FTP-RPC

Is FTP the worst web services interface ever? I’ve been publishing Froogle product lists (which I guess are now Google Base upload files) with Movable Type just as a proof of concept for a long time, but I always assumed at some point Froogle/Gbase/et. al would support Atom API for posting.

Now they’ve expanded the number of places they’re using FTP as a web service, and it’s kind of frustrating. To be fair, I understand why they might do that, and it’s actually not even close to the worst web services interface ever. That honor would go to IMDb’s email-based interface to database queries. The saddest part? I’ve actually used that feature.