DABU Archive
These posts are all in this one category.
DABU, the free blogging service I created, got a bit of blogging buzz this weekend when one of the most read bloggers in the world, Robert Scoble, launched a "developer's challenge" - with a unique prize: He would switch blogging services to whichever service could answer the challenge first.
The challenge was to have full OPML support.
Well, silly me, even though I knew what OPML was, and was a beta tester for Dave Winer's OPML Editor, and was at Gnomedex when Dave said OPML was the next big thing, but I still didn't have OPML support in DABU. So like any self-respecting geek, I stayed up late and added it.
It took just a couple hours - the hard part was finding a standard to follow, Dave's site wouldn't loading (it does now), and OPML.org (also run by Dave) didn't answer the questions I had. No sweat, I found Dave's OPML implementation, and used as my spec. I got it working, and even tested it in Dave's OPML Editor and it worked on the first try.
So I posted on Scoble's comments "DABU supports OPML" with a few links so people could test it.
Unfortunately I wasn't the first to post a response.
The next morning Tim Macrina, who graciously hosts DABU and my other projects, messaged me excited but slightly worried: "What if Scoble switches to DABU - how much bandwidth would that be?" I told him not to worry: "What are the chances that Scoble would actually leave his current URL?"
Then I started getting a bunch of congratulatory emails. Scoble announced on his site that he's going to use DABU.
Whoa!
I gave Scoble a call to talk about the bandwidth potential. It didn't seem as bad as Tim and I expected. Tim was ready to order another T1 if it came down to it.
However, the story doesn't end there. People started getting angry. Specifically, Linux, WordPress, and Apache fans. The terms of the challenge were that he was going to switch to the first service to support OPML. The big question was: I Scoble choosing DABU over WordPress because DABU is hosted on a Windows machine whereas WordPress is on a Linux box, even though WordPress was first?
Scoble is a man of his word, and a huge supporter of the community, and said he'd use WordPress as promissed. Does that put DABU out of the picture? Hardly. He's going to use DABU too, but he hasn't said what for yet.
Scoble story links:
Sept 29: Developer challenge: I'll switch blogs to the first blogging service that supports OPML
Sept 30: New URL appears on DABU, WordPress still in the hunt too
Oct 1: OK, OK, I am gonna use WordPress, but I'm going to use DABU too
The number of DABU sites has doubled this weekend - so thanks for all the press Scoble!
Earlier tonight Scoble issued a Developer Challenge: I'll switch blogs to the first blogging service that supports OPML.
Hmmm.... that's not too hard. I created the OPML support tonight. It only took a few hours.
And... it worked on the first try!
- Posts and photo albums grouped by tag: http://www.DylanGreene.com/opml/tags.xml
- Posts and photo alums group by year: http://www.DylanGreene.com/opml/archive.xml
All DABU sites now have automatic OPML support.
The coolest part is that you can drill down from the list of posts and photos albums down to individual comments and photo captions using OPML tools like OPML Editor from Dave Winer (see the screen shot).
I don't know if Scoble will decide to use DABU, but I'm glad to have spent the couple hours to keep ahead of the ever-changing standards curve.
DABU is the free blogging service I created that I use for this site, and almost 100 other people are using for their sites. http://www.DABU.com
OPML is an outline format in XML. It is similar to RSS in that supporting it today will impress a small number of geeks but support for it in the future is going to be practically mandatory if you care about your users.
