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I’m not sure if it’s a ‘skill’, a ‘knack’, or maybe an ‘art’ (by this point), but I can say that my procrastination abilities have become quite well-honed at B-school.

Case in point: we just wrapped up our MCP project. The MCP is a full-time effort (and then some); there’s no classes in April because of it. While every group scrambled to finish on time, my group’s project was especially back-loaded; lots of analysis couldn’t even get started until last week.

Goes to figure, then, that I’d decide last week was also the perfect time to ‘tag’ my entire iPhoto library with comments and keywords. Doing so is the digital equivalent of rummaging through a shoebox full of old photos and writing helpful notes on the back of each picture, explaining who’s who, etc. It’s exactly the sort of ridiculous undertaking that nobody ever bothers with — unless, of course, there’s other, more important work that needs doing.

But it brings me around to this: one thing you hear, working in the web industry, is that “Metadata Is Expensive”. In other words, “scribbling notes on old photos is time-consuming monkey-work”. And I can say, from recent experience, that that’s true, regardless of whether the photographs are digital or physical. (Metadata, incidentally, is defined as ‘data about data’; on the web, metadata helps classify, describe, or organize web pages.)

You hear this ‘metadata is expensive’ maxim especially in regards to search. Google, for example, gives a cold shoulder to metadata — it reads only the regular, visible words on a web page, and ignores any behind-the-scenes attempts to categorize a website. There’s a bunch of valid reasons for this, namely:

[A] Google patented software techniques which make their current setup pretty awesome [B] Early web history showed people will cheat and write deceptive metadata to lure an audience.
[C] The notion that ‘metadata is expensive’ to create. It just isn’t worth the time.

Obviously, there’s a bit of a vicious cycle with that final point: I can now imagine plenty of people crafting nice, careful metadata code for their websites, if they thought Google might actually use it.

The main reason I’m increasingly confident in the above statement comes from my own recent behavior vis-a-vis iPhoto: apart from the procrastination element, I did have some good reason to slather metadata across my entire iPhoto library. The soon-to-be-released Mac OS X Tiger will supposedly allow me to search against it. Given how I value those pictures greatly, it struck me as being worth the effort to organize my photos. However ‘expensive’ it was. (Just a few hours’ work, really.)

But Google isn’t going to start acknowledging metadata, I think, largely because of reason [A], above. They’re on top of the search-engine world right now, and won’t benefit from rocking the boat. As for [B], I think the web today is capable of solutions that weren’t on the radar in the ‘90’s. And regards [C], well, like I said: ‘expensive’ is relative. People will gladly bear the cost of metadata on things that they personally value, and that extends off the desktop onto the web. See Flickr.com.

So. I’m increasingly of the opinion that if Google doesn’t do metadata, somebody else will. In fact, it seems like one of the obvious avenues for second-tier players like Yahoo, MSN, and Jeeves to gain some competitive advantage in the search space.

And I want to see what that strategy looks like, if it happens. Especially if it provides me new opportunities to put off doing real work.

…quick, then, before they hit the lights, a run-down on Mighty Atom Syndication.

Updated, 2008: And hit the lights they did. For sentimentality’s sake, I’ve reproduced the text of the original article below. This one was fun to write:

Mighty Atom: Really Similar Syndication?

Last time around, we took a look at the increasingly popular graphic, which developers use to signpost links to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) files. Well, RSS has a new competitor now: the upstart Atom Syndication Format.

Atom files can be recognized by their own cute-as-a-button button, . And whether you click or , you still get the same raw-looking XML markup — not quite fit for human consumption. All these cute buttons have a real and practical purpose, though: Site Syndication.

Those corresponding XML files are designed for audiences using the “news aggregators” — sort of like mini Web browsers — much favored by high-volume websurfers. Using a news aggregator, you can browse through the latest updates from a customized set of your favorite websites in just a fraction of the time it takes to do the same thing using Internet Explorer. Also, because syndication files follow a standardized XML-based format, they allow other sites to integrate your latest links and headlines into their pages, automatically.

So, what’s the difference between Atom Syndication and RSS?

It’s kinda like the difference between “newfangled” Philips screwdrivers and “old-fashioned” Slotted screwdrivers. A few fire-eatin’ types may spend their days trolling the rec.arts.woodworking forums, debating the differences of torque capacity thresholds, drill bit cam-out, patent history, and manufacturing-cost issues between these incompatible rivals. But most of us are more or less resigned to keeping both types of screwdrivers in our toolkits — we’ll use whichever one is handy and fits our needs.

Similarly, Atom Syndication and RSS are both tools designed to do the same basic job: advertise and distribute website content by creating machine-readable XML newsfeeds.

Chances are, your choice of syndication format will be influenced largely by your choice of Content Management System. Google’s Blogger, for example, pushes the nascent Atom format and includes a pre-built starter template for Atom feeds and Atom feeds only. (All this, even though Atom is still a work-in-progress, only at version 0.3.) Tripod’s Blog Builder tool, on the other hand, offers an RSS 2.0 generator.

Whether you’re invested in a CMS already or you’re still shopping around, it’s a good idea to have a working understanding of both technologies. We went over all the whys and hows of RSS in “Sharing Your Site With RSS,” so in the pages that follow, we’ll be focusing on Atom, starting with why people bothered to build another site syndication format in the first place.

This blog now seems to be officially shuttered for the summer. ‘Cause it’s sunny out.

Elsewhere, though, there’s this: Metadata, Mark II, an overview of some nifty metadata technologies.

