[uf-discuss] Google Base API

[David Janes]

Google Base is explicitly trying to do something that Microformats are
not: boil the ocean, or in this particular case, a sea in the ocean.

Google Base silos are basically spreadsheets; each record is a row in
the spreadsheet. How do you model that in Microformats? In fact, the
best/easiest way of modeling that is supported by Google Base: you can
upload CSV files. The Google Base data API just provides a simple way
of expressing that spreadsheet in XML. Marc Canter's bizarre rant this
morning about standards aside, I know of no standard alternative way
to do this. RDF/XML is too expressive, Microformats doesn't try to be
expressive outside of defined problems.

BTW: I demoed in April a quick and dirty hCalendar to Google Calendar
translator (the API to Google Calendar is GData). I didn't pursue this
any further except to demo as a trick because Google didn't provide a
mechanism for 3rd parties to post on your behalf, which meant your
password would have to be given up. With AuthSub [2] this is no longer
an issue so perhaps it's worth reinvestigating.

Regards, etc...
David

[1] http://blog.davidjanes.com/:search:democamp
[2] http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/authsub.html

On 8/24/06, Scott Reynen <scott at randomchaos.com> wrote:
> On Aug 24, 2006, at 12:27 PM, Chris Messina wrote:
>
> > However, microformats seem a whole lot easier and a lower barrier to
> > entry in many respects (though they'd have to get involved in the
> > community process which may be too slow for them). At the very least,
> > supporting both microformats and their own made up magical API would
> > be a nice overture.
>
> If you think a microformats API to Google Base would be useful, why
> not build one on top of the existing API?  Live applications make for
> more compelling arguments.
>
> Peace,
> Scott
>
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