December 11th, 2005 · Comments Off
About Participo: We’re a consultancy based in Manchester,
UK. We use a collaborative and innovation-lead approach, empowering
groups to discover, learn and share their organisation’s knowledge and
ideas.
PowerPoint -> opml convertor
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looks interesting – a way to convert PowerPoint to OPML.
Interesting, because most of the thinking and intellectual output in
companies I’ve dealt with is exclusively locked in PowerPoint. People
think, create and share ideas in this hideous program, but sharing is via email.
And people in orgs are collaborating, they’re sending ppt’s back and
forth – editing eachother words, fleshing out ideas and building joint
visions.
So, if you want to get people to share outlines, and get opml in as
a file format into these eplaces, a ppt -> opml convertor is a smart
opening salvo…
The Outliner in PowerPoint is nonexistant, so maybe this will introduce other tools into the thinking workplace. It’ll take a lot to wean people off ppt addiction.
Plus PPT is notoriously inflexible as a shared format – far better to get it into searchable text.
And it’s interesting that the site is setup by Jim Moore, he of the $100mil RSS Fund.
Hmmm, Hust saw the post
on Jim Moore’s blog…interesting, he seems to be focused on the
shareability of opml as a format and therefore the need to get ppt
-> opml:
“My own rationale is that OPML can be a used as a universal knowledge format. OPML features outines in an open format that can be indexed, searched, shared, combined, and written and read with free tools.”
So opml becomes the de-facto, structured information sharing format? Makes a lot of sense.
(Via Dave Winer.)
Tags: Economics and cybenetics
December 11th, 2005 · Comments Off
If you want to subscribe to my blog through Feedburner, here is the source URL:
” title=”http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jim/xml/rss.xml
” target=”_blank”>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jim/xml/rss…
BTW if you want to see my Manila stats, they are available at GoDaddy.com, also fall down
here, at least for RSS. And yet what traffic is growing? What
traffic is more efficient for users? What traffic rewards
loyalty? What traffic follows relationships that are close enough
to see growth in interaction? RSS.
Tags: Economics and cybenetics
December 11th, 2005 · Comments Off
Bravo to Massachusetts for raising the question.
In early
2005,
Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration and Finance in
>Massachusetts, was the first government official in the
United States
to publicly connect open formats to a public policy purpose: “It is an
overriding imperative of the American democratic system that we cannot
have our public documents locked up in some kind of proprietary format,
perhaps unreadable in the future, or subject to a proprietary system
license that restricts access.”
[1]At a September 16, 2005 meeting with the Mass Technology Leadership Council Kriss stated that he believes this is fundamentally an issue of sovereignty. [2]
While supporting the principle of private intellectual property rights,
he said sovereignty trumped any private company’s attempt to control
the state’s public records through claims of intellectual property. [3]
(from Wikipedia here)
But let’s be sure we are considering all the answers.
There are two types of business ecosystems out there, each with potential answers.
1. There is the open business ecosystem based on Web 2.0 and RSS and OPML.
The RSS and OPML-enabled revolution of Web 2.0 is participative in the
most revolutionary sense. Millions of individuals are now contributing
to the Web 2.0 revolution as content producers and writers of web
services. Thousands of small companies are being formed.
These companies are dedicated to providing low-cost, high-performance interoperable services.
2. There are the closed, big company-dominated business ecosystems, encompassing Sun and IBM, as well as Microsoft.
The “openness” of solutions originating in the big company ecosystems is based on manipulating impenetrable processes such as OASIS that only the largest firms can afford to play in. Here is a summary–favorable
to OASIS as far as I can see–of the process. What many observers
note is that despite being an “open process” the cost of
participation in OASIS and similar organizations is enormous, the
complexity is profound, and decisions require years. As a practical
matter small and medium-sized software and services providers as well
as individuals are locked out.
No matter how open the formats, the large-company sector of the
software industry is an oligopoly. It will not matter, at the end
of the day, which company Massachusetts sources from. The result will be
“open” solutions that are enormously complex and that require costly
implementation and ongoing services, regardless of the cost of the
underlying software licenses. This is because the ecosystems of
these companies are closed, and the dominant providers will find a way, absent
competition, to take their pound of flesh from their customers.
Business ecosystem #1 has the better answers.
