Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled

eCommerce Microformats

CommerceNet and zLab have been thinking a lot recently about microformats in the context of e-Commerce. In back-and-forth discussions among (but not limited to) Marty, Allan, Ram, Joyce, Alex, Rohit, Ross, Marc, Kevin, and Kragen, about some of Marty's "twenty simple schemas that cover 80% of the potential uses of data in collaborative commerce", the ones that regularly come up are:

1. products -- information, specials, inventories, contents, manuals
2. people -- reputation, relationships, product recommendations, contact information
   
3. companies -- contact information, organization, reputation, relationships, products & services
   
4. dates -- events, conferences, tradeshows, meetings
5. news -- articles, product reviews, sales specials

Note that some of these have overlap with some of the microformats Tantek talks about -- a very promising sign. There's still a need for thinking through what these schemas would actually contain and how to properly orthogonalize them, but I'm enthused by the momentum of the discussions.

Microformats

Kragen recently said to me that

XHTML tables are the new CSV, and they're better than CSV because they have escaping. Also there's nicer viewers for them but that's besides the point.

It occurred to me that the use of modular XHTML for semantics is not a fad; rather, it points to a trend that Tantek Çelik calls microformats.

In my post on The Web Way, I mentioned having dinner with Tantek, which led me to rule 6,

Where it's useful, they should embrace microformats, a/k/a lowercase semantic web.

Tantek talks about a Microformat Manifesto:

1. Markup should be as simple as possible.
2. Markup should be droppable into as many formats as possible.
3. Development should be decentralized.

The manifesto would also make a compelling case for how The Awesome Power Of XML is best harnessed through tiny X(HT)ML dialects usable for specific purposes. I agree; I've noted in the catablog post (and the accompanying comments) that RSS is the single-biggest-real-world-useful example of TAPOX, and RSS is useful because it is tiny (and therefore easy to embed in applications as an input/output format).

Tantek talks with enthusiasm about the philosophy of microformats:

1. Keep the formats simple. It's worth repeating because this is the whole point of microformats: they must be easy to learn and use. As Kragen noted, using an XHTML dialect offers escaping and presentation control, making it easy to embed such formats in web pages with minimal effort.
2. Pave the cowpaths. Only create a new format to serve an existing application.
3. Get rough consensus and running code. Implementation in scripting languages such as PHP, Python, and Perl is paramount to adoption.
4. Get adoption by "real people". Only then will semantic X(HT)ML move beyond theoretical discussions.

Tantek also talks with enthusiasm about a collection of microformats that represent the philosophy of microformats well:

1. RSS for simple syndication (though the jury is still out on its progeny, especially Atom, which seems to get more complicated as it goes through committee despite fine leadership).
2. xfn for human relationships (using the  rel  attribute; note that using  rel  is also an easy way to extend Creative Commons metadata).
3. GeoURL for location (using simple <meta> tags).
4. hCalendar for calendar events (mapping the commonly used iCalendar format to XHTML).
5. hCard for address books (mapping the commonly used vCard format to XHTML).
6. XOXO for outlines and blogroll-like subscriptions.
7. Attention.XML for keeping track of what you've read, what you're spending time on, and what you should be paying attention to.

The Chairman and Founder of CommerceNet, Marty Tenenbaum, asserted his belief in a recent brainstorming session that

There are maybe twenty simple schemas that cover 80% of the potential uses of data in collaborative commerce.

Marty often conveys his enthusiasm for the ongoing social software trend to increasingly facilitate improved E-Commerce. When thinking of Tantek's and Marty's visions, I'm excited that thoughts on catablog suggest that there are opportunities to create microformats for products -- perhaps the music, movies, and books that fill up peoples' typelists represent a good place to start.

Update, January 2005. Technorati has set up a MicroFormats page on its wiki to summarize these issues going forward...

Catablog

I believe that RSS is the single-biggest-real-world-useful example of TAPOX (The Awesome Power Of XML). I'm reminded of that daily, as Rohit has been fond of regularly using the word "catablog" lately to connote

Using an RSS feed to deliver catalog notifications such as sales, closeouts, news, best sellers, reviews, release dates, and other special deals.

A search on the word catablog yields no such definition. Still, there's a lot of promising work in that direction; for example:

1. Nick Bradbury points out eBay's general announcements and system announcements feeds. That's a step in the right direction. Hey eBay, how about feeds for every auction so I can get all those eBay alerts out of my email?

2. On the other hand, Amazon has wholeheartedly jumped on the RSS bandwagon, so now there's lots of Amazon Syndicated Content Feeds: "Amazon.com Syndicated Content is delivered in RSS format. RSS is a standard XML format for delivering content that changes on a regular basis. Content is delivered in small chunks, generally a synopsis, preview, or headline. Selected categories, subcategories and search results in Amazon.com stores now have RSS feeds associated with them, delivering a headline-view of the top 10 bestsellers in that category or set of search results. Using RSS, you can easily track any type of information that changes on a daily or even hourly basis (view an example RSS feed for topselling DVDs)... The RSS feeds generated for Amazon categories and search results are based on the existing XML feeds delivered by Amazon's Web Services platform."

3. Even boutique eCommerce sites like ThinkGeek makes a new stuff and announcements feed available on its What's New (s) page.

The button has been slowly but profoundly changing my life over the last five years, allowing me to get more and more content out of my ever-cluttered email inbox. Catablogs have even more potential to get eCommerce notifications out of my email, so I salute the concept.

TAPOX: The Awesome Power Of XML

Rohit used the phrase The Awesome Power Of XML(or, TAPOX) in conversation recently, and I wondered aloud who coined the phrase. Rohit surmised that it was Jon Bosak or Tim Bray (or both!), but when I searched Google for "The Awesome Power Of XML" and searched Google for TAPOX, I came up empty-handed.

Does anyone know where "The Awesome Power Of XML" and/or "TAPOX" came from?

One thing's for sure, the phrase didn't come from Rohit: he's an XML Bastard. Specifically, he's not a fan of XML and WS-* (which he calls "WS-splat") and the whole Web-Services-Is-CORBA-And-OASIS-Is-OMG-Thus-Repeating-Last-Decade's-Debacle-All-Over-Again shenanigans. I think that Rohit would say that TAPOX stands for "The Awful Problems Of XML".

By the way, tapox.com is available as a domain name for anyone who wants to buy it. Who says there are no cool, short domain names still left for sale?

As an aside, Rohit now eloquently calls the Fisher problem, "searching my own d*mn inbox". The splat in d*mn is his, not mine.

Blew Indigo Violent

I'm leaving town to attend The Hackers Conference till Monday. My current thoughts are of Indigo and Application Internetworking and The Indigo Blues and Social Networking and... how can I afford my rock-n-roll lifestyle?