Comments on: Don’t use Neutrino, use FOAF http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf a geek commodity Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:27:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Pip http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf/comment-page-1#comment-443 Pip Wed, 18 May 2005 21:10:00 +0000 http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf#comment-443 Although maybe I'm just blinkered :) Although maybe I’m just blinkered :)

]]> By: Pip http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf/comment-page-1#comment-442 Pip Wed, 18 May 2005 21:09:00 +0000 http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf#comment-442 I think I get that, but I still think the autodiscovery is better.<br/><br/>In the Neutrino scenario, this kid's going to have to find each and every feed for his new services, and add them in, one at a time (so, go to homepage, view source, find autodiscovery links, copy/paste n times for each service), if he's using FOAF then he changes his Furl homepage URL to his del.icio.us homepage URL, and he's done. Isn't the point of computers that they do the work for us?<br/><br/>btw, I wouldn't whatever app this is start at my blog, I'd give it the URL of my FOAF, just like I'd give it the URL of my Neutrino file. I think the one layer of auto-detection is worth it for the other benefits you get.<br/><br/>FWIW I now have a working version of FeedOnFeeds which does exactly this (it works, but it ain't pretty - I didn't know PHP before I started :). I think I get that, but I still think the autodiscovery is better.

In the Neutrino scenario, this kid’s going to have to find each and every feed for his new services, and add them in, one at a time (so, go to homepage, view source, find autodiscovery links, copy/paste n times for each service), if he’s using FOAF then he changes his Furl homepage URL to his del.icio.us homepage URL, and he’s done. Isn’t the point of computers that they do the work for us?

btw, I wouldn’t whatever app this is start at my blog, I’d give it the URL of my FOAF, just like I’d give it the URL of my Neutrino file. I think the one layer of auto-detection is worth it for the other benefits you get.

FWIW I now have a working version of FeedOnFeeds which does exactly this (it works, but it ain’t pretty – I didn’t know PHP before I started :) .

]]> By: Phil Ringnalda http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf/comment-page-1#comment-441 Phil Ringnalda Wed, 18 May 2005 20:47:00 +0000 http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/05/dont-use-neutrino-use-foaf#comment-441 Maybe I'm just deluded by the sight of something shiny (I'll favor anything I haven't argued about for more than three years already, no matter what), but it sounds like you're missing the purpose of Neutrino, which is to actually subscribe to it, as an XML redirect to feeds on (generally) third party services. It's not trying to replace autodiscovery, it's trying to replace the actual URL that your aggregator fetches each hour. I'd really rather not have my aggregator start each run by fetching my blog, autodiscovering my FOAF, fetching it, fetching all the referenced HTML and parsing it for feed autodiscovery links, and then fetching the actual feeds. Fetching a Neutrino file, parsing it, and fetching the feed URLs in it, though... that's reasonable enough.<br/><br/>In a world with infinite money and technical ability, there's no need for it whatsoever, but for who it's for, a kid in high school or junior high with a cheap vanity domain name without any real hosting behind it, and with an LJ (oops, that was last month, now he's moved to Dead Journal) and a Furl feed (oops, he didn't like the purchase, now it's del.icio.us) and a Flickr feed (which will be whatever's next, because he's way too cool to use something owned by Yahoo!), whose friends want to subscribe to "him" and not lose him as he moves from one free service to another, it would be pretty useful (within the limits of how stable his /neutrino.xml URL turns out to be). Maybe I’m just deluded by the sight of something shiny (I’ll favor anything I haven’t argued about for more than three years already, no matter what), but it sounds like you’re missing the purpose of Neutrino, which is to actually subscribe to it, as an XML redirect to feeds on (generally) third party services. It’s not trying to replace autodiscovery, it’s trying to replace the actual URL that your aggregator fetches each hour. I’d really rather not have my aggregator start each run by fetching my blog, autodiscovering my FOAF, fetching it, fetching all the referenced HTML and parsing it for feed autodiscovery links, and then fetching the actual feeds. Fetching a Neutrino file, parsing it, and fetching the feed URLs in it, though… that’s reasonable enough.

In a world with infinite money and technical ability, there’s no need for it whatsoever, but for who it’s for, a kid in high school or junior high with a cheap vanity domain name without any real hosting behind it, and with an LJ (oops, that was last month, now he’s moved to Dead Journal) and a Furl feed (oops, he didn’t like the purchase, now it’s del.icio.us) and a Flickr feed (which will be whatever’s next, because he’s way too cool to use something owned by Yahoo!), whose friends want to subscribe to “him” and not lose him as he moves from one free service to another, it would be pretty useful (within the limits of how stable his /neutrino.xml URL turns out to be).

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