Thoughts From Eric Archive

In our post-game analysis, Tantek and I felt that the Developers Day track on microformats went incredibly well.  Not only did we get a lot of good feedback, I think we turned a lot of heads.  The ideas we presented stood up to initial scrutiny by a pretty tough crowd, and our demonstrations of the already-deployed uses of formats like XFN, like XHTMLfriends.net and an automated way to subscribe to hCalendars and hCards, drew favorable response.

Even better, our joint panel with the Semantic Web folks had a far greater tone of agreement than of acrimony, the latter of which I feared would dominate.  I learned some things there, in fact.  For example, the idea that the Semantic Web efforts are inherently top-down turns out to be false.  It may be that many of the efforts have been top-down, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be.  We also saw examples where Semantic Web technologies are far more appropriate than a microformat would be.  The example Jim Hendler brought up was an oncology database that defines and uses some 600,000 terms.  I would not want to try to capture that in a microformat—although it could be done, I suspect.

Here’s one thing I think is key about microformats: they cause the semantics people already use to be impressed onto the web.  They capture, or at least make it very easy to capture, the current zeitgeist.  This makes them almost automatically human-friendly, which is always a big plus in my book.

The other side of that key is this:  it may be that by allowing authors to quickly annotate their information, microformats will be the gateway through which the masses’ data is brought to the more formal systems the Semantic Web allows.  It very well may be that, in the future, we’ll look back and realize that microformats were the bootstrap needed to haul the web into semanticity.

Tantek and I have had some spirited debates around that last point, and are actually in the middle of one right now.  After all, maybe things won’t go that way; maybe microformats will lead to something else, some other way of spreading machine-recognizable semantic information.  It’s fun to debate where things might go, and why, but I think in the end we’re both willing to keep pushing the concept and use of microformats forward, and see how things turn out down the road.

What’s fascinating is how fired up people get about microformats.  After SXSW05, there was an explosion of interest and experimentation.  Several microformats got created or proposed, covering all kinds of topics—from folksonomy formalization to political categorization.  A similar effect seemed to be occurring at WWW2005.  One person who’s been around long enough to know said that the enthusiasm and excitement surrounding microformats reminded him of the early days of the web itself.

As someone who’s at the center of the work on microformats, it’s hard for me to judge that sort of thing.  But I was there for some of the early WWW conferences, and I remember the energy there.  As I rode home from WWW2 in Chicago, I was convinced that the world was in the process of changing, and I wanted more than anything to be a part of that change.  To hear that there’s a similar energy swirling around something I’m helping to create and define is profoundly humbling.

That all sounds great, of course, but if it remains theoretical it’s not much good, right?  Fortunately, it isn’t staying theoretical at all, and I’m not just talking about XFN.  Want an example of how you could make use of microformatted information right now, as in today?  That’s coming up in the next post, where I’ll show how to make use of a resource I mentioned earlier in this post.

• Microformats and Semantics in Japan was published on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the (X)HTML, Microformats, semantic web, and XFN categories.
• There have been five replies.

A partial braindump from WWW2005.  I’ll get to the professional stuff in another post.

• A staggering majority of the personal vehicles on the streets in the Chiba and Tokyo areas are black, white, and varying shades of gray.  Even dark blue is a rare sighting, and forest green seemed to be Right Out.  There were, however, the occasional splashes of color, like red sports cars and yellow Beetles.  Were those the rebels of Japanese society?  I don’t know.  I just know that any time I turned to look at the cars, it was a very monochromatic affair.

• On a related note, I did see three Hummers—all in very dark colors, by the way—and two of them had those thin tires that the street kids love so much.  Because, after all, nothing screams “please lower my gas mileage” quite so much as a Hummer.

  (I wish I were rich enough to buy a Hummer and have it completely painted with a “My Little Pony” theme, complete with stuffed ponies on the dashboard and an all-pink shaggy carpet interior.  That would be totally bumpin’.)

• The Japanese are really, really serious about their fresh seafood.

