Fwd: RSS feeds and event aggregation
Aerik Sylvan
decided to send it out the the whole group. Waaay too relevant not to
share.
Check this out. I've been talking to Volunteermatch about event
aggregation. Very related to your most recent post. Basically, I
emailed them pitching event synication via RSS. They told me that
they have done deals with a few other websites (Feed America, and
DoSomething) that cost in the $10k range. I was stunned, so I wrote a
quick little parser and added their data to Eventfeed to prove how
easy it is.
Apparently she's not getting it... Suddenly I get a "Mr. Sylvan"
tone... I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't want to
antagonize them, but I'm half inclined to stand behind "fair use"...
Thoughts, anyone?
Best Regards,
Aerik
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Aerik Sylvan <ae...@thesylvans.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 9:37 AM
Subject: Re: RSS feeds and event aggregation
To: Megan Kelly <mke...@volunteermatch.org>
Dear Megan,
I understand the "Mr. Sylvan" tone and will read the contract.
Did you consider the rest of what I had to say? I added your data to
demonstrate, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that using RSS to syndicate
data, is much more efficient that custom coding solutions? (That's
the whole purpose of the eventfeed website.)
I was very alarmed to hear the $10-20k estimates - that is exactly the
situation we should avoid. Non-profit websites can *easily* share
information with each other, to everyone's benefit.
Best Regards,
Aerik
On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Megan Kelly <mke...@volunteermatch.org> wrote:
>
> Mr Sylvan,
>
> Because you are not using our RSS feed for personal use, but rather, for
> a public site, you need to sign the attached contract.
>
> Thank you, Megan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asy...@gmail.com [mailto:asy...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Aerik
> Sylvan
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 4:20 PM
> To: Megan Kelly
> Subject: Re: RSS feeds and event aggregation
>
> Megan,
>
> Thank you very much... hopefully I'm not misreading your email - I don't
> mean to put you on the defensive. I really appreciate your taking the
> time to talk to me.
>
> I want to point out something - if you take a look at
> http://eventfeed.org/search.php?loc=san+francisco,+ca&startdate=2009-02-
> 05&enddate=2009-03-05&q=love&go=Find+Events
> I believe you will find the top result ('ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE Help
> Benefit') is from Volunteermatch.
>
> I did this using your existing RSS feed - it took me about 20 minutes to
> write a parser (using an existing body of code). It's a little clunkier
> than having start time and end time in tags, but it works.
>
> The point I'm trying to make is that using RSS is a very, very good way
> to syndicate these events. In a very small amount of time I have
> volunteer search that is at least as rich - possibly better- than the
> one at DoSomething. Again, I'm not trying to sell anything - I'm
> promoting a standard way of doing things efficiently and cheaply so
> everyone can benefit.
>
> I'm doing all this to try to convince you of the simplicity and
> efficiency of my approach. Those websites don't need to spend $10-20k
> to integrate a volunteer search.
>
> Best Regards,
> Aerik
>
>
> --
> http://eventfeed.org - An Initiative Promoting Syndication of Events
>
--
http://eventfeed.org - An Initiative Promoting Syndication of Events
http://www.wikidweb.com - the Wiki Directory of the Web
http://tagthis.info - Hosted Tagging for your website!
--
http://eventfeed.org - An Initiative Promoting Syndication of Events
http://www.wikidweb.com - the Wiki Directory of the Web
http://tagthis.info - Hosted Tagging for your website!
Aerik
promoting event sharing (syndication) by using RSS and I've been
pitching this to anyone who will listen. Volunteermatch.org is one of
the biggest volunteer opportunity sites out there. They have an RSS
feed, but it doesn't have tags for start and end date, and it's
limited to only 25 results. Not the best setup for aggregation.
So I've been having this email conversation with Megan at
Volunteermatch trying to get her to see the merits of what I'm
proposing. The conversation has been going south. When I went ahead
and used their RSS feed to demonstrate to her how it could work (by
adding the events to Eventfeed.org, which links back to Volunteermatch
in the search results), I got a fairly chilling "Dear Mr. Sylvan"
letter.
I'm not sure whether to try to salvage the conversation, or just get
on with it. I'm somewhat disinclined to sign the contract, as I
should think they'd *want* me to re-distribute their listings for
reasons similar to the ones Elias outlines. But, even aside from
that, I think this is easily "fair use" - I'm essentially running an
"Events search engine".
I would love to have feedback. I'd really love to have support.
Best Regards,
Aerik
>
> --http://eventfeed.org- An Initiative Promoting Syndication of Eventshttp://www.wikidweb.com- the Wiki Directory of the Webhttp://tagthis.info- Hosted Tagging for your website!
>
> --http://eventfeed.org- An Initiative Promoting Syndication of Eventshttp://www.wikidweb.com- the Wiki Directory of the Webhttp://tagthis.info- Hosted Tagging for your website!
Elias Bizannes
It's an interesting problem. I wouldn't get defensive on what happened with you as it's fairly standard for companies to charge for commercial use of their API. But it does highlight an incongruent understanding in the world about data.
At http://activityhorizon.com - which was a startup camp weekend project that's not monetised - we scraped data from various websites and showed events on a Google map.
A week ago, the CEO of a company with $10million into it threatened to sue us for using "their" data. This is despite the fact we drove traffic to their site, and the data they had was actually events information from other sites.
The CEO asked me to not disclose what happened because he doesn't want a public relations backlash - but I am tempted now after reading your incident to make a case study out of this. That being, how stupid companies are with their industrial age thinking. In the information age, value of data comes through reuse, not lockdown.
I'm still trying to research what grounds companies like this can demand you not use their data, especially when it's already open on the Internet. There are not legal precedents and copyright law is a weak argument especially when you repurpose the data to create a new derivation (and the servers are hosted in another country).
Elias Bizannes
http://liako.biz
Aerik Sylvan
to search engines as well. I think I could vary accurately describe
the function we are talking about as a "search engine for events" and
as such, we could probably be expected to honor robots.txt files as a
matter of ethical behaviour, but that's about it. I think if we
scaped date, presented all of it on our websites, and did not link
back to the source, it would be entirely different - but we are
talking about providing value by helping connect users to the data on
on source site.
Frankly, I'm still trying to decide what to do. If they threatened to
sue me, it might create some interesting PR... :-)
I should also provide this update: Megan wrote me again and told me
that the $10-20k figure included other tools and applications, not
just the feed. And she asked me to sign a contract again.
Thanks,
Aerik
