XML News from Monday, November 29, 2004

Lately I've noticed that outlets for article sized content are becoming fewer and farther between. I've got lots of things I'd like to write about at a length somewhat longer than a typical Cafe con Leche news item, but much shorter than a full book; so I decided to do something about it. Hence I am announcing The Cafes, a new site for content that falls somewhere in the large territory between a blog post and a book. The initial articles include:

The Cafes will not be updated as regularly as Cafe con Leche; just when I've got something I want to write about. It's going to focus more on How-Tos and technical material, and less on product announcements. The goal is to write more substantive material that will be valuable for a longer period of time. I do have an RSS feed for the site to announce the most recent articles, but my assumption is that most readers will find the site through search engines and links, when looking for information on a specific topic, not by checking in every day. I will be adding new articles at a rate of about one a day this week, as I've got quite a back log to plow through. Indeed the back log was one of the motivating factors for launching the site.

Also unlike Cafe au Lait/con Leche, the Cafes includes a place for reader comments on each article. I rolled my own comments system on top of PHP and MySQL because I really couldn't find an existing system that did what I wanted it to do. At the same time, since no one's done comments like this before, I pretty much had to code the system from scratch, so it's more than likely there are some bugs flitting around, waiting to be squashed. if you happen on any of the critters, please let me know.

Judging by my server logs, a few of you have found the site already. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I think it's ready to be opened to the public. Check it out, and let me know what you think. Please post any comments you have on the Welcome to the Cafes page. I think you'll like what you see. I'm very excited about The Cafes, and I think it's a going to be a very interesting and productive destination. Happy XML!