It is business ecosystem #1, based on Web 2.0 and RSS and OPML that provides the truly open, disruptive alternative
to closed formats, expensive software licenses and isolated silos of
information. This is because the industry is an open ecosystem,
with many many players. Most of those reading this post belong to the
Web
2.0 world. Let’s make sure we tell the world of government,
especially here in Massachusetts, that we exist.
P.S. Note to politicians in Massachusetts: NONE of the big
companies involved in the current dispute are headquartered here in
Massachusetts.
Many many of the small and medium-sized firms at the forefront of the
Web 2.0 revolution are headquartered in Massachusetts and/or funded by
venture capital companies located here.
Massachusetts was the center of the minicomputer revolution.
Massachusetts was bypassed in the personal computer revolution, with
the exception of a few companies like Lotus Development. Massachusetts
gained in the Internet years, creating strong companies that in many
cases weathered boom and bust better than their west coast
competitors. Now we are entering the Web 2.0, RSS, OPML era.
Massachusetts is at near parity with other regions in terms of Web
2.0. I am sure that many Web 2.0 entrepreneurs will be pleased to help
their state government adopt new technology solutions–and I am equally
sure that building a robust base of Web 2.0 companies here in
Massachusetts will be good for our citizens.
This something to think about. We can promote economic growth in
our state through buying Web 2.0 information technology
solutions. And because these solutions are more advanced than the
alternatives, we can also give our state agencies an advantage.
Tags: Economics and cybenetics
December 11th, 2005 · Comments Off
Thanks for noticing the release of OPML workstation PowerPoint to OPML converter and host:
http://blog.grain-of-salt.com/index.php?itemid=78
http://www.furl.net/item.jsp?id=6023256
http://www.globelogger.com/item.php?id=539
http://www.furl.net/item.jsp?id=6023256
http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2005/12/10/502380.aspx
http://platformwars.blogspot.com/2005/12/powerpoint-to-opml.html
http://www.rss-blogger.de/b2e/blogs/index.php/new/2005/12/10/von_powerpoint_zu_opml
http://www.rss-blogger.de/b2e/blogs/index.php?blog=5&title=auf_der_suche_nach_opml&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
http://www.tibsbits.com/nl/?itemid=251
Success criteria for a Universal Document Format
I. There is a general recognition that the world needs a Universal Document Format. Here are five success criteria:
1. Source: Applications such as PowerPoint and StarOffice
should be easily convertable to this Universal Document Format.
2. Use: The format must allow for sharing, searching,
filtering, clustering, merging, and management of the information it
contains, in order to help break down isolated silos and islands of
information.
3. Distribution: The format should be able to be converted
to any one of a number of formats for printing and presentation, as
well as for sending in secure form to clients of all sorts.
4. Simplicity: The format should enable semantic searching, filtering
and clustering by exposing the semantics of the ideas in the document,
and hiding (as much as is practical) any formating or other
idiosyncratic locally-used, application-specific information that is
not relevant to semantic processing.
This format should enable searching, filtering and clustering of
relationships among documents and ideas, and again the format should
suppress proprietary or locally-relevant and application-specific
information that is not relevant to expressing relationships or
semantic content.
5. Vendor neutrality and openness to contributions of small and
medium-sized businesses: As far as possible, a Universal Document
Format should not advantage a single large company or a consortium of
such companies. Ideally the format should be stable, supported by
a wide grass-roots user base in order to assure that the format cannot
be
manipulated or appropriated by one set of powerful companies, and it
should be a format to which many vendors, large and small, are able to
contribute applications. It should be a format supported by an
open business ecosystem, as we will discuss at the conclusion of this
paper.
OPML and RSS meet the criteria better than the “Open Document” approach or the Microsoft XML approach
II. Thus I propose OPML and RSS as a Universal Document Format.
The advantages are fivefold–source, use, distribution, simplicity,
vendor neutrality and openness to contributions of small and
medium-sized businesses:
1. Source: PowerPoint and StarOffice and other application formats can be converted into OPML and RSS.
For example, here is an open free web service that can convert PowerPoint and other files to OPML,
provides free hosting so that others can view and download these files
using a variety of free tools and, at your option, you can be indexed
and published to the whole world.
2. Use: OPML and RSS can be easily managed by a rapidly
expanding world of open web services. Thousands of small and
medium-sized businesses are participating in the OPML and RSS
revolution. Millions of individuals and engaged, and representatives of myriads of businesses and professions.
OPML and RSS are what is
being adopted by the world’s media companies, by Web 2.0 services, by
major search engines and portals, and by millions and millions of users
as they shift from client-based software to open web superservices.
