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July 29, 2005RSS in Windows Vista
RSS or really simple syndication lets you subscribe to content from a website and is fast becoming a method by which companies get information out to their audience, many of the companies who took the corporate blogging survey described how they have dropped their email newsletters in favor of using RSS, or at the very least compiling their articles from their blog and sending the list of articles instead of their email newsletter.
Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Vista will support RSS.
Platform Components
The RSS platform support in Longhorn has three parts:
* Common RSS Feed List gives application developers access to the list of feeds to which the user is subscribed.
* Common RSS Data Store is a common data store that provides a single location where applications can access any content that has been downloaded to the PC via RSS—including text, pictures, audio, calendar events, documents, and just about anything else. All applications will have access to this content for creating rich user experiences.
* RSS Platform Sync Engine automatically downloads data and files (enclosures) for use by any application. It is designed to be as efficient as possible when downloading this information, using idle network bandwidth whenever possible, in order to limit the impact on the user's Internet experience. Developers can use the platform to get RSS data without having to manage details like synchronization schedules or subscriptions.
Taking some notes from PR Communications on RSS, it’s a “a method for syndicating content from a source (a website or a blog), and may replace email as a way to keep in contact with websites and email newsletters. Tired with the barrage of permission-based e-mails, customers are switching to readers that read the RSS content. A customer reads their RSS content on a daily basis. While it is used to be culturally unacceptable to send lots of permission emails on a daily basis, those companies (corporate bloggers) that provide regular content will be more likely to keep their audience’s attention.�
http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2004/06/the_opportunity.html
The numbers of Americans using RSS are small at the moment, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project 5% of Internet users say they are using RSS readers.
While the use of the Internet has grown overall, see this insert from Pew’s “A decade of adoption: How the Internet has woven itself into American life�:
“On a typical day at the end of 2004, some 70 million American adults logged onto the Internet to use email, get news, access government information, check out health and medical information, participate in auctions, book travel reservations, research their genealogy, gamble, seek out romantic partners, and engage in countless other activities. That represents a 37 percent increase from the 51 million Americans who were online on an average day in 2000 when the Pew Internet & American Life Project began its study of online life.�
Another July 2005 Pew Study, “Public Awareness of Internet Terms� found that only 9% of Americans had a good idea of what the term RSS means.
The potential is there for people to use RSS, but the means for using RSS are not available to most Americans at the moment. Microsoft hopes to change that with its support of RSS in Windows Vista.
Posted by johncass at July 29, 2005 1:32 PM
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