Apr. 23, 2006. A talk given at the CM Pros Summit in San Francisco, CA in connection with the Gilbane conference on content management. This talk discusses RSS and it's limitations, explains microformats such as hCalendar and hCard and why they are beneficial for providing structured data about events and contacts. It covers several applications of microformats (upcoming.org, meetup.com, flock.com) and demonstrates how support for microformats can be added to blogging tools such as Wordpress and CMSes such as Plone.
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Microformats and the Future of Syndication
1. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
7. 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
8. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. AdaptiveWave
Building blocks of
microformats
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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
18. 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
21. 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
22. AdaptiveWave
My hCard
<div class=quot;vcardquot;>
<a class=quot;email fnquot;
href=quot;mailto:nate.aune@adaptivewave.comquot;>Nate Aune</a>
<div class=quot;telquot;>+1-617-820-5113</div>
<div class=quot;titlequot;>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
23. AdaptiveWave
Example
hCard
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
25. 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
26. 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
34. 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
35. 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
36. 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
37. AdaptiveWave
Integration with CMSes
A look at Wordpress and Plone
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
39. 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
40. 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
43. 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
44. 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
45. 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
47. 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
50. 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
52. AdaptiveWave
Don’t be a
beached seal
Use microformats!
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
53. AdaptiveWave
Thanks!
CM Pros Summit.(4/23/06) www.adaptivewave.com (866) 418-2836
54. 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
55. 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