For the purposes of this application, we're not talking about microcontent in the strict Jakob Nielsen definition that's now a few years old, which focused on making documents easy to skim. Today, microcontent is being used as a more general term indicating content that conveys one primary idea or concept, is accessible through a single definitive URL or permalink, and is appropriately written and formatted for presentation in email clients, web browsers, or on handheld devices as needed. A day's weather forcast, the arrival and departure times for an airplane flight, an abstract from a long publication, or a single instant message can all be examples of microcontent. But, as we'll see, these pieces of microcontent are best handled by a program designed for the task.
The microcontent client is an extensible desktop application based around standard Internet protocols that leverages existing web technologies to find, navigate, collect, and author chunks of content for consumption by either the microcontent browser or a standard web browser. The primary advantage of the microcontent client over existing Internet technologies is that it will enable the sharing of meme-sized chunks of information using a consistent set of navigation, user interface, storage, and networking technologies. In short, a better user interface for task-based activities, and a more powerful system for reading, searching, annotating, reviewing, and other information-based activities on the Internet.
via dashes.com
We've been talking about a microcontent client for years now, and finally all the pieces and infrastructure are in place to build it. The best parts of the microcontent client are that it's fully backwards compatible, it can leverage the unused abilities of existing content to improve their utility, and that its appearance in the software market is inevitable.
I'm testing a new reblog thing by reblogging Anil's old post about reblogging. But still - you should go back and read this post, it was quite prescient.
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