• Tim Bray says I’ve been one of his heroes for the longest time.  Whoa.  Tim Bray said that.  I mean, Tim’s long been one of my heroes.  Mutual heroism?  Whatever.  I remember hanging around him like a fanboi at WWW7 while he talked to someone else about stuff I’m not smart enough to understand.  When I finally got a chance to introduce myself, he had to leave as he was already running late.  Despite my feeling like a rube for imposing on him when he was clearly intensely busy, I still walked away from it thinking, I got to shake Tim Bray’s hand.

  Before you start to project too much creepiness into this little scenario, be assured that I did not (then or ever) resolve to leave my shaking hand unwashed.

• I did manage to get into Tokyo on Sunday, tagging along with Rohit Khare and his wife to meet up with their friend John in the Ueno area.  We had lunch at an unagi place, and after they all left I took a river ferry toward the bay.  A thunderstorm rolled through the city as we sailed, shrouding the buildings and the radio tower where Mothra cocooned.  After disembarking at a transfer point, I watched a rainbow form over the river, with the far edge of the Rainbow Bridge as a backdrop.

  Later the same evening, making my way back toward my hotel, I was standing in a JR Shinbashi station looking for the Yamanote line to Nippori, where I would catch the Skyliner to Narita Airport.  Frowning, I peered at various maps as I searched for some sort of indication that I was even in the right station.  As I leaned in close to one, a voice to my right said, “Oh, hey, Eric”.

  My head snapped around and I found that I was standing next to Richard Ishida of the W3C, who I’d met just a few days before, and who was studying the map trying to find the line that would get him to Keio University.  When I told him what I was looking for, he pointed me toward the right line.

  I still believe that the universe is an essentially random place, but it’s days like that when I completely understand why many people believe that there are no coincidences, that everything happens in a time and a place for a reason, when I come closest to knowing why they believe in angels.

• On the flight back to the United States, there was a dim glow on the horizon that I thought might be the Aurora Borealis.  The last time I saw the lights, I was seven or eight and my parents woke me up at three in the morning so I could see them.  The memory is dim with so many years gone and the sleep that filled my eyes that night, but what I do remember has always stayed with me.

  The glow turned out to be the ‘top’ edge of the terminator, something I have never seen before.  I wonder what of it I will remember, thirty years from now.

• Out of the East was published on Tuesday, May 17th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been five replies.

Last fall, Tantek and I presented a poster at HT04.  To get it to the conference in one piece and to avoid having to lug it across the country, I created a PDF of the poster and sent it off to the Kinko’s web site.  It was printed for me by the Kinko’s closest to the conference.  All I had to do was send them a digital file, and 2,150 miles later I retrieved the physical output.

As I did so, I thought: This is really amazing.  This is what’s so great about being connected.

A few months later, Kat upgraded her car, and the new one came with XM digital radio.  We started receiving music from geosynchronous orbit, a digital signal broadcast from 22,600 miles above the equator and deciphered by the short, stubby antenna on the car’s roof.  On a drive to visit relatives, we listened to the same station for the entire four-hour drive there, and again for the return drive.

As we did so, I thought: This is incredible.  This is a great example of the benefits of connecting everything.

I was wrong in both cases.

This morning, I stood in a hotel room in Chiba, Japan and saw my wife and daughter on the television.  Back home in Cleveland, they saw me on a computer monitor.  We talked to each other, waved hello, got caught up on recent events.  I watched as Carolyn ran around my office, heard her say “mama”, and agreed with her when she signed “telephone” while she watched my image.  I stuck my tongue out to make a silly face, and six thousand miles away, my daughter laughed with delight at my antics.

A few minutes after we’d finished the chat, with the glow of home and family still warm upon me, I thought: This is why we connected everything in the first place.

• Connected was published on Wednesday, May 11th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn, Personal, Tech, and Technovertigo categories.
• There have been two replies.

Just as I prepare to leave for WWW2005 in Japan, John Allsopp has announced the details for Web Essentials05  in Sydney this September.  Everyone’s fave Molly kicks things off with a keynote, and there will be some great speakers: Tantek Çelik, Jeff Veen, Kelly Goto, Derek Featherstone, Douglas Bowman, Russ Weakley, Cameron Adams, John Allsopp himself, and more.

