I think, eventually, the TrackBack notification format should supplant the weblogs.com ping format. Why? Although weblogs.com sports a plain vanilla HTTP POST interface, the implementations in weblog software are overwhelmingly RPC-based. This is not as good as it could be, because it means that endpoints other than weblogs.com need to use XML-RPC libraries to parse incoming pings.

And for what? Two lousy pieces of data. Compare this to the POST-based TrackBack format and the far richer data it contains. But a TrackBack isn’t the same as an update notification. TrackBack creates a relationship from one post to another post on another weblog, or posts across categories. To my knowledge, no weblog software emits a non-contextual, TrackBack-compatible update notification.

Of course, one could argue: I don’t need all that data, I’ll go look at the site myself when I get the ping, kthx.

Which brings us to the question of technologies like mod_pubsub when applied to weblogs. Email notifications and polling for RSS updates every half-hour are good enough for most. So is there any benefit to having those update notifications contain more info, and occur in real time? Not fake real time, like rapid polling, but smart URL-based routing with push for clients that support it. I dunno, you tell me.

Previously: Wishbringing

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