By Spencer Swartz
Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software company, on Friday said it plans to add Really Simple Syndication, a popular technology for reading news and information on the Web, in its next version of Windows.
Known as RSS, the technology invented by one-time arch-rival Netscape Communications Corp. allows Internet users to track freshly updated information -- without having to surf through a long list of Web pages.
Microsoft said it wants to reach beyond the current limited audience of hard-core Internet users by making RSS convenient for mainstream computer users in its upcoming version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.
The Redmond, Washington-based company is planning to offer a set of underlying extensions to RSS code that will make it easier for Web sites to publish lists such as photo albums, music playlists and other sorts of Top 10 lists as RSS feeds.
Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft's manager in charge of RSS, is set to tell an audience of technology enthusiasts attending the annual Gnomedex conference in Seattle on Friday of how Microsoft will tie RSS capabilities into Windows.
Hachamovitch is set to embrace the Creative Commons license backed by many leading RSS supporters. The license provides looser copyright restrictions on creative work but stops short of entirely giving up all claims of ownership.
"That's groundbreaking for Microsoft," Joe Wilcox, an analyst at Jupiter Research, said of the software giant's embrace of Creative Commons, which has served as a rallying point for computer users opposed to Microsoft's industry dominance.
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The RSS capabilities will be embedded into Microsoft's Longhorn operating system, expected to be released in trial form this summer and made available to consumers as the next new release of Windows in
2006."Microsoft wants to make this more than just about getting more people to use RSS. They want to turn this (capability) into a developer platform, kind of like what they did with the Web browser," he said.
With the new Windows, users will be able to receive updated headlines through an illuminated RSS icon with a click of a button.
This in turn will automatically make the selected RSS feeds able to run in any Windows-based application designed to accept RSS. Microsoft is looking to encourage outside software developers to build a variety RSS features into new software.
The move has won the support of Dave Winer, RSS's most tireless advocate over the years, and Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford Law School, the founder of Creative Commons and a sometime Microsoft adversary.
"The people at Microsoft noticed something that I had seen, only peripherally -- that there were applications of RSS that aren't about news," Winer wrote on Wednesday at his Web site
RSS has aided the proliferation of Web logs. Blogs, the easy-to-publish Web sites that allow users to offer quick commentaries on issues that matter to them, use RSS feeds to stay up-to-date with other blogs. (with additional reporting by Eric Auchard)
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