Microsoft: It's the Web Standards, Stupid!

<RANT>

Can I say how tired I am of public griping about the Web Standards Project (WaSP) ? It's been happening off-and-on since the group's inception - especially by Microsoft.

The latest is regarding a recent announcement by WaSP to create another test suite to, yet again, convince all browsers to fully support the defacto standards (aka Recommendations) of the W3C. I'm not talking about the new-fangled XLink and XPath, (which are both hardly new at this point), but CSS2 and HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0. For crying out loud - it's been 5 years - that's like 60 in Web years.

Disclosure: I used to be on the Steering Committee for WaSP but bowed out due to a complete lack of time to really contribute to the group. Now I am obsessed with making the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) project as standards-compliant and accessible as possible. I can only do so much with 5,900 HTML pages and a constantly-changig publication cycle.

I've already sent my comments to Robert however since Radio Userland doesn't appear to make use of anchor elements in the comments, I'll repost it here:

YAFWSCM here - (Yet Another Former WaSP Stering Committee Member). I've been out of the loop re: WaSP for a while but your post struck me as more about being snubbed than Web Standards. Did you reach out to the WaSP members? Set up meetings at SXSW to discuss thier Acid test or how you can help them liase with the IE team? Hakon, being one of the powers behind CSS, has ALWAYS been proactive when it comes to Web Standards. It just so happens that he also works at Opera. Does that mean his strong support of Web standards is diminished?

At the beginning of my time on the WaSP SC I pushed and pushed and pushed MS to fix their lack of Web standards compliance - when Chris Wilson would say, "show me an example" I would build a handful of HTML pages that tested certain functionality, show what it SHOULD look like or do, and sent it his way. Nothing.

MS has had two browser versions since that time to get it right - IE5 and IE6. Nothing. Honestly? I don't think IE will ever recover and will continue losing ground to Firefox. The benefit of such an open project allows the community-at-large to point out gaps and get them fixed much faster than a BigCo like MS that continues to be more interested in creating new features that become defacto "standards" that they control.

Stop the public griping, contact the WaSP SC with an IE Team member in tow, and finally start fixing some of this stuff. PLEASE.

But I haven't been able to respond to Dave Winer's little quip because he conveniently doesn't allow people to comment on what he writes about.

Mr. Winer says:

The WaSP guys aren't interested, because as designers, their livelihood depends on it being hard for users to create content. Kind of like a book publisher working to keep a format complicated so there will be demand for their book. Yeah, I've actually seen this happen. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

It's ridiculous to suggest that the reason WaSPers haven't pushed for a text editor in browsers, (or making it "easier" to build Web sites), is because of job security. That's a gratuitious, provocative & unneccessary comment, though it's what I've come to expect from Dave when it comes to WaSP. WaSP's base mission is to get all browsers to support the base W3C Recommendations of CSS2 and HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 - allowing developers to separate markup from design, truly taking advantage of XML. Browser companies are free to innovate all they want, but please support the basics for those of developers who want to use them.

I was starting to gain my respect back for Dave over the last year but his cheap shot has ruined that. I want to reiterate that I don't think Microsoft will recover what it's lost to Firefox and I believe they will continue to lose ground in the browser war. It's simply a result of failing to support base Web standards and choosing innovations that further tie the user to an MS-based oeprating system rather than make it easier for their users to browse the Web on any platform.

</RANT>

Note to Podcasters: Where's your ID3-f00 ?

So I've gotten into podcasting hardcore this past week, even generating some ideas for my own show. But one of the major things that's been annoying me is the complete lack of proper ID3 name tag metadata in the MP3s that make up these podcasts. There's a reason for metadata - if done properly and even verbosely, search engines will someday be able to search the metadata INSIDE the MP3 file itself just like it will be able to search JPGs, PNGs, and TIFFs for Adobe's RDF-based XMP metadata.

Adam - DSC-2005-03-14 means little to me or my Tivo. Call it "Daily Source Code podcast for 03/14/2005 - 'basic title here'". And don't put the show summary in the "Album" ID3 tag - that should be reserved for the Comments field. You have one MP3 per show so considering a single show an album is silly. I'd call your album "Daily Source Code". Make use of the Track Number and Disc Numbers. Say you have one Disc per month and one Track per day. So this episode would be Track 14 of 31, (provided you do an episode every day this month), and Disc 3 of 12 in the Year 2005. It's like tracking magazine volumes and issues.

And so many of you podcasters end up doing transcripts for your shows with hypertext. I'd say at a minimum you should put the final URL for the transcript in the comments field - if it fits. Perhaps someday the community will make it much easier to redirect "expired" URLs or to have MP3s "check-in" with their originator if requested so they can change metadata from time to time.

Best practice should be to copy the whole darn transcript into an appropriate ID3v2 tag so it travels with the file. Then eventually those who are deaf could read the transcript and those of us who are archivist metadata freaks can keep the textual data with its original audio. And, of course, searching for any text in the transcript would bring up the MP3 file. The only problem is I'm not sure of an ID3v2 tag that supports massive amount of text. Perhaps making use of the Lyrics3 spec needs to be an option. Basically the transcripts are "lyrics" for a podcast.

