Build Date: Sat Nov 23 09:20:06 2024 UTC
I know better, because I'm American, and I pledge upon the altar of Spock eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
-- Tjames Madison
I Never Metadata I Didn't Like
1999-06-17 19:38:19
The Dublin Core sounds like a really cool Irish drum-and-bass group or something. But it's not! It's a crazy ass metadata specification for EVERYTHING on the Web. Crazy!
I dunno what it is, but for some reason everybody's crazy about METADATA this season. It's the crazy buzzword of the year. And the darlings of metadata are the folks who are doing the Dublin Core.
Metadata is, like, data about data. Example: if the data is a photographic JPEG of my ass, the metadata would be who the photographer was, the date the picture was taken, who owns the picture, and maybe some explanation ("Mr. Bad's fine bootie."). You could conceivably use that metadata for searching for pictures of my ass -- and they wouldn't have to be named "Mr_Bads_Ass.jpg" or anything.
How you define metadata is a sticky business. The W3 has this RDF thingy that Netscape thought up, and of course you can add some of this stuff to HTML pages, too. The Dublin Core is pretty agnostic about the medium used to specify the metadata -- they're more interested in defining WHAT you say, not in how you say it.
OK, so, go see the Dublin Core RIGHT NOW. Check it out! And then go add tons of metadata to your Web site! It's like updating your stuff without really HAVING TO! Isn't that cool?
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