Pocket Casts has come up with a new feature called Playlists. I was able to figure out how to use it in a few minutes using their web app. Questions. Is there an open format behind this feature? Can I create a playlist outside of Pocket Casts? Can I use a PC playlist in another app? Pocket Casts comes from Automattic so I would expect the answers to be yes, given how committed they are to the web, and how podcasting is of the web. The most logical open format to use here would be imho RSS 2.0.#The feed validator operated by the W3C is kind of frozen in time, and imho has a very odd perspective on things. So I tried using ChatGPT as a feed validator, and it was totally up to the job. #
- I've been using the term of the web, starting in a piece I wrote last Monday. Now it's time to explain more about what it means because I used the term in the context of Pocket Casts in an earlier post. #
- For a piece of software, being of the web means that it is built to share data with other apps, ones that receive data as input, as a feed reader consumes feeds, or generate output for other apps, e.g. software used to publish feeds. Or competitive apps, that do roughly the same thing another app does, and want to be able to receive the user's data, or better, share the users' data so they can use both apps (we shouldn't settle for less than this, imho). #
- Of the web means you're signed on to letting users move data wherever it makes sense to them to. #
- These days people use the term "web" to mean basically something you can view in a web browser. But that does not mean it is of the web. If Bluesky for example were of the web, it would mean you could add a feature to it without rewriting the whole thing. #
- This fantastic web is what the silos destroyed, starting with Twitter in 2006. They made the software simpler to use because all the feed reader developers were trying to wall off this part of the web for themselves. Going to WordCamp was invigorating for me, because the people I met there were very much of the web as far as I could tell. And they were young enough to not have been part of the initial web, they've never had the experience of plug and play between apps. I want desperately to develop a small web playground for us to explore all the possibilities. #
- There's a reason the web is called the web. Visualize what it's capable of doing as a web. It's not just a word, it's concept, a very important one. #
- PS: I looked around the web for illustrations of a spider's web but they're all too orderly too symetric. The point of a web in real life, the kind that spiders make, is they are chaotic and ad hoc. Like the web we make on the internet. #