Tag: Microsoft

Is Microsoft Trying To Kill Us?

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What on earth are Microsoft trying to do here? This is the US Software Patent office at its most ridiculous ever!! It has filed a patent on the Windows RSS Platform. Does this apply to Europe?

Part of the application appears to be describing the auto-discovery methods of detecting feeds in a page, but what about the rest of it? Is it for desktop Windows applications? Is it web aggregators? Time to call the lawyer.

If granted, one proposed patent would cover “finding and consuming Web subscriptions in a Web browser.” The invention, for example, could allow a user to “subscribe to a particular Web feed, be provided with a user interface that contains distinct indicia to identify new feeds, and…efficiently consume or read RSS feeds using both an RSS reader and a Web browser.”

I’d like to know what effect this is going to have in Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, PageFlakes, etc, etc and OF COURSE, podcast.com (which is nearing the end of a major overhaul with regards to feed reading and feed folder organisation – and ‘amplification’) !!! The whole podcast industry (yes, there is one) relies on this so-called invention.

The application was made in July 2005, so surely there’s plenty of prior art? I don’t get it?

Nick Bradbury, creator of FeedDemon apparently does not want to call Microsoft ‘evil’ just yet, but personally I feel like we just had a major shot across our bows. Friendly fire? I think not.

Is this just a way for lawyers to make money? I sometimes I think these departments