Phil Pearson has the news that the structured blogging initiative is out the door. Hurray! I had some time yesterday to download the plugin, install Wordpress and take things for a test drive. There's still a few kinks to be worked out (I'm apparently the first person who attempted to install and run on Windows), but overall things look really smooth.

Phil's got a good round up of comments, including first hand reactions from folks at the Syndicate Conference (more can be found at this search for structured blogging). Thomas Vander Wal says this is the brightest idea in 2005 (of course, the idea goes back to 2003 - and before). I think he's right.

As I've said before, structured blogging, microcontent, whatever, represents a giant step forward for web content. We've had XML for years, but for some reason we've resisted using it for what it does best - describing data. While RDF provided a solution, the lack of tools and somewhat steep learning curve left it unadopted. We took baby steps with things like RSS and tagging, but for a long time we've needed to take the next step and create standards that allow us to capture and retain the semantic information associated with our content.

To put it another way, this means we're building a giant, distributed Google Base-like system where the publisher of the content owns and controls the content, and anyone is free to come along and build cool applications using the available data. In other words: Awesome!

Anyway, I'm really excited. Kudos to all those involved (Marc Canter, to say the least). We're proud to be supporting the initiative. This is a first step towards building a better web.