with which I build my summary blog "The Daily Mink"
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), syndication feeds
allow innovative repurposing of the content of blogs and open up new avenues
for content sharing, such as podcasting. Although use of syndication feeds is in
its infancy, I predict big things, as the ability to create and consume them gets
built into the operating systems we use on computers and mobile devices.
It may seem simple, but the syndication feed, in whatever format it's found--
RSS
or Atom--is an important step in the evolution of the system at the heart of
the Web,
XML
. The original authors of
XML
saw it as a universal document lan-
guage, allowing a tree-structured representation of a document. Syndication
feeds bring another powerful structure to
XML
--lists and collections.
Lists and collections (such as databases) are at the core of so much of comput-
ing already, and syndication feeds provide a means for programs to share data
organically. They provide an avenue for easy
SOA
(service-oriented architectures)
and unlock imaginative use of all the data that swirls around us--bank accounts,
health records, billing information, travel histories, and so much more. Syndica-
tion feeds make the Web programmable. More than that, Atom standardizes the
means by which feeds are accessed, providing an
API
to decouple the web site
from the program that exploits its feeds.
A wave of people, the "Web 2.0" movement, is already using syndication feeds
and Ajax to create web sites such as Flickr, del.icio.us, Bloglines, and Technorati,
and they're just scratching the surface of what's possible.
This book is an important reference for people who want to be ready for the
future. You may have picked it up for information about the technology side of
blogging, but it offers much more than that. It's a launch pad for the future. Pio-
neers like Tim Bray, Sam Ruby, Dave Winer, and Mark Pilgrim had to make all
this up as they went along.
For you, there's this book. The skills it teaches you may prove to be the key
that unlocks a participation-age program that will change the world. Read on,
program wisely, and create the future!
S
IMON
P
HIPPS

Chief Open Source Officer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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