Aquarionics

Epistula V MPT

Epistula verses MPT

GPL

Not yet, maybe one day. Currently BSD.

FreeDB

MySQL, check. Soon (I hope) anything that PEAR::DBI supports.

Output to XML

Good idea.

non-crufty URLs.

• http://base/2003/05/02/oneMeaningfulWordFromTheTitle, Not yet.
• No system-specfic cruft. Check (/journal doesn’t count)
• No Queries, Check
• No file format, Check
• Seperate page per entry, Check

Daily URLs

check.

Monthly URLs

check.

Yearly URLs

check. Cool :-)

Each entry has a title, a category string, contents, time posted (auto-generated), and one or more objects

Check.

Summeries

Not yet.

Faceted Categories.

Well, you can currently narrow down any entry via all the metadata I hold on it, so maybe check.

Hierarchical Categories.

Check :)

Automatic subdivision of categories

Neat idea, but would require keywords so we could tell which should go in which new cat, so maybe not for Aquarionics

Multiple categories per item

Check. (By the requirements, when I include such things as GPS data this becomes more complicated, but for now, check)

RSS for Weblog

Check.

RSS per cat.

Check

Ping weblogs.com

Check

Automatically convert Slashdotted entries to static pages, and switch back to dynamic generation once the traffic subsides.

A page that is being slashdotted becomes static because of the Funky Caching. Some day soon, I want cached pages to be served as static, rather than the minimum of PHP that this currently uses, so Checkish

Creative Commons.

I don’t like them, but others might. Noted.

Web Interface

Check

LinuxSTEP Interface

Not Check. Never heard of it until today :)

metaWeblog API

Blogger API, yes. Not metaWeblog, yet. This has less to do with my thoughts on it as a standard, than it is that, basically, I don’t like closed standards, something that’s not helped by my irrational irritation with the person who invented it. Not that BloggerAPI is more open, but the development of it is at least community lead. So one day, when I’m bored, this will happen. Not before.

Accept entries sent by e-mail

Don’t like the authentication issues on this one, but noted.

Make it easy to send entries from a mobile phone

Hmm. SMS Gateway.

Me like.

Import entries from Blogger, Radio, Manila, Movable Type, etc.

I’ve imported them from Blogger (I changed my template to a psudo XML one and ran regexs to turn it into SQL). But yes, noted.

Sam added PingBack, TrackBack and Comments to this list.

Check.

So I agree with everything except the metaWeblogAPI thing. So, where’s the conflict? You can’t have drama without conflict! So my conflict is with the metaWeblogAPI (MWA). My problem is, basically, that it was written by Dave Winer, a man who’s technical abilities I respect, but who is to any social software as a megaton bomb is to a hippy commune. I’ve never seen him work with the community. I’ve seen him work with Biiiig fuckoff companies to get his standards, and Biiiig fuckoff organisations to get his message across, but not the community. I’m going to write the whole RSS fiasco off as a contest of egos, but basically some people developed RSS 1.0 as an open, community created standard (They shouldn’t have done, because it wasn’t theirs to fuck around with, but I digress) which Dave looked at, smiled fixedly at for a while, and said “Some good ideas”, took the good ideas, put them and RSS0.9 out as RSS2, and continued to develop it as a closed standard.

But as I say, I’m writing that off. What he did to the Blogger API thing, however, was to look at it, impliment it, and then run with it. We had a name for that back when Microsoft was doing it to HTML and RTF. We called it “Embrace and Extend” and we meant it as an insult. It’s one thing to develop a competing standard against someone in the same field. It’s quite another to take the pre-existing standard, add stuff until the original author’s app won’t support it, and publish it as your own work. Esspecially when said developers are working on V2, which supports everything your brand new thing does, and was developed with the support and recommendations of the people who were implimenting it, communicated via an email list.

That was a rant. It’s over now. There’s a point in there somewhere.