The Progress Bar » microformats

What's Driving Microformats?

Dave Evans — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:14:37 +0000

Yahoo, for one, although after spending time with Fred at ClaimID last week, I’m pretty confident that Micro/ClaimID will drive microformat adoption for identity aggregators and job boards.

Nice writeup about the differences between Structured Blogging and microformats here.

Itâ€™s because the Structured Blogging plugins are a TOOL that makes it really easy to create the reviews. People arenâ€™t using the tool because they want to publish structured data, even I donâ€™t really use it for that reason, they use it because it makes writing reviews easier.

Are people writing a lot of structured reviews? I thought it was more for events.

How about a bidirectional FOAF editor while we’re at it?

Poor Pubsub, time to use Blogpulse or Technorati?

Fred Stutzman Explains MicroID

Dave Evans — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:26:23 +0000

Fred at ClaimID has two blog posts which do a good job of explaining MicroIDs. Part 1 and Part 2.

ClaimID is Just Outta (Private) Beta

Dave Evans — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:01:40 +0000

ClaimID is now officially Justouttabeta. Congrats to Fred and Terrell, who I got to meet at Identity Mashup last week.
It’s quite clear that microformats for claiming content are starting to come together, and ClaimID is smart to integrate with OpenID, MicroID and keeping an open mind towards working with other initiatives that strengthen and increase the value of microformat-based data aggregation.

ZoomInfo is a summarization search engine which approaches content aggregation with a crawl-based system. As I mentioned to Fred last week, ZoomInfo would be a great partner for ClaimID. I’ll even link to the Partner page to make it easier.

I’m curious about what people think about Technorati’s Microformats Search. Do you think it’s a good idea for Technorati to support ClaimID as well?

Claiming Web Content

Dave Evans — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 19:00:10 +0000

For the majority of people, adding identifying information to web pages, templates and blog posts is beyond their technical understanding or patience threshold. For now.

MicroID wants people to put this in their web page headers:

Invisible to the naked eye, it allows search engines to find all conent that is marked as mine. What happens if someone else marks their stuff as mine, either by mistake or on purpose? If you can claim any web page or blog entry, what happens when multiple people claim the same page? Seems like this could be a problem similar to overzealous people editing others Wikipedia entries.

There are 26 David Evans in Massachusetts, we all get each other’s mail from time to time. Around tax time it’s especially unnerving. ZoomInfo has 200 matches for David Evans. This one is me. Originally it was riddled with inaccuracies that I had to fix. This blog is listed as mine, but the posts they reference are empty or taken out of context. Such is the result of relying on machines to catalog a person’s online identity.
CoComment functions similarly. It uses a bookmarklet to claim comments left on blogs. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to click the link before posting, the frustration is annoying. Plug-ins for WordPress and Movable Type blogs are being developed to make the whole process easier.

ZoomInfo functions similarly to ClaimID. The difference is that ZoomInfo does the harvesting and everything else on the back end. It’s up to you to figure out what belongs to you and what doesn’t.

PersonCode Too Similar To MicroID?

Dave Evans — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 23:46:39 +0000

Johannes Ernst has mentioned Hans Gerwitz’s PersonCode, which appears quite similar to MicroID. Hans’s take on PersonCode is here. I can see 20 people working on projects like this with too much overlap and not enough differentiation to make separate projects worth the effort to the implementors.

The sooner a content-claim Microformat is agreed upon the better. Hashing an email address isn’t terribly difficult, it’s making the meta-data usable to regular people which is difficult. That’s if an email address is what’s going to be used as the base identifier.

ClaimID blog is worth a look if you haven’t visited Fred’s world yet. I read they are making it so you can use your name in your ClaimID links, which will be nice for the early adopters until the next John Smith wants to claim his name. Unless I’m missing something?

Leo Laporte claimed his PGP key, smart.

When this stuff is as simple as CoComment in Firefox, it’s going to take off. For now, it’s Just Outta Beta.

Claiming Web Content

Dave Evans — Thu, 04 May 2006 16:09:46 +0000

“Hello, my name is d4b8ba1042.” If the new crop of content ownership services has it’s way, this could be the way you identify yourself on the internet. While not the easiest to remember, unique identifiers based on personal information are a step closer to making it easier for authors to claim content which is, and which is not, theirs.
For the majority of people, adding identifying information to web pages, templates and blog posts is beyond their technical understanding or patience threshold. For now.
MicroID wants people to put this in their web page headers:

Invisible to the naked eye, it allows search engines to find all conent that is marked as mine. What happens if someone else marks their stuff as mine, either by mistake or on purpose? If you can claim any web page or blog entry, what happens when multiple people claim the same page? Seems like this could be a problem similar to overzealous people editing others Wikipedia entries.
There are 26 David Evans in Massachusetts, we all get each other’s mail from time to time. Around tax time it’s especially unnerving. ZoomInfo has 200 matches for David Evans. This one is me. Originally it was riddled with inaccuracies that I had to fix. This blog is listed as mine, but the posts they reference are empty or taken out of context. Such is the result of relying on machines to catalog a person’s online identity.
A major issue with ClaimID is that one needs to install a bookmarklet. The problem with them is that you have to remember to click it each time you post something. CoComment functions similarly. It uses a bookmarklet to claim comments left on blogs. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to click the link before posting, the frustration is annoying. Plug-ins for WordPress and Movable Type blogs are starting to be developed to make the whole process easier.
ZoomInfo works like ClaimID. The difference is that ZoomInfo does the harvesting and everything else on the back end. It’s up to you to figure out what belongs to you and what doesn’t.

Numly is similar to MicroID.

Numly.com assigns Numly Numbers (Electronic Serial Numbers / ESNs) for all things digital. These unique identifiers provide digital rights management capabilities as well as third-party, non-repudiation measures for proof of copyright via real-time verifications. Numly Numbers are simple to generate and act as an electronic timestamp for copyright purposes. They also allow you to track content viewership, monitor ratings, and can be used as permalinks.