Blogging Roller

RSS advistory board: The RSS Profile makes it easier for feed publishers and programmers to implement RSS 2.0, offering advice on issues that arise as you develop software that employs the format. For 18 months, the board worked with the RSS community on interoperability issues, receiving help from representatives at Bloglines, FeedBurner, Google, Microsoft, Netscape, Six Apart and Yahoo. The profile tackles the most frequently asked questions posed by developers:

1. How many enclosures can an item contain?
2. Are relative URLs OK in item descriptions?
3. Is it OK to use HTML in elements other than an item's description?

For the answers, read the sections on enclosures, item descriptions and character data, respectively. Sam Ruby announced this morning that the Feed Validator now tests for conformance to the profile, offering 11 new checks for improving interoperability.

Kudos to the RSS Advistory Board. The RSS Profile is an excellent guide to publishing RSS. Plus, it's very nice to see the confusing parts of RSS clarified and to see those clarifications linked to from the RSS spec.

Just got it today to replace my old handed-down '91 Honda Accord. Favorite features: 49 MPG and an audio jack for my iPod. As far as I can tell, my employer Sun offers no incentive for buying a hybrid but the IRS offers a $2100 tax credit for the Civic Hybrid which is not bad at all.

Joe Cheng: I’m starting a (hopefully short) series of blog posts documenting the specifics of how the upcoming AtomPub-enabled release of Windows Live Writer will behave, and what AtomPub-enabled blog* servers can do to ensure the best interop with us. I also hope other blog client implementers can learn from our experience and consider using the same rules and behaviors we do when implementing their own AtomPub support.

Very nice. I'll be watching this one closely, looking for ways to improve Roller's and ROME's AtomPub support.