Sun, 17 Nov 2002 00:43:35 GMT

Candidate for best-named-blog of 2002.

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 00:38:09 GMT

Mitch Kapor discusses the schedule of his Chandler project.

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 00:35:17 GMT

Joe Jenett sings the praises of the RSS Explorer tool.

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 01:55:32 GMT

Brrrr. It's colllllllllllllllllld.

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 20:56:03 GMT

Paul Boutin: "Steve Jobs understands the iPod's potential for grand theft audio."

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 14:51:36 GMT

Paolo on aggregators and authentication.

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 14:53:15 GMT

Wired: "After spending nearly a year trying to work out ways to allow companies to retain patents on W3C standards, the idea was finally rejected in a 12-7 a vote."

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 14:58:27 GMT

Dusty Baker will manage the Chicago Cubs next year.

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 18:06:11 GMT

Jack Bell says RDF is so hard because it is so simple.

The truth about RDF

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 14:30:17 GMT

As I watch Mark Pilgrim and Shelley Powers and Tim Bray and others struggle with where RDF is at, I thought I'd offer my own two cents in a safe place, here on my weblog. Of course these are just my own opinions, influenced heavily by my own experience.

Before there was a World Wide Web, there were big technology companies with ambitious plans for networking and application integration, and interop between competing software. Apple had OpenDoc and Taligent in partnership with IBM and a bunch of other companies. Microsoft had Cairo and various mail and database APIs, some in partnership with other companies. It seemed every company had their own roadmap, the industry made mundane mature products, PCs and Macs; and mostly incomprehensible white papers and bookshelves of incomprehensible documentation, and not much inbetween.

Then along came the Web and blew that all up. You didn't even need to read the docs to figure it out. Just View Source. That was good because there were no docs.

So I am a disbeliever of anything that requires as much documentation, head-scratching, hand-waving, and eyes-glazing-over as RDF does in 2002. Forget the problems with the formats, that can be dealt with later, after you figure out how to explain it to someone who knows a lot about computers, networks, users, XML, HTTP, etc. If you can't explain it to me so that I understand what you're doing -- you've got a big problem.

It's a cute, and all-too-common tactic to say that people who don't get it are dumb. I'm not dumb, but RDF makes me feel that way. After all these years, I've concluded that if I can't understand it, it doesn't have much of a chance in the market. All the powerfully successful technologies of the past have had simple explanations anyone could understand. If RDF is one of those, I strongly believe it must too. Therefore I conclude that it isn't.

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The truth about RDF