AP ran a story last month on how Longhorn is going to have built-in support for RSS feeds. It sounds like the OS will basically manage your feeds for you (no more stand-alone RSS reader required?). The article also mentions something called “simple list extensions” which sounds proprietary, however, Microsoft will apparently “make the list extensions technology available for free” through a license which will “retain some intellectual property rights.” So it doesn’t sound like full-blown open source, but it’s at least a step in that direction. Will these new RSS tools be the next Internet Explorer? Maybe… maybe not. According to the article, only “6% of consumers actually have an RSS reader on their computers.” Microsoft’s move to integrate RSS with an operating system may change this. At least one thing is for sure: RSS seems to be gaining more and more traction as the data delivery format of choice.
Matthew Bass
Musings on software and life...