This conversation about Atom is, I think, really an important one to have. As well designed and thought out as protocols & standards such as OAI-PMH, METS (and the budding OAI-ORE spec) are, they don't have that "viral" technology attribute of utter simplicity. Sure there are trade-offs, but the tool support and interoperability on a much larger scale that Atom could provide cannot be denied. I, too, have pondered the possibility of Atom (& AtomPub for "writing back") as a simpler replacement for all sorts of similar technologies (METS, OAI-PMH, WebDAV, etc.) -- http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2007/07/app-moves-to-pr.html. The simple fact that Google has standardized all of its web services on GData (a "flavor" of Atom) cannot be ignored. I have had some very interesting discussions over on atom-syntax about thoroughly integrating Atom as a standard piece of infrastructure in a large digital library project here at UT Austin (daseproject.org), and while I don't necessarily think it provide a whole lot of benefit as an internal data transfer mechanism, I see numerous advantages to standardizing on Atom for any number of outward-facing services/end-points. I think it would be sad if Atom and AtomPub were seen only as technologies used by and for blogs/blogging. Also, re: blog mirroring, I highly recommend the current discussions floating aroung the blogosphere regarding distributed source control (Git, Mercurial, etc.). It's a fundamental paradigm shift from centralized control to distributed control that points the way toward the future of libraries as they (we) become less and less the gatekeepers for the "stuff" be it digital or physical and more and more the facilitators of the "bidirectional replication" that assures ubiquitous access and long-term preservation. The library becomes (actually it has already happended) simply a node on a network of trust and should act accordingly. See the thoroughly entertaining/thought-provoking Google tech talk by Linus Torvalds on Git: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 -peter keane daseproject.org On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Jakob Voss wrote: > Hi Ed, > > You wrote: > >> I completely agree. When developing software it's really important to >> focus on the cleanest/clearest solution, rather than getting bogged >> down in edge cases and the comments from nay sayers. I hope that my >> response didn't come across that way. > > :-) > >> A couple follow on questions for you: >> >> In your vision for this software are you expecting that content >> providers would have to implement RFC 5005 for your archiving system >> to work? > > Probably yes - at least for older entries. New posts can also be > collected with the default feeds. Instead of working out exceptions and > special solutions how to get blog archives with other methods you should > provide RFC 5005 plugins for common blog software like Wordpress and > advertise its use ("We are sorry - the blog that you asked to archive > does not support RFC 5005 so we can only archive new postings. Please > ask its provider to implement archived feeds so we can archive the > postings before {TIMESTAMP}. More information and plugins for RFC 5005 > can be found {HERE}. Thank you!"). > >> Are you considering archiving media files associated with a blog entry >> (images, sound, video, etc?). > > Well, it depends on. There are hundreds of ways to associate media files > - I doubt that you can easily archive YouTube and SlideShare widgets > etc. but images included with <img src="..."/> should be doable. However > I prefer iterative developement - if basic archiving works, you can > start to think about media files. By the way I would value more the > comments - which are also additional and non trivial to archive. > > To begin with, a WordPress plugin is surely the right step. Up to now > RFC 5005 is so new that noone implemented it yet although its not > complicated. > > Greetings, > Jakob > > -- > Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich > Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network > Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany > +49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de >