Shared Structured Content Servers

Posited by Marc Canter as one of the conditions for creating an Open Mesh

Description

"Marc Canter on structured content as infrastructure:

"Call it micro-content, micro-formats, tagging, meta-data, semantic web, shared knowledge bases or what have you - the idea is that content comes along with extra ’stuff’ associated with it and that all that content and data is available on public, shared servers - where a community can contribute to it - and it’s overall value goes up.

Wikipedia in one way - is a shared structured content server. So is DMOZ. And there are all sorts of knowledge bases, open courseware and shared resources available on the web which could be considered ‘shared structured content servers‘.

But what I’m talking about here is one step beyond that. Something a bit more specific. It’s about shared Events, Reviews, local ads and info, maps, digital assets, even people databases or aggregated groups. Having APIs that can specify “Walnut Creek, April 20th, 2008 at 4:20 PM” kind of accuracy and granularity.

That means that the service needs Open APIs so developers (like us) can access it and rely upon it as infrastructure. Structured Content as infrastructure." (http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2008/04/how-to-build-the-mesh-3-shared-structured-content-servers)