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The Problem With and the Future Of Mentions

My involvement with the Indiewebcamp movement continues, and I want to encourage what is possible.

One of the building blocks of Indiewebcamp is the webmention.

Webmention is considered an update to pingback. Pingback was proposed in 2002 as an automated version of the Trackback concept that added link verification. The basic principle of  a Pingback is Person A posts something. Person B posts something that links to Person A’s post, which sends a pingback. Person A confirms by visiting Person B’s site to check the link exists. The pingback specification uses the XML-RPC framework as a method of transport.

Akismet, a hosted anti-spam service, has taken the measure of blocking all of them by default, because they’ve become such an avenue for spammers. We certainly think Trackback support should be discontinued, and Pingback likely behind it. It isn’t just that they’ve become an avenue for spammers…but they add no value.

Webmention is similar to the pingback specification in use, but it is carried over plain HTTP as opposed to XMLRPC. This means it is easier to implement, and a simple HTML form can send webmentions.

Most pingbacks and tracks contain title of the post that sent the trackback and ellipsed […] … […] summary text, which is of little use. No improvement of presentation is likely to go forward without addressing the underlying protocol.

The proof of concept of this is the WordPress webmention plugin, which adds support for webmentions, and its companion plugin, Semantic Linkbacks, which takes the output of any sort of linkback and turns it into human readable text, along with a profile picture. It allows for a much nicer presentation.

The way Semantic Linkbacks does human readable text is that it parses the site that has sent the mention. It counts on the site being microformats 2 complaint, although it will try to fall back on the original microformats standard and other information if needed.

I’ve thus filed a feature request with the people at WordPress, the start of my attempt to make WordPress more friendly. It is specifically for Microformats 2 support in WordPress, which would allow better parsing of WordPress sites.

With this, more sites will display markup that will allow sites receiving mentions from them to better present those mentions. Part of the reason mentions are mostly garbage is we have made them that way with neglect.

I’d like to not only see Webmentions baked into more sites, but improved presentation tools and discussion around them, and then…the Spam problem will be one worth solving. There are efforts underway to address this.

 

It has been a while since I’ve updated this site, even as I’ve kept the resume portion updated, but I have not been taking full advantage of all the things I want to put here. I’ve decided it is time to get back up to date and add in the material I had originally planned.

Please stay tuned.

Musings on Library Automation

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Image via Wikipedia

I’m still trying to find my voice for writing here. Every project needs an editorial style, and I’m sure it will take me more time to figure out what I want to talk about, and how I want to talk about it.

When I was observing at Cardozo High School in Queens, I was assigned to improve the metadata on books in their OPAC. Many of the MARC records had been brought in from online services, and several were inaccurate, others sparse, and often not directed at the needs of the patrons. Original cataloging is something librarians do less and less of nowadays.

I learned a lot while doing what was a small part of the school library. A patron browsing the shelves of a library may find books casually. But now, many people looking for books use the online catalog the same way they use Google…a keyword search. Having more information to search with, rather than less, increases the possibility that people will find a book, justifying keeping it on the shelf.

When you pull a book off the shelf in a library during the process of weeding(removing books from the collection), you get to see the records indicating the last times it was taken out, as cards inside the book. Some books may not be used often, but they fill in gaps in a collection that it isn’t worth buying new books for. You can’t abandon a book because it is old and not used as much.

Google Books has been providing the service of digitizing out-of-print books, and many libraries are migrating to digital e-books to save on shelf space. But the need remains for proper metadata. The more information, the easier it is to find out.

It is to this end that I indexed my video collection in a open-source program. I have plans to organize the metadata associated with my digital music collection, which serves as use copies(with the original CDs as the archive). And finally, plans to index my entire book collection in LibraryThing, which will allow me not only a complete list, but the opportunity to share parts of my collection with others, as well as get recommendations on new books.

This is a massive project. My video archive took several days of organization, and then only a little to add each new video as acquired and thus maintain the collection. But without it, browsing through the collection is hard. Doing the books is going to be much harder.

More on this to come.

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Why I love Oldies

Adam's Record Collection
Image by Adam Melancon via Flickr

I love Oldies, and I don’t appreciate most music made after 1970. Recently, I contemplated how that could have happened. I’m under 30. I wasn’t even born in 1970.

It all starts in 1985. The movie Back to the Future came out, which contained a number of classic 50s songs. This was one of my favorite movies. For those of you who haven’t seen it, in it, a 1985 Teenager goes back to when his parents were the same age, in 1955. It was in this movie I first got introduced to songs by the Penguins and Chuck Berry.

This is where my love of 50s music came from, especially doowop. It didn’t come from my parents. Their music era was the 60s, and era I also love.  My mother exposed me to a little of that, but my brother introduced me to the Beatles, among others, and I branched outward to enjoy other classic rock.

I realized a few years ago, when I was giving a lift on behalf of a college club to a guest, knowledgeably discussing Leiber and Stoller, and answering trivia questions lobbed at me about the Diablos, that the community for classic media is still alive, and includes people of all ages. More recently, the popularity around the remastered release of the Beatles catalog proves it as well.

So, when people talk about more modern music, I am the one who doesn’t know as much. But I can live with that.