Saturday, October 01, 2005
Change of Course (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)
Let's start with the question: "Who is Aaron Swartz?"
Aaron Swartz is a student at Stanford. I think he is a sophomore, now. Not sure. He is one of the creators of, what we know of, now, XML. RSS and Atom feeds of sites. If you have a "My Yahoo!" page, then you have seen what XML can do. I've had a "My Yahoo!" page, pretty much, since they started the service. The content available shot through the roof some time last year. The reason was that Yahoo found a way to make XML work for them.
It's a great way to get all of the text from a site without anything else. That makes for a very small document that loads very fast into your computer. Generally, it includes links to the full version. That way you can see all the graphics, and what have you, if you want.
(As a sidenote, for years, developments in the internet were measured in how rich you could make something in multimedia content. RSS and Atom feeds are an innovation that simplifies things ... takes things back to the "old days" of the internet. In fact, most RSS pages remind me of the the way that the online service Prodigy presented information circa 1995.)
XML has, also, been a part of the blog world. Most of the blogs that I know of have some type of XML feed.
Aaron was part of that. In fact, he was one of the first major voices to be heard from the blog world by more traditional media.
The kid has a voice that is insightful, thought-provoking, humorous, and modest.
As an almost-40 year old fart, I have been reading this kid's stuff for a while. In fact, Aaron Swartz is one of the people that I was thinking of when I wrote this. We don't, necessarily, agree on things. However, what he has to say is ... I would have guessed that he had at least a Masters degree, and was, at least, 10 years older, when I first read his stuff.
He has started an online magazine. The article, linked in the title, lays out how he is going to make his magazine conform to the norms of contemporary journalistic integrity, in regards to the traditional sources.
Aaron Swartz is a student at Stanford. I think he is a sophomore, now. Not sure. He is one of the creators of, what we know of, now, XML. RSS and Atom feeds of sites. If you have a "My Yahoo!" page, then you have seen what XML can do. I've had a "My Yahoo!" page, pretty much, since they started the service. The content available shot through the roof some time last year. The reason was that Yahoo found a way to make XML work for them.
It's a great way to get all of the text from a site without anything else. That makes for a very small document that loads very fast into your computer. Generally, it includes links to the full version. That way you can see all the graphics, and what have you, if you want.
(As a sidenote, for years, developments in the internet were measured in how rich you could make something in multimedia content. RSS and Atom feeds are an innovation that simplifies things ... takes things back to the "old days" of the internet. In fact, most RSS pages remind me of the the way that the online service Prodigy presented information circa 1995.)
XML has, also, been a part of the blog world. Most of the blogs that I know of have some type of XML feed.
Aaron was part of that. In fact, he was one of the first major voices to be heard from the blog world by more traditional media.
The kid has a voice that is insightful, thought-provoking, humorous, and modest.
As an almost-40 year old fart, I have been reading this kid's stuff for a while. In fact, Aaron Swartz is one of the people that I was thinking of when I wrote this. We don't, necessarily, agree on things. However, what he has to say is ... I would have guessed that he had at least a Masters degree, and was, at least, 10 years older, when I first read his stuff.
He has started an online magazine. The article, linked in the title, lays out how he is going to make his magazine conform to the norms of contemporary journalistic integrity, in regards to the traditional sources.
