To Richard, 

Sorry your friend isn't doing so well, and that you're having to deal with peripheral aggravation too.

In the 'Wouldn't it be nice' department 

What if places like Amazon let you export your address book to OPML? When file export is an option, it's usually text or Excel. I always forget my parents' address in Florida and when I went to place an order online today to ship to them (not from Amazon), I went to Amazon for it. Outlook addressbook format might be a nice export format, too.

Also, wouldn't it be a good idea for an online retailer, as a way of building loyalty, to broaden the scope of their address book? It could become your online contact headquarters, not just holding info on people you frequently buy things for, but a private place to keep all your contacts.

And FURthermore! 

OPML seems like it might be a good addressbook format. People do still like to sort, but that's where search comes in. Every time I think, "this isn't a good application for OPML; you can't sort," then I remember, "Oh, yeah. Search."

I think somebody -- like Bela? or would it not be in his interest? -- should build search into the OPML Editor. And while he (or whomever) is at it, toss in features of OPML Manager, too, so there's an easy way to publish onlines in a browser.

I'm out of my depth, I know, but couldn't the HTML output just be a hack of the blogging tool? Is this the kind of thing that Dave keeps saying would be a simple matter for experienced Frontier developers to whip out? They should. There's a market. See us? We're right here. Plus, they could help get the community server install smoothed out, with docs, and we would love you. We'll surround you with glory and gratitude. Publicly. You'll never feel so good in all your life.

You know what's so cool about blending OPML and search? It gets all circular and centered. You have a huge OPML file and you want to explore just certain aspects of it. You search, look at the results, and with a tool like Bela's OPML Search, you can grab the results as OPML. You could publish that pared-down file for someone else to search and narrow it down even further for their own purposes.

Then it can get built back up with a whole different topical slant if the narrowed and pared down file becomes part of a new community outline. Neat, huh?

Later: Hil tells me Bela is a woman. Cool! Sorry about that. I saw the first name with only one "L" and headed straight to Lugosi's gender. I didn't pick up on her association with Jim Moore either. I guess I assumed she was a solo developer.

For what it's worth 

From Dave's post today, "I heard this in North Carolina at a session where I was used as an example of what blogging was rising against, the middle-aged white male."

For what it's worth and if I am understanding him correctly, I definitely don't see Dave as The Man (in the representative of the Establishment sense).

I'm not sure I am understanding Tara correctly either! LOL! If by "subverting the power structure" she refers to the Cluetrain tenet that the internet subverts hierarchy, I do agree with that. The difference, I think, is that in subverting hierarchy -- either a hierarchical way of organizing information or a hierachical organization chart -- you blur the distinctions of rank. Any morsel of information may be tied to any other, lofty or foolish; and any workaday employee is able to shoot off an email to the CEO.

Ironically, it was hierarchy that caused me not to want to understand OPML for the longest time, because I tend to be a rebel and dislike putting things into slots that label them as being more or less important than something else. I'm coming to find that outlines are actually a freer way to associate things than the more traditional matrices you find in databases and spreadsheets and most consultants' powerpoint charts!