The RSS Advisory Board has two new members: Jason Shellen, the product manager of Google Reader and a former strategist for the company that created Blogger, and Jake Savin, the lead developer at UserLand Software.
Jason Shellen has spent three years at Google since the company acquired Blogger developer Pyra Labs.
First launched in October 2005, Google Reader is a free web-based aggregator that reads Really Simple Syndication and all of the other syndication formats, supporting item sharing, tagging, an application programming interface and other features.
Shellen's also a member of the PayPal Developers Network Advisory Board and the Social Software Alliance.
Jake Savin has developed software since 2000 for UserLand, so he's been a part of the company during the four years that it published Really Simple Syndication and helped popularize the format.
He's the cocreator of the weblog publishing tools Manila and Radio UserLand, two of the first commercial programs to support RSS, and a content management system for the publisher of MacWeek, MacWorld and MacCentral magazines.
Savin's also a professional musician who runs a mobile recording studio in Dallas that publishes some of its work as podcasts.
Welcome aboard!
The proposal to expand the RSS Advisory Board to 15 members has passed 6-0, with board members Meg Hourihan, Jenny Levine, Eric Lunt, Randy Charles Morin, Greg Smith and myself voting in favor.
This proposal revises the charter to expand the board and permit deliberations on new members to take place privately, rather than on the mailing list RSS-Board.
The board is an independent organization formed in 2003 that publishes the Really Simple Syndication specification, helps developers create RSS applications and works to broaden public understanding of the format.
If you are involved in RSS as a publisher, programmer, educator or executive and you'd be interested in joining, please contact board chairman Rogers Cadenhead.
The following RSS Advisory Board proposal has been made by Randy Charles Morin and seconded by Greg Smith.
Under the board charter, this begins a seven-day discussion period so any interested parties can comment on the proposal. (The best place to comment is on the mailing list RSS-Public.)
When that ends, the board will have seven days to vote on it.
Proposal
In order to facilitate new members of the board being chosen, I
propose the following two changes.
Change item 1 of the charter to:
1. The board has up to 15 members.
Change item 4 of the charter to:
4. All actions of the board (except the election of new members) take place on the RSS-Board mailing list, where posting is limited to members but messages can be read by the public.
The proposal to add Greg Smith to the RSS Advisory Board has passed 4-0, with board members Meg Hourihan, Jenny Levine, Randy Charles Morin and myself voting in favor.
Smith is the developer of FeederReader, an RSS aggregator and podcasting client for mobile Windows devices. The software was launched in August 2004 and received a "best software" nomination from Pocket PC Magazine in 2005. He's also a contributor to the book Podcasting Hacks.
Welcome aboard, Greg!
The proposal to support the common feed icon has passed 5-0, with RSS Advisory Board members Meg Hourihan, Jenny Levine, Eric Lunt, Randy Charles Morin and myself voting in favor.
In an effort to make the concept of syndication easier for mainstream users, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera will all identify RSS and Atom feeds with the same icon:
The board has adopted the symbol on this site and encourages its use on web sites, browsers, and syndication software.
Additionally, the board encourages web publishers to use the icon on any feed, regardless of whether it employs Atom or the two formats that call themselves RSS: RDF Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication.
If you've added the icon to a site published with Movable Type, WordPress or another weblog publishing system, your tips on implementing the icon are welcomed on the RSS-Public mailing list.
