“That Was Support”

Thursday's post, "It Must Be Dave's Fault," was written in support of RSS, Dave, and UserLand. Apparently some people are unable to read between the lines.

Really, I was going to completely ignore the whole Echo "thing" until and unless something significant came of it, but it seems this is all anybody wants to talk about.

Would I like to have a better format than RSS 2.0? Uh... I guess. Depends on what "better" means... remember that part of being a good format is one which can be easily adopted. RSS is perfect, at least in that way.

How about a better protocol than MetaWeblog? Yes, that I'd be a little happier about. Conversant supports an unlimited number of vectors for metadata (categorization) in weblog posts. Last I checked, that couldn't be done with the MetaWeblog API. On the other hand, that can't be done with any of the current desktop weblog clients either, so it doesn't matter that much to me.

Adding support for a new syndication format will take a couple hours. Adding another protocol, especially one based on SOAP instead of XML-RPC, is something I don't even want to think about right now.

If Blogger weren't behind Echo (or whatever they're calling it now), I wouldn't be worried aobut this at all... it would be one of those projects that start with a huge burst of energy and noise, but then fades away to obscurity and fossilization. Unfortunately, with Blogger's mass and resources behind it, I'm afraid the rest of us won't be able to ignore it.