[Chester LUG] https://identi.ca

[Ben Arnold]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 09:52:15PM +0000, robin592 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> I am simultaneously interested and confused.

A dangerous combination... for everyone but yourself :)


> How does this compare to something like RSS?

> Is that a really stupid question?

Not at all. Indeed there's feeds of stuff, but that's as far as it goes.

RSS is a standard way of consuming a feed of items: a document (XML)
format that defines how to link to an item and provide a bit of detail
(title, body, published date) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS#Example
You may have software to consume the feed document, and it regularly
requests an updated list of it's items.

ActivityStreams are, simply, a much richer definition for the Item. It's
the document format that Pump.io uses to serialise activities. Stuff can
be added at will: the data published in Les' post may describe his
camera (a "device" maybe with it's name and manufacturer/product URL)
and where he took the photo (a "place" that has an "address" and the
lat/long/alt "position"). If a really good Pump.io website or app - it's
a protocol, the websites can represent it however they want - understood
what a "place" was then it could draw a map and pin. That extra "place"
info will literally be tacked on the end of the post data. What could
RSS display of all this? Just the title, a blurb of text and URL to the
post (https://identi.ca/note/wfohb2obr23 or whatever).

(The federation and decentralisation features aren't really relevent in
this reply focussing on data formats.)


Goodnight,
Ben


--
Ben Arnold
Liverpool, UK

Free Software Foundation (Europe)
e: benarnold at fsfe.org | ben at seawolfsanctuary.com
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