August 16, 2003

Chris Pirillo has been touting the advantages of RSS and aggregators as an alternate to email for marketing. RSS is such a good idea that it has two standards. I'm not going join the which is better argument here. There is a time and a place for that and I think it involves alcohol. Sooner or later the combatants will hammer out their differences and we can go on to the next big thing.

I'm seeing more weblog posts that have pseudo html tags such as <rant> or <whine> right in the blog. No hidden bowels of the blog magic here. These tags are right out there in plain sight. These tags have value because they give the reader a hint of what is going on in the mind of the writer. What we don't have is a standard for these pst's (plain sight tags).

So why do we need a standard? Because without a standard you can not abuse the standard. Plus creating a standard is a good reason to get together and argue over what should or shouldn't be in the standard. Then once the standard is set, we would finally be free to ignore the standard, just like in the real world.

So here is my proposal for the base plain sight tags that all webloggers would be required (by the standard) to learn. Each tag will have a corresponding closing tag just like real html.

• <politically incorrect></politically incorrect>
• <tongue in cheek></tongue in cheek>
• <sob story></sob story>
• <drunken rant></drunken rant>
• <vain reference to myself><vain reference to myself>
• <well I thought it was funny></well I thought it was funny>
• <no I didn't look it up><no I didn't look it up>
• <senior moment></senior moment>
• <incoherent drivel></incoherent drivel>
• <passionate plea></passionate plea>
• <sheepish retraction></sheepish retraction>
• <feeble excuse></feeble excuse>
• <dog ate my blog></dog ate my blog>

Of course there is also a pst for professional writers. <don't blame me my editor approved this>

At first I thought that we should allow abreviations like "damb" for "dog ate my blog" but if we eliminate abreviations think how much longer your weblog posts would be.

I open the floor to questions...