rss/ical combination

January 2, 2007

I’ve not seen any signs we’re quite there yet, though searching for “ical/ics” and “rss enclosure” does bring up some interesting ideas. In short, what I am hoping to see is something like the following:

When I’m authoring a blog entry, I can add specific event information (date/time/location/etc) which gets added to the RSS feed for that blog. The data could be in its own format, but it likely makes more sense to use the ical format. Whether this is embedded directly in the RSS or a reference to an automatically created ics file doesn’t really matter to me - both could be fine.

Feeds carrying references to audio files became known as ‘podcasts’. While the main focus - the audio file - was intended for media players, the other data in the RSS stream provides valuable context and can be used on its own in feed readers. While many podcast feeds are solely the audio file, beyond a title and a short description, that’s just how it is now, not how it has to be. All the data in the RSS feed can be complimentary, and in my view, event information is perfectly suited for some form of standardized inclusion process in RSS feeds.

I know that a lot of people ’subscribe’ to ICS files directly, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to go about it. My biggest concern is that there’s not enough meta-data around the event info. In some cases there doesn’t need to be much, but in other cases, more data would help. By my reading of ICS, it’s not XML based, and there are defined standards for what fields are to be included. I imagine it degrades gracefully, ignoring unknown keywords, but something still feels very utilitarian about it (not necessarily a bad thing, but doesn’t seem to leave room for much innovation).

EXAMPLE: In a blog post, I can add a long description of the event, links to more info, such as maps, etc. Perhaps even include an audio or video file to describe the event in more detail. Current readers can be extended to incorporate this new info whenever, adding new functionality. Imagine the google rss reader offering to add event information from the feed items you’re reading directly in to your google calendar. While I’m not the biggest google fan, they’re a convenient example because they own both components right now - I can’t think of too many companies that do (does MS? I’d think so).

I’m probably not putting this very eloquently, but I hope I get the idea across. This seems like it’s something that needs to come from one of the big players, or perhaps a consortium, to get momentum, otherwise it’s just someone else’s half-baked code idea

Addition:

I think the bigger hurdle here is adoption on the reader side (is it that obvious?). If someone like feedburner would make the option to ‘add to ical, add to yahoo cal, add to outlook’, etc in their feed processing for ical data associated with a blog post, that would probably ensure adoption right there.

Posted in Blogging, Business, Design, Development, Ideas, Microsoft, PHP, Podcasts, Speech, Web, XML, opensource