Update, 2008: Webmonkey shuttered its doors not too long after this article was published. I’ve pasted the original text of the article below, for sentimentality’s sake — one of the last freelance writing bits I did while living in Rome…..

Metadata, Mark II: FOAF, RDF, GeoURL, and SMBmeta

Remember META tags? Once upon a time, a finely crafted META keyword tag would get you the bourgeois treatment from search engines. You could specify exactly which search words should be associated with your site and, best of all, META tags were invisible to users, allowing webmasters a touch of the ol’ “editorial liberty.”

Yeah. That didn’t last. Almost instantly, META tags were abused and mis-used by pageview-hungry Web developers, who crammed all sorts of irrelevant and naughty keywords in their pages, trying to shunt the flow of Web traffic their way. And now today Google and other search engines essentially ignore META keyword tags.

(Of course, if you’re absolutely adamant that your page be promoted in response to specific search terms, Google, Yahoo, HotBot and the gang are happy to help, but with an improved targeted-placement technique far less attractive to spammers: It’s called Advertising, and it costs cash-money.)

End of story? That’d be sad, indeed, because META keyword tags were a rather sweet idea, at least on paper: short, sensible descriptions of your site, tailored so that machines could quickly read and index it, and subsequently help people find it.

Well, META’s not dead.

In the pages that follow, I’ll be giving you a bird’s eye view of a few independent technologies, each aspiring to get useful metadata back into the Web. Some are homegrown, some corporate, and some academic, but all of them let you enhance your site with useful information and improve the ways your site is associated with other sites. Sound interesting? Good, then here’s the game plan:

1. We’ll start with an explanation of that metadata word (so we can finally quit italicizing it).

2. Next comes a tour of the platitudes and latitudes of GeoURL, a fun, on-your-site-in-just-ten-minutes META tag that pinpoints your webpage’s real-world location with GPS-style accuracy.

3. Then we’ll check out SMBmeta, a newly launched metadata framework designed to give small businesses their fair share of the Web limelight.

4. We’ll finish up with a macro look at some of the “Semantic Web” standards favored by the W3C: Dublin Core and RDF — and we’ll show them off a bit with FOAF (Friend of a Friend), an application which leverages both those high-minded efforts.

OK then, let’s get started!

Metadata Background

A lot of smart people (like Tim Berners-Lee, who merely invented the Web) are still laboring to make the big dream behind the old “META keyword” come true. That concept is Metadata, which, strictly speaking, means “data about data”, but in our context means “stuff describing your Web page as a whole”: who wrote it, what it’s about, related concepts or categories, the date it was written or updated, the language it’s written in, who controls the copyright, physical locations it describes, if there’s a Table of Contents, etc., etc.

The point is, nobody necessarily wants to see all those details cluttering every single Web page. But if that data were invisible, machine-readable, and used to describe both the contents and context of Web pages, that would open a lot of possibilities, allowing Things of Great Niftiness to ensue. The W3C calls this ambitious idea the “Semantic Web”:

“The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.” Scientific American, May 2001

So having a metadata-rich Web wouldn’t just improve our user experience as we search and surf the Web, but it would also augment the ability for “robots” or software agents to collect and process information on our behalf.

When people talk about the “Semantic” Web adding meaning to the Web, it’s not really for you and me — you and I generally understand whatever we’re reading, and know which links we need to click to get certain tasks done — it’s about adding meaning that machines can process and navigate.

Whoooo! Robots! Software Agents!

Indeed. Which brings us to this rather key caveat: In this tutorial, we’ll be looking at a mishmash of different technologies that are not yet widely adopted, and may well never be. (That includes the aforementioned Robot Agents.) As of press time, not a one of these technologies will deliver the slightest boost to your Google PageRank or your listing on HotBot. And there’s absolutely no guarantee they will in the future.

Still, ‘tis better to lead than follow, and more fun to fiddle with emergent tech than to wait for the “critical masses” to show up and master it before you, right?

Let’s start, then, with a metadata application already adopted by thousands of webloggers, because it’s fun and entertaining but keeps its feet firmly anchored in the real world: GeoURL.

My tennis coach used to boast how, any woman he scored a date with, he took to Jack In The Box, specifically, the drive-thru window, via his Honda GoldWing.

He made it apparent — I was just 10 or 12 years old, then — that this exercise had been repeated times innumerable; the point was never to impress, nor to anger (nor to bed, I now imagine), but rather, to suss out that special lass capable of enjoying his company on a longer-term basis.

Computer afficionados seeking similarly high-risk/reward romance should consider an evening spent soldering His N’ Hers’ GameBoy lightshields, including a requisite trip to RadioShack for white LED #276-320 . (Both ours work dandily.)

For that unlikely second date, keep your eye on portablemonopoly.com — they’re promising retrofit-kits that’ll backlight existing GBA’s.

And as for the games… here’s a piece I recently wrote for WIRED magazine.

Meet Audrey: a conglomeration of the command line and the curvaceous, the ubercute and the Unix-y.

And while ‘Audrey Hacking’ may sound like ‘her’ full name, it’s actually the definitive guide to tinkering with 3com’s now-discontinued ‘ergo’ Net appliance — great fun for those intrigued by DNS spoofs and QNX shells.

With a fine browser, datebook, plus new mp3, caller ID, and picture frame hacks, you’ll soon see, Audrey is quite likable indeed. And now available for pennies on the dollar.

(Ours sits stately on the kitchen counter, for quite a number of reasons.)

“Down From the Top of Its Game” is a neat, in-depth analysis into the story of Infocom, Inc. Neat, at least, to those who know/care/remember what Infocom was…