Oh, and me.  I’ll be there, too.  You can get all the details at the WE05 web site.  I heard great things about WE04, so I’m really looking forward to WE05.  Hopefully I’ll see you there!  It’ll be a fair dinkum, and very likely truly bonzer, no worries.

Did I use any of those colloquialisms correctly?

• Web Essentials 05 was published on Wednesday, May 4th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Web categories.
• There have been nine replies.

You know the effect where, if you only catch a TV show every now and again, it’s always the same episode?

Whenever I happen to catch Stargate: SG-1, it’s always the episode “Window of Opportunity“.  Seriously.

How awesome is that?

• Thrown For a Loop was published on Monday, May 2nd, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been twenty-seven replies.

I just talked with Ryan, organizer of the XHTML and CSS Workshop happening in London on Saturday, 4 June 2005, and he says there are only a few seats left—there were but seven when he contacted me on Friday, but for all I know it’s fewer now (and no doubt it is if you’re reading this post in the archives, instead of when it was first published).

Thanks to the very strong registration numbers, Ryan is seriously considering adding another day.  If that happens, it will mean the Saturday session is all sold out, so if you want to attend that day, you’d better get your reservation in quickly.  We’ll spend the day learning about the ins and outs of standards-based design, as well as chewing over attendee questions and generally having fun while we learn a ton.  And don’t forget about the exclusive Survival Kit CD-ROM that all attendees will receive.

All in all, a good time is in the offing, and it’s yours… but only if you grab a seat.

Update | 22 Apr 05: the Saturday session has sold out, and the Friday session has been scheduled.  Registration is open!

• London Workshop Filling Up! was published on Sunday, April 17th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the (X)HTML, CSS, and Speaking categories.
• There have been nine replies.

Have I been busy?  Oh so very much yes.

A couple of questions for the crowd.

1. In order to get to Japan, I’m flying to Newark, New Jersey and then direct from there to Tokyo, Japan.  That second leg is a 13.5 hour flight.  Whee!  The good news is that I scored a seat with a power outlet, so I can compute my way across the Pacific.  I’d like to take along some DVDs and listen to my music library, but that’s the trick: I need good, comfortable, middle-to-high quality headphones that will be nicely audible even on an airliner.  Any suggestions?  They don’t have to be noise-cancellers, although I’m not opposed to such devices.  I’m just wary of their price tags.
2. My desktop machine is a G4/500, circa 2000, and it runs OS X fine so long as I don’t try to run too many concurrent applications.  I should probably know this, but I don’t, so help me out: what kind of RAM chips does it take, and where do I get said RAM for a good price?

Thanks.

• Wanted: Headphones and RAM was published on Friday, April 15th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Personal and Tech categories.
• There have been fifty-three replies.

As recently announced by Mark Baker, Tantek Çelik and I will be co-chairing a full-day track on microformats as part of Developers’ Day at WWW2005.  We’ll announce the details in the near future, but we can already say that have some great speakers and topics lined up.  I encourage anyone who can to come check it out.  You can register at the WWW2005 site; make sure to check the option for “Developers’ Day, 5/14” when you do.

Tantek and I will also be presenting a poster on XMDP at the conference, and on Tuesday, May 10th, I’ll be delivering a half-day tutorial on Standards-Based Design—assuming enough people register, anyway—as well as delivering the afternoon keynote at, and participating in the closing panel for, the 2nd International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A).

Add to that an expected public appearance in Tokyo the evening of Friday the 13th (for which I hope to have details very soon) as well as a few other agenda items, and I’ve started to wonder if I’m going to have any time to sightsee while I’m there.  That’s becoming something of a theme, actually: I’m not expecting to have more than a day or so to make the rounds when I’m in London this June.

For some reason, I’m reminded of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles: “Work work work work work!”

• WWW2005: Microformats Track was published on Monday, April 4th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the CSS, semantic web, Speaking, and W3C categories.
• There have been nine replies.