Scoble wants OPML:

Here's the deal. I will switch to the blogging tool that outputs OPML automatically like what Michael Arrington did by hand.

Will it be a Microsoft service? I hope so. Hey, MSN Spaces, you gonna add OPML and categorization, er tagging, support so this will be possible, or will it be Google or Yahoo that does it first?

Michael, this is awesome. I want this for a whole lot of reasons. It looks a darn lot like tagging support, which we added to Channel 9 , but is a whole lot more powerful. Why? It lets me again escape the Web browser. See, to me, Web 2.0 is letting me do things in an edge way. I can't use Channel 9 while on an airplane very well. I could use OPML, though.

Ye gods, it's time someone came out and said something. OPML is a really, really crappy format. Really crappy. I had massive headaches implementing OPML support for import/export in BottomFeeder. Why? Because there's no real specification. Like everything Dave Winer has ever been involved with, the specs are all in his head, and it's up to the rest of us to figure out wtf he actually meant. Here's the "spec" - and look at all the meaningless crap in it (windowRight? Why is there something specifying the number of pixels for the margin?).

I had to add tons of hacks to the OPML support in order to support the export formats of various tools. The problem? Everyone implemented it a little differently, because the spec is incredibly unspecific - about just about everything.

Getting back to Scoble's excitement, I have no idea why he thinks OPML is some magic mojo that let's him escape a browser. It's a format, and a fairly bad one. It doesn't enable or disable anything by itself.