I just came across this article while brainstorming about the
Comment API
and it's potential use (subject of another post as this is being
implemented as I write) within Blog Clients (RSS Aggregators and
Readers).
Back to the article. This is an essay by George Gregorio who is so into
auto discovery that he deliberately stuffed his contact details in
an FOAF file that you need to auto discover using a FOAF auto
discovery aware client(e.g. FOAFnautor the human
brainfor instance :-) ) . Anyway, he is an excerpt from his
essay (a very good read).
Over a month ago Paul Ford
published a great essay entitled How Google beat
Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web. After reading it the first
time I thought it was a great introduction to the Semantic Web, an idea I had been
trying to wrap my head around even since encountering RDF as it is
baked into RSS 1.0. I had seen the
light and bought into the promise of the Semantic Web.
Time passes...
With Dave Winer's floating of the idea of
RSS 2.0 discussions
ensue about the RDF in RSS 1.0. After spending some time badgering
poor Bill Kearney for a concrete
benefit of having RDF in RSS 1.0 and not getting a really
satisfactory answer I went back and read Paul Ford's essay again. I
wanted to get that old religious feeling back again. It didn't
work. The magic was gone.
Read
on...