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Yet Another Subscription Model at Microsoft 
By Trevor Bauknight (c) 2005

Late last week at Seattle's Gnomedex technology conference
(http://www.gnomedex.com/), a cutting-edge exploration of
emerging Internet technologies like RSS, Blogging and
Podcasting, Microsoft demonstrated IE7 publicly for the first
and announced (http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/understanding/
rss/rsslonghorn/) that the company was in love with RSS.
Not in so many words, of course, but Microsoft is embracing
and extending the open syndication technology in a way not seen
previously.

For starters, IE7 will have nice RSS integration built right in
to the browser. RSS feed autodiscovery will light up a button
on the toolbar inviting users to subscribe to a site's content.
This is a nice touch, following the lead of Opera and Apple's
Safari in making it less of a chore to track down and subscribe
to RSS feeds.

Next, the forthcoming and long-awaited followup to Windows XP,
code-named Longhorn, will feature RSS-related "platform
services", integrating RSS functionality right at the OS level.
What this means, concretely, is that those who create
applications that make use of RSS can count on a certain level
of OS-level functionality including automatic downloading and
parsing of feeds. The jury is still out on what this could
mean; and although there is the predictable speculation on how
Microsoft will use this to put its competitors at a
disadvantage, the company seems to have provided a means for
application writers to make use of non-Microsoft-approved RSS
elements while still gaining some of the benefits of OS-level
parsing and idle-time feed downloading.

Finally, Microsoft has created what it calls Simple List
Extensions to the RSS model, allowing content to be provided in
the form of an ordered list, such as a constantly-updating
top-ten lists, calendar entries and so on. In a refreshing
move, the company will be making these extensions freely
available using a Creative Commons license
(http://creativecommons.org/), a way of making content freely
available while retaining certain rights to that content.

What Is RSS?

In the event that you live in a cave and still don't know about
RSS, it is a sub-standard of XML that allows content providers
to easily syndicate their content in a predictable way,
enabling programmers to create programs (commonly called
"aggregators") that pull in wide-ranging content one item at a
time and present it in a logical manner. Think of it as a
subscription model for capsule summaries of all the web content
you don't have time to read, similar to AP headlines rolling in
on a teletype. It allows you to collect web content from a
variety of sources into one place where you can pick and choose
what you'd like to actually visit.

Building on the concept, the Podcasting phenomenon feeds audio
broadcasts in a similar manner using the same underlying
technology. It is this kind of versatility that makes RSS such
a prime candidate for being the most significant disruptive
technology since the arrival of HTML, meaning that it will
acquire new uses not intended or foreseen in its original
implementation. Blogs make heavy use of RSS feeds to present
bits of news from other sites automatically, and so on.

In fact, Microsoft seems to be betting that RSS will once again
shift the primary model by which people make use of the Web.
Originally, linking was key, and people moved from site to site
through a comparatively simple web of interconnections until
there were simply too many pages to keep track of. Then came
the search engines to help you find what you were looking for
on the Web, and now Google has become a common verb. Searching
is the primary way people find Web content now; but Microsoft
sees this changing again as RSS makes it possible for people to
subscribe to content they know they like or find useful.

I'll never forget my first experience with the World Wide Web,
and I don't recall being all that excited about the text-based
subject tree with some interesting entries but no content.
That was fifteen years ago, however, and the Web has changed
pretty dramatically since then. There is still a good deal of
magic in the basic hyperlink, though the sheer amount of
garbage on the Web has made the kind of discovery we used to
enjoy nearly impossible. In fact, in spite of technological
advances in the search engines, results are still hit-and-miss
at best, and downright useless at worst.

Two Ways Forward From Here

RSS has been touted
(http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2004/dec/20.html) as a sort
of "back-door" into the coveted highly-placed search results of
Yahoo and perhaps into Google, thanks to the automated
technology of "pinging" systems which spread the word about
your RSS feed's new content, the return-links they generate and
the fact that most sites with RSS feeds are content-driven to
begin with. We can say that since we established our RSS feed
at CafeID (http://www.cafeid.com), our traffic from searches
has picked up dramatically, and we're nothing but pleased with
the result of a couple of hours' effort.

Google, however, is exploring a different technology it
invented called SiteMaps
(https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login), which are
similar to RSS feeds except that they feed your content to
Google, rather than to the world of RSS aggregators, thereby (it
is hoped) improving the accuracy of its search results. We'll
explore SiteMaps a little further next week, after we get our
own SiteMap up and running.

Microsoft's embrace of the RSS model is hard to dismiss,
especially given the enthusiasm and openness that the company
seems to be bringing to the project. A public beta release of
IE7 is due out sometime this summer, showcasing this
technology, and when Longhorn arrives next year sometime, the
idea that our content will be flowed automatically through the
OS and a wide range of associated applications is very
appealing.

Okay! I'm Convinced Already! What Do I Do?

Creating an RSS feed couldn't be much easier. You simply create
a simple XML file describing the content you wish to syndicate
and place it somewhere on your site. The file, a simple text
file, uses straightforward self-explanatory tags like <title>
and <link> to describe each <item> you want to syndicate (this
article would be a new <item>, for example) and then set about
keeping your sites up to date.

You don't need to run a blog or anything like that to have an
RSS feed. Just find a good tutorial like this one at
SearchEngineWatch
(http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271) and
make your file, then validate it and expose it to the
monitoring (or "ping" sites) that keep track of and pass the
word about your content feed.

It's ridiculously easy to add an RSS feed to your website,
whether yours is a content-driven site or not; and with the
syndication format about to take off, it makes perfect sense to
investigate embracing it yourself for your company's website if
you haven't already.

A vote of confidence from Redmond goes a long way toward
establishing technology like this. Subscription models seem to
be very popular at Microsoft these days, and it will be
interesting to watch how Gates & Co. handle the integration of
RSS technology into its product line. Watch this space, or
better yet, subscribe to it for continued coverage of emerging
Internet technologies and how to put them to work for you.

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Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with over 15 years
of experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation
and maintenance of business and personal identity online and
can be reached at trevor@tryid.com. Stop by
http://www.cafeid.com for a free tryout of the revolutionary
SiteBuildingSystem and check out our Flash-based website and
IMAP e-mail hosting solutions, complete with live support.
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