Microformats and the Future of Syndication

AdaptiveWave Microformats and The Future of Syndication Nate Aune AdaptiveWave, LLC CM Pros Summit, San Francisco Apr. 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 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 data hCalendar 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 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:nate.aune@adaptivewave.com\">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 CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836

AdaptiveWave Applications How 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 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 CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836

AdaptiveWave Integration with CMSes A look at Wordpress and Plone 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 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 template folder_listing.pt • event view template event_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 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 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 Don’t be a beached seal Use microformats! CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836

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 Innovation http://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 CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836

Microformats and the Future of Syndication

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