oEmbed is the latest standard to come out of the Web 2.0 developer crowd. While I’m typically a huge advocate of standards, and think much of the prior work has been superb, oEmbed fails on almost every level. So much so, in fact, that I’m writing this post to declare it worthless, and suggest an alternative.
Upon first seeing the spec, I immediately tweeted:
oEmbed completely ignores REST principles. GET with a Content-Type to the original resource. Benefit: a single URL per resource. C’mon!
Allow me to further explain…
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When I’m working away from my apartment or the office, I’m usually in a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi. However, occasionally I’ll find myself in a location where the only connection available is via my AT&T account. In order to utilize that from my PowerBook, I’ve configured my BlackBerry Pearl as a Bluetooth modem on Mac OS X 10.5.
I’ve documented the configuration procedure, as a reference for anyone who might find it useful.
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I truly enjoy reading the thoughts and ideas of people who are willing to challenge conventional wisdom. Umair Haque is one of those people. Founder of Bubblegeneration and director of the Havas Media Lab, his posts are always thought provoking.
The focus of his thesis revolves around the transition from a traditional economy to an “edge economy,” and how that shift requires firms to rethink strategy and advantage. He recently wrote an article that generated a fair amount of discussion. In it, he had this to say about an “orthodox” strategy:
Competitive advantage is fundamentally about making markets work less efficiently. One catastrophically effective way to do that is to hide and obscure information – to gain bargaining power relative to the guy on the other side of the table.
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Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, currently advocates for the development of a semantic web, which would allow machines to be able to understand and reason about the data available online. Toward that end, he was recently quoted in an article by The Times. I was intrigued by what he said:
Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
If you still weren’t sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you would know not to claim it as a tax deduction.
It’s about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life.
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The Pirate’s Dilemma is a fascinating new book that takes an in depth look at the impact youth culture is having on nearly every aspect of modern life, including society, economics, and technology. Matt Mason delivers a book that is highly entertaining and filled with thought provoking new perspectives.
As the book explains:
Youth cultures often embody some previously invisible, unacknowledged feeling in society and give it a name.
Often times, this name is applied to entirely new genres of music, which are used to express the ideals behind a movement. The book explores the origins and ideas behind punk, disco, and hip-hop as well as how these forms spread through pirate radio and remixes. Matt Mason’s experience in the music industry gives him unique insights on this topic.
As these trends gain acceptance, they are absorbed into the mainstream. Meanwhile, technology and the Internet is accelerating the pace and increasing the impact. The Pirate’s Dilemma, then, is as follows:
“How should we react to the changing conditions on our ship?”
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