aggregators such as edgeio.com
• Web services: add your friend’s calendar entries to your datebook
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Plone• content management system built on top of
Zope and written in Python
• open source (GPL license)
• used by NASA, Motorola, Nokia, HP, Disney, Creative Commons, FSF, Oxfam
• uses templating language called ZPT (Zope Page Templates)
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
hCalendar support in Plone• Only had to modify two files:
• events listing templatefolder_listing.pt
• event view templateevent_view.pt
• All done at the XHTML level
• No low level coding necessary
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
hCard support in Plone
• Only two files to modify:
• Member listing template member_search_results.pt
• Author profile page author.cpt
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Microformats summary• solve a specific problem
• start as simple as possible
• design for humans first, machines second
• reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards (i.e. iCalendar, vCard)
• modularity / embeddability
• enable and encourage decentralized development, content, services
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
Don’t be a beached seal
Use microformats!
www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06)
AdaptiveWave
Thanks!
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
More info / credits• Microformats - http://www.microformats.org
• Structured Blogging - http://www.structuredblogging.org
• Tantek Celik - presentation on Microformats http://tantek.com/presentations/2006/03/microformats-sxsw/ http://tantek.com/presentations/2005/12/syndicate-microformats/
• RSS Networks for Learning and Innovationhttp://www.ottergroup.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/16/1233232.html
• Converters (hCard to vCard, hCalendar to iCal)
• suda.co.uk/projects/X2V/
• feeds.technorati.com/events/ and feeds.technorati.com/contacts/
•
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
AdaptiveWave
This presentation is archived at:
http://www.jazkarta.com/presentations/microformats.pdf