[Imc-alternatives] web services

[Aaron Kreider]

Actually by "web services" I mean things like xml-rpc and SOAP.  I'm 
most familiar with NuSOAP (a SOAP library written for PHP).  There is a 
bunch of techno-jargon behind it (eg. I don't recommend reading an 
advanced technical book on web services- very boring!), but the basic 
proposition is that RSS is good for syndicating content.  Web-services 
lets you offer a service.  For instance, there are sites that will 
convert your street address to a latitude/longitude (geocoder.us is run 
by an activist).  Or in the case of my site, you can ask for a list of 
groups or events, and it'll respond to your search question.  Google 
Maps is another example.

The main advantage is that web-services are much more advanced than just 
syndicating a news feed.

I think IMC should consider making its newswire available by 
web-services.  Ultimately another website ought to be able to request 
any news story ever written, and search for it by tag, category, rating, 
date, imc that produced it, and other variables.  This would make it a 
lot easier for IMCs to pick what news stories they wanted from other 
IMCs, and encourage non-IMC websites to take it up. 

I'm not sure to what extent drupal or any other cms will have built-in 
webservices to their modules (probably most won't - they'll offer a way 
to do web services, but you'll need to do a lot of customizing).  So 
addmittedly, this will take a bit of work.  But it might be something to 
suggest to the imc-tech list, particularly if they settle on a new platform.


Aaron


> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:28:47 +1200
> From: "strypey at riseup.net" <strypey at riseup.net>
> Subject: Re: [Imc-alternatives] decentralising Indymedia services
> To: A list for volunteers wanting to work on the Alternatives IMC
> 	<imc-alternatives at lists.indymedia.org>
> Message-ID: <46B14F6F.6090100 at riseup.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>   
> Web services connect web servers, through web apps running on them. Web
> apps can share data through web services (email, ftp, irc etc) but many
> of the dominant ones like Google Search, YouTube or MySpace are what he
> calls data silos - hoarding their data on one private server (or
> cluster). One of our Aotearoa geeks suggested defining microformats
> (http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page) as a basis for creating open
> web services.
>
>