RSS Built in to Windows Vista?
I was browsing around the WinFX site recently, and I found this interesting article on RSS Support in Longhorn. Basically what it amounts to is that Microsoft is quite literally building RSS-related functions directly into the OS itself. There are 3 key ways that this will occur:
1) "Common RSS Feed List" - This means that a feed is not subscribed to in a specific tool, but rather in an underlying operating system store that any application can check against. This means, for example, that we could develop an application that could immediately consume any of the user's current feeds.
2) "Common RSS Data Store" - Any feeds that provide "enclosures" (file content embedded in the post, such as an mp3 in a podcast, or a jpeg in a photoblog) would be downloaded to a shared location (somewhere in My Documents, I think) that any application can process. Microsoft sees this as facilitating, for example, a contact management type system where iCal files are sent down the feed.
3) "RSS Platform Sync Engine" - Um, basically pulling the feeds (definitely a handy function). Seriously, this is monitoring of the feed retrieval, such as using idle bandwidth.
In addition, Microsoft is talking about custom extension to RSS (so-called "Simple List Extensions") that provide additional data such as custom ordering information for posts. This would facilitate notions such as wish list feed ordering based on priority rather than just date. There is also a bit of a worry around "custom" extensions, so it will be interesting to note how / how open Microsoft implements this...
This whole idea a fascinating move. First of all, it's potentially a bit alarming that Microsoft will have access to everything we're interested in (a bit of an automatic Big-Brother paranoia). More than this, it will definitely raise some interesting possibilities. I can think of 2 examples off the top of my head, for example: any tool that you install could add its feed into this store so you could be automatically notified about updates. I wonder if there will be automatic categories, such as "Products", to facilitate this? Another idea is for retailers, such as Amazon, tracking your favourite bloggers and matching them to author searches. For example, if I follow Dino Esposito's blog, Amazon could track it (with permission, hopefully - notice I didn't mention "A record company such as Sony" ;->), and notify me when a new book of his is available. Conference organisers could do the same for speakers, i guess.
Anyway, it's an interesting idea. I wonder where it will lead....?