This means that users are benefiting by perhaps the fastest spread of
information technology applications ever seen. This will mean
that a government that adopts OPML and RSS will not be captive of a few
vendors, but will be able to harness the power of a world of
applications and web services.
3. Distribution: OPML and RSS can easily be converted into
PDF, TIFF and any number of presentation and secure document formats.
OPML and RSS can also be easilty converted back into PowerPoint, StarOffice
and other formats for further refinement, and cycling to step one again.
4. Simplicity: RSS and OPML are the simplest of formats, and yet
they enable the incorporation of all essential content. In
particular OPML conveys outlines and
relationships, and incorporates by reference other content, including
but not limited to RSS as well as any other file type or
web service that can be envisioned.
5. Vendor neutrality and openness to contributions of small and medium-sized businesses:
OPML and RSS are the most stable and the most truly open formats–in
the sense that they are held by a community rather than by
standards-bodies that themselves may be subject to industry
manipulation.
The central RSS specification is owned by Harvard University and is
guided by a board of trustees chartered to create the deepest level of
stability
for adoptors. OPML is a superset of RSS that is the standard upon
which tens of millions of RSS “aggregators” are constructed, and is
evolving within a grassroots community that is open to small and large
businesses alike, and that has garnered the support of most of the
major players in the Web 2.0 revolution. OPML and RSS are at the
center of a rapidly growing, profoundly open ecological community of
users and developers, an open business ecosystem.
Because literally thousands
of vendors are supporting it, many observers predict that OPML and RSS
will without government intervention
become the default standard for
knowledge and information sharing across media companies and business
enterprises. OPML and RSS are well beyond the tipping point, and
are at the center of a booming business and a social movement. If you
are in government, and you don’t believe this, ask your venture capitalist friends.
Government cannot long stand up to movements of the
information technology market as a whole, nor should it. Contrary
to
whatever is adopted by law in Massachusetts or in any other
jurisdiction, it is my prediction that ultimately OPML and RSS and
their natural successors will win in government as well as in enterprises and with consumers. OPML and
RSS and other grassroots formats as they emerge, are simply too
useful and too easy to be stopped.
Open Document Formats versus Open Business Ecosystems
Meanwhile, the fight about the Open Document approach has become a
struggle among large vendors, because these companies understand that
it is not a truly neutral format. It is an open document format being promoted
by a closed business ecosystem of allied companies. Thus proponents are
willing to
spend to lobby for it, and opponents are taking action to stop
it. The fight is currently centered in Massachusetts, where government agencies are lining up for and against being forced to adopt the new format.
The proposal, which was finalized last month, calls for all
electronic documents created by Executive Department agencies after
Jan. 1, 2007, to utilize only formats deemed “open,” which include
OpenDocument and Adobe’s PDF.
OpenDocument is the centerpiece in the new OpenOffice.org 2.0 release, but is not supported by Microsoft Office.
If it goes through, government employees will be forced to
migrate systems to other productivity suites that could include
StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, KOffice and IBM Workplace.
As expected, Microsoft responded harshly to the plan, calling
it “inconsistent and discriminatory.” The company said it has no
intention to add support for the OASIS backed format, but will listen
to customer feedback on the issue. However, Microsoft has left the door
open by announcing it will implement PDF capabilities in Office 12 next
year.
More recently, Microsoft has taken action to have its own XML-based
formats certified as open by an alternative standards organization, and
is now arguing that state agencies in Massachusetts should be able to
choose among formats deemed open.
Unfortunately, this is a fight among dinosaurs. The open formats
in question are the expressions of largely closed industry
ecosystems. Meanwhile, the new open business ecosystem based on RSS and
OPML is flourishing.
The answer to the dilemma is simple. Convert the outputs of
applications from both camps into a format that is at the center of the
most open business ecosystem on earth. Convert outputs from all
applications into truly open and neutral OPML and RSS. Then stand
back and benefit as you become able to search, sort and share knowledge
using the tools and services that are evolving so quickly in the wider
marketplace.
It is open business ecosystems that benefit customers, not open formats.
Open ecosystems are open to small and large businesses. Open
business ecosystems are open to customers and their creative ideas. Open
business ecosystems are open to the future, and to the grassroots political
activity that is increasingly powerful across the information
technology landscape. Come on Massachusetts–go grassroots!
Open document formats and open business ecosystems are not equivalent!
