Posts about Web Standards (RSS, JSON)

9AM — The Podcast Standards Project is a new initiative to promote the use of open standards, as in RSS, as the backbone for podcasting-content delivery. The project is created at a time when big VC-backed companies are piggy-backing onto the current podcasting hype to lock listeners into their platforms.

Cameron Moll:

The environment out of which The Podcast Standards Project sprang is not unlike the environment from which The Web Standards Project (WaSP), a similar consortium established to protect the open nature of the web, emerged in its early years:

“When The Web Standards Project (WaSP) formed in 1998, the web was the battleground in an ever-escalating war between two browser makers—Netscape and Microsoft—who were each taking turns ‘advancing’ HTML to the point of collapse. You see, in an effort to one-up each other, the two browsers introduced new elements and new ways of manipulating web documents; this escalated to the point where their respective 4.0 versions were largely incompatible.” (source)

This bears a strong resemblance to podcasting today. Without the establishment of PSP and the support of its allies, podcasting risks becoming a closed environment held captive by only a handful of dominant players who may have competing, commercially-defined priorities that drive disjoined, proprietary visions of podcasting’s future.

I’m not huge on podcasts, but any effort to keep a part of the Web open and accessible, despite big corporations’ worst intentions to wall it off, is a worthwhile effort.