path: root/old/published/tantektranscript.txt

12:04:10 PM luxagraf: tantek-
12:04:33 PM luxagraf: hello this is scott gilbertson from wired news. i met you at SXSW at the microformats panel...
12:04:33 PM tantekc: greetings
12:05:12 PM luxagraf: I'm working on an article/how-to sort of piece for wired on microformats and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.
12:05:56 PM tantekc: hi scott, yes, absolutely, but can it wait until 10:30am? i have a couple of meetings this morning
12:06:10 PM luxagraf: sure that's fine.
1:54:02 PM luxagraf: okay. First off how would you describe microformats?
1:54:15 PM luxagraf: Alex Faaborg writes that microformats are "adding semantics to markup to take it from being machine readable to being machine understandable." Would you say that's a fair description of your goals for microformats?
1:56:45 PM tantekc: not really
1:57:03 PM tantekc: i'm not even sure what that means to a normal/average person, or even a normal/average tech-reader
1:59:11 PM luxagraf: well I take it to mean that instead of just parsing the code that machine can recognize that there's something meaningful in the code that can be manipulated. but that is admittedly a bit obscure. 
2:00:02 PM tantekc: http://microformats.org/wiki/what-are-microformats has good summaries
2:01:46 PM luxagraf: so the emphasis is more on easy of reading/writing...
2:01:53 PM luxagraf: by the average person
2:08:16 PM tantekc: and frankly, making even average web pages both more useful and more usable to the average person
2:08:32 PM tantekc: a simple example is the contact/about page for a company
2:09:20 PM tantekc: before microformats, you had to select/copy/switch-to-addressbook/click-in-field/paste the company name, address, phone number, fax, email etc.
2:09:37 PM tantekc: if you do the math, that's like 5 steps per field
2:10:07 PM tantekc: if you assume 5 fields (which is being conservative, given that address alone is typically street, city, state, zip)
2:10:28 PM tantekc: then that's like 25 steps/actions! just to copy contact info to your address book from a web page!
2:11:36 PM tantekc: OTOH if you go to today's hCard microformatted contact info pages, e.g.: http://technorati.com/about/contact.html
2:11:46 PM tantekc: and click the "Add to Address Book" link
2:12:12 PM tantekc: with a single click you are able to add contact info as one logical "chunk" of information to your addressbook. presto.
2:12:19 PM tantekc: making existing common things more usable.
2:13:05 PM tantekc: similarly for events on web pages (where you have to copy paste the date, title, location etc.) and hCalendar
2:13:15 PM tantekc: which enables one click add to calendar
2:13:57 PM luxagraf: provided you have operator installed right? or does that work regardless of browser?
2:14:10 PM tantekc: in that URL I gave you - regardless of browser
2:14:21 PM tantekc: because the page has a "Add to Address Book" link
2:14:30 PM luxagraf: right, but for the hCalendar 
2:14:42 PM tantekc: which does the address book transformation for you
2:14:42 PM tantekc: for hCalendar, same thing
2:14:46 PM tantekc: see http://barcamp.org/ for an example
2:15:23 PM luxagraf: ah. okay. I didn't know that.
2:16:05 PM tantekc: individuals can do it too, for the events they are attending or speaking at
2:16:20 PM tantekc: e.g the "Subscribe..." link on the left side of my blog near the events: http://tantek.com/
2:18:12 PM luxagraf: one of the things that I've noticed about microformats is that as more and more sites start to use them, they almost take the place of an API... the data that you might be trying to aggregate or pull in is right in the page and can be parsed out without using a formal API (in simple cases anyway). Do you see that as something microformats will be used for more in the future?
2:18:30 PM tantekc: precisely!
2:18:39 PM tantekc: and here's the key to that
2:18:43 PM luxagraf: For instance edgeio is scraping hListing data
2:18:44 PM tantekc: *any* HTML author can add microformats
2:18:47 PM tantekc: you don't need to be a programmer
2:18:50 PM tantekc: as opposed to an API
2:18:55 PM luxagraf: right
2:19:01 PM tantekc: which requires someone who at least has some backend programming skills
2:19:11 PM tantekc: and microformats sometimes even do a *better* job
2:19:19 PM tantekc: because they reflect the *actual data* visible on the page
2:19:23 PM tantekc: which is often what people want anyway
2:19:30 PM tantekc: rather than some random abstraction that a programmer came up with
2:19:44 PM tantekc: microformats can handle 80/20 of API needs on typical sites like that
2:19:59 PM tantekc: and will scale more easily to more sites
2:20:26 PM tantekc: since there are 100x if not 1000x more people that can edit a little simple HTML, rather than code some indecipherable Perl/Python etc.
2:20:41 PM tantekc: lower barriers to entry for publishing are key
2:20:49 PM tantekc: imagine if every site could be mashed up
2:24:22 PM luxagraf: right and it also takes some burden off the site developers as well, they don't have to design an api
2:25:04 PM tantekc: yes, or rather the easy ones
2:27:59 PM luxagraf: so there's really two levels here, the user interaction through the page and then the mashup between sites for those that know a little bit of html
2:31:31 PM tantekc: and then there's the search level too
2:32:11 PM tantekc: just as today's SEO folks are slowly discovering that valid semantic XHTML that uses <h1> for top level headings and other such proper semantic tags work well on today's well established search engines
2:33:06 PM tantekc: by marking up contacts with hCard, events with hCalendar, reviews with hReview, listings with hListing, search engines will be (and are) able to find that information on those sites better
2:33:50 PM tantekc: in fact some microformats are already being parsed and handled by the big search engines
2:34:15 PM tantekc: e.g. rel-license, the microformat for license links, is parsed and supported by Google and Yahoo's license/CC search
2:36:33 PM tantekc: rel-tag is supported by Technorati and others for browsing tagged blog posts
2:37:04 PM tantekc: Technorati has a technology preview of contacts/events/reviews search on http://kitchen.technorati.com/
2:37:13 PM tantekc: Alexa has a prototype hCard search from data from their crawls
2:37:34 PM tantekc: And of course edgeio.com already incorporates hListing support in the search *and* results.
2:41:22 PM luxagraf: how do feel about Firefox adding microformat support, do you think that browser support is necessary or is it sort on a nice, but non essential aspect?
2:41:49 PM tantekc: I think it is an essential step
2:42:01 PM tantekc: it makes it that much easier for both users and content/site publishers
2:42:24 PM tantekc: There is a lot of potential as demonstrated by plugins like Operator
2:42:43 PM tantekc: the way it uses microformats to seamlessly let you move around big logical chunks of information
2:42:46 PM tantekc: among various sites you use
2:42:58 PM tantekc: it makes all of those sites more useful
Changed status to Offline (2:44:03 PM)
Changed status to Online (2:53:28 PM)
2:57:35 PM luxagraf: tantek- thanks for your time. I think I have enough stuff for the article. my editor wanted me to ask if there was a photo of you on flickr or the like that he could use for the story...
2:58:21 PM tantekc: something microformats related perhaps?
2:58:27 PM tantekc: let me check...
2:59:22 PM luxagraf: I guess so. he said if it's easier he can come by your office and take one, I guess you're just around the corner from wired.
3:02:19 PM tantekc: this is a good one: http://flickr.com/photos/kk/389322202/ - i think kk would give permission if you simply attributed the photo to him.
3:08:22 PM luxagraf: okya that'll work. Thanks again
3:21:07 PM tantekc: great! let me know if i can be of further assistance. KK's email is kk@kriskrug.com BTW if you want to email him to ask permission to use the photo.
3:21:34 PM luxagraf: cool. thank you.
Changed status to Idle (3:34:50 PM)