This is the project website for Ode (pronounced oh-dee), a personal publishing engine for the web. Ode is unique in that it is designed to be simple – not necessarily easy.
Simple means understandable (at least it does here).
Here's hoping for a great new year for this project and its participants.
There will be a new release this year, and hopefully lots of other activity too. Of course that's going to depend on all of us. So we'll see how it goes. (I'm as curious as you are.)
For my part, I'm going to spend as much time on Ode as I can, making improvements and expanding what it can do. As I've said before, we're only just scratching the surface.
Thanks to everyone who supports this project. I can't tell you how import you are to Ode. After all, that is what's beautiful about a small project like this, that each person involved can make a meaningful contribution. I believe that this ideal that is at the heart of the Wide Web, and it's the reason why Ode exists in the first place.
So thanks for all of your help to this point, and let's all do better in 2012. That's the promise of a new year - to improve what we are already doing well, and to fix what we've done wrong. A new year is the next best chance to get it right, and that time is now.
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As the year the project was officially released, 2010 will always be an important year for Ode. But this little project is still a baby. The good news is that after the first year I have every reason to believe the Ode is workable. Nothing has happened to make me change my mind about that, and that's really positive. The bad news, if you want to call it that, is a lot of work to do!
If Ode were an infant it would be taking its first tentative steps, and shifting to new kinds of play (from fine motor control to bigger movements). The advice would be that each baby is an individual and develops at his or her own pace. Though admittedly somewhat of a stretch, in this context I'd say Ode is right on track.
As some of you know I believe that while intentionally small and simple, I believe Ode is an important project representing a crucial point of view.
I'm a proponent of the open web, and you're at all interested in Ode I'm guessing you are too.
Access to information has never been more important - of course there has never been a time when I wouldn't have said the same thing. The point is that the open, distributed nature of the web makes it exceedingly important. What has been demonstrated in the last couple of decades is that open and distributed solutions that scale as the web has, both in terms of architecture and acceptance, is a very rare thing. We have it now, for once, and may not get it again any time soon. We should cherish it.