Interesting conversation this month. (This is the stuff I listen to on my commute.) I was particularly intrigued by the 10 or so minutes spent discussing the need for a method of embedding identifiers and the location of a web service into HTML. Send the identifier to the service and get back the metadata. This is the exact use case of unAPI.

I was all set to get to work and give them a brrring! on the cluephone, a.k.a., comment on the post. But before I got around to it Ed Summers pointed out on irc that you can achieve the same thing using just elements and/or HTTP Link: headers. In other words, why separate the identifiers from the service URI.

I like how simple unAPI is to implement. Since your metadata service’s base url doesn’t change you don’t have to worry about coordinating attributes of elements that need to appear in both your and page . This is a non-issue for lots of folks, but I bet it’s not so simple if your using WordPress or Drupal for your CMS.

As for the Glue extension thingie, I’ll try it out before passing judgement. But it did strike me funny that they’re not using RDF for anything. Also, and maybe I’m imagining it, but in the 10-minute wrapup at the end of the podcast I think Tom Heath basically takes a some veiled jabs at the Glue guys for being SemWeb poseurs.