Category Archives: Microformats

Google Profiles, namespace lock-in & social search

I’d originally intended to respond to Joshua Schacter’s post about URL shorteners and how they’re merely the tip of the data iceberg, but since I missed that debate, Google has fortuitously plied me with an even better example by releasing custom profile URLs today.
My point is to reiterate one of Tim O’Reilly’s ever-prescient admonishments about [...]

Where data goes when it dies and other musings

I’ve been wanting to write about Ma.gnolia’s catastrophic data loss last week ever since it happened, but wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to approach it. Larry (Ma.gnolia founder and the sole person who maintained the site) is a good friend of mine, and Ma.gnolia was one of Citizen Agency’s first clients. It’s been [...]

Inventing contact schemas for fun and profit! (Ugh)

And then there were three.
Today, Yahoo! announced the public availability of their own Address Book API. Though Plaxo and LinkedIn have been using this API behind the scenes for a short while, today marks the first time the API is available for anyone who registers for an App ID to make use of the bi-directional [...]