RSS got a big push from Microsoft
today. While,
they may have downplayed it a bit in the near past..
one only has to look at Bill Gate's speech last year to
the CEO conference where he touted RSS as the best and most effective way to access content. MS has had big things in
store for RSS. Perhaps, they saw it as a way to redeem themselves from the ill fated
CDF channels of the 90s.
Today, Microsoft says RSS is going to be key in how people access the internet. Wanting to take RSS beyond the world
of bloggers, which btw, it has long outgrown (for the last time: RSS <> Blogs!), Microsoft has proposed some
extensions to the RSS standard that seem to be palatable to the typically resistant Dave Winer
(are you now one of them, dave?).
Meanwhile, a lot of
mainstream press has
been picking up the story. eWeek has captured MSFT'
motivations best - "Microsoft has decided that subscribing, via RSS, will join browsing and searching as the third leg
of its information-access triangle."
Cool!
So what does this mean? well, Microsoft says that it wants to make RSS a fundamental part of Longhorn(next Windows).
Your subscriptions and their status will be maintained by the operating system - or rather your identity in the
operating system. The OS will be aware of any set of services, content, information you subscribe to. So you can get
weather, calendar updates, content updates, document updates, those silly plaxo updates (anything to shut those up!)
via RSS. Perhaps, even your media (TV, Radio) subscriptions.
To many, this may sound familiar to the vision of web services.. this is the same story of the
future that MSFT videos at conferences played over the past few years ago. So, What is the difference? Web
Services were made overly complicated, only seem to please geeks and wanna be tech analysts. Most of the
technology was proprietary and expensive . .this time RSS has got momentum and MSFT is using the Creative
Common's license,
so there should be broader acceptance and use.
The idea is that Windows will provide the RSS services at the core OS level so applications, aggregators, and
other RSS based applications (widgets?) can use the capability. What's more there is inbuilt capability to store feed
data (handy when we are downloading movies over RSS) and Sync services (sync with your PDA).
All sounds good in theory.. very promising.. all depends on execution, right? And of course, whenever longhorn does
ship - btw, none of these goodies make it to upcoming longhorn betas. We will keep you posted on this story as it
develops. Stay tuned.. will be back right after these messages.
[More: BBC]
[More: PCWorld]
[More: ZDNet] - The Death of Atom.
[More: Podcast
Tools] - Impact on Podcasts
[More: Digital Web Magazine] - Some resistance
[More: MSDN] - Videos from the MS RSS
Team]
[More: Slashdot.org] -
Discussions
[More:
BusinessWeek]
[More
:
AP]
