Today Microsoft announced the addition of several new RSS features in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. The Longhorn Browsing and RSS team (the one we interviewed here) is also are announcing a new RSS extension, to be released into Creative Commons, that lets you do lists in subscriptions
Demo One, at about 23:19. RSS in IE 7 and synchronization with other aggregators (like RSS Bandit)
Demo Two, at about 34:00. Enclosures, calendar integration.
Demo Three, at about 49:50. Amazon integration.
Worth a watch if you’re at all interested in web stuff…the RSS features they show are just great. The person in the video makes a very good comment on the evolution of internet use. He says basically that people’s usage has changed like this:
browse –> browse + search –> browse + search + subscribe
If you think about it, he is quite accurate. First all we did was blindly wander around the internet. Once search technology improved enough to begin to reliably find what we were actually looking for things changed. Instead of blindly wandering around people began to specifically use the internet to find information. …Enter the era of Google. We are still in the shift to the next stage. When you have found whatever information you are looking for you can bookmark it. This has provided the easiest method of coming back to something for later inspection. Now people are able to use the internet for a little bit of everything. They can browse randomly just for amusement, find exactly the specific info they are looking for and/or they have the option of rutinely checking on a certain site that they enjoy. Enter the age of RSS syndication. RSS stands for really simple syndication. This gives anyone the option (with the right software) to subscribe to a website. Think of this as the next step in the evolution of bookmarks. Now you don’t have to go to your list of bookmarks and click a link that will take you to the individual website where you have to sift through endless amounts of other distractions to find the information that interests you. Using RSS subscriptions the normal user can click on this link and view all the important information on a site without all the hassle.
Wandering the Interwebs 