Someone high up, (Adam, Ron, Dave), should consider posting these or similar ideas as "Best Practices" or even "Podcasting Recommendations". Because while metadata can't be exploited to its fullest now, it certainly will be in the future. The DSpace archive, for instance, is meant to archive data for over 100 years. The better we tag now, despite the fact of the hundreds of thousands of terrabytes of data that may accumulate, if metadata resides in the same file its describing...it will be that much easier to find, recognize and reuse.

Will is Walking - Sort Of

Check out these new pics! Will's walking with a bit of a walker. Cute as a button.

TIVO: Listening to Podcasts on your Tivo

I'm home in bed today but I had to get this idea out onto paper before I forgot about it. Like my friend John, I've recently been getting into podcasting. While I don't have an iPod, I listen to the shows at work during the day while I'm getting stuff done - I was one of those people who concentrated better WITH music. It blocked out the part of my brain that would get distracted with something else.

Anyway, I've been listening to a few shows while lying down and can't help but think that it would be cool to be able to listen to these on my Tivo. With a young son, we don't want to watch TV all the time but sometimes it's nice to play music in the background and catchig up on radio would be great as well. Until Tivo has software to use and record from a USB AM/FM tuner, why not create a Podcast application that, in addition to downloading shows for someone's iTunes player, also queues them up to the Tivo Home Media Environment for listening to.

Basically, such an application would auto-share the downloaded MP3 files and take the metadata from the RSS feeds to allow you to see what show it is as well as the tags from the MP3. Then I could pop over to my Tivo and start a show whenever.

Garden State/Zach Braff Rocks

One of the things I'm coming to terms with being a new father is how behind everyone else I am ... but with TivoToGo and other opportunities on the far horizon (Netflix + Tivo partnership), I hope to catch up.

I saw Zach Braff's movie "Garden State" last week and I can't get it out of my head. Ever since jgd3 got me into Scrubs, I've been itching to see this movie and it was much more than I expected.

While my wife really likes "Scrubs", she wouldn't have cared for Garden State. One of the major areas we differ in our relationship are our taste in movies & music. I call her tastes very "vanilla" - she likes funny or happy movies that stay on the light side. She doesn't like watching foreign movies unless they are in this vein AND are dubbed as opposed to subtitled.

For me, on the other hand, "Garden State" was an incredible emotional journey. I truly enjoyed almost every moment of it. As I've expoused in great deal on before, I like music & movies that evoke all sorts of emotion - anger, frustration, sadness, depression, elation, love, and neediness.

I don't think I'm an emotional vampire, because I don't see myself "feeding" on these emotions or trying to evoke extreme emotions in those around me to experience them. I think this ability also allows me to be extra intuitive about the emotions of those around me, though Kirky says I'm overreacting and am just as "sensitive" as everyone else.

I've also been obsessivly listening to the soundtrack. I have an aural memory of sorts. Songs tend to evoke memories of what I was feeling and where I was when I heard them - especially if it was a particularly meaningful moment. So the "Garden State" soundtrack, in addition to being great music, gives me a taste of the emotions I so reveled in while watching the movie. Ah, escapism.

My favorite tracks are Cary Brothers' Blue Eyes, (which I listen to over and over and over), and Frou Frou's "Let Go", the latter of which brings back the incredibly emotional ending of the movie back every time the track gets 47sec in and the lines "(So let go), So let go, Mmm, jump in, Oh well whatcha waiting for?" play.

Honestly? I can't remember what was happening in the movie when "Blue Eyes" came on. It's also been used on "Scrubs" a few times - usually when they take a quick time out from being silly and have one of those striking serious moments that make me sit back and go..."ouch." I love to close my eyes and listen to that song.

There was a cinematographic techqnieue I really liked from the movie where Braff's character was stationary and everyone/everything else around him was moving at fast forward. It conveyed a great sense of being left behind, lost, lonely and out of it. Braff used it in an episode of "Scrubs", (Episode 87), he directed recently as well.

OK, I'm rambling. I bought the DVD for this movie and it will become stationary in my Portable DVD player for a while like "Lost in Translation" did. I like to watch it when I'm too tired to read or need a "time out" from reality and need to sink into something.

Auntie Mellie's Pictures of Will

Melissa finally eeked out a moment, (in her copius amount of spare time ;) ), to post her gorgeous pictures of Will from her weekend visit - check them out. They're wonderful.

Maya on being homeless

It appears that despite "coming out" in the media last month, Maya is in Chicago with no place to stay - trying to sleep on the train and barely avoiding getting raped. Now, she may be wanting to see what it's like since she's helping fight for gay homeless youth but if you know anyone in the Chicago who can give her some space to keep her stuff or to sleep, send her an email.

Steal This Link -From Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly is not one of my favorite people. In fact, it would be fair to say I despise the man. It appears just as many Neo-Conservatives try to drown the American public in ideals of decades past....O"Reilly is digging up an oldie but goodie Internet faux-pas: he's having his lawyers send out Cease & Desists for people simply linking to the "pundit's" columns - specifically, his commentary on the PBS show "Letters from Buster". Alas - I thumb my nose and point my link!

...and now standing!

He's standing now. Wow....walking's next! He's already doing that with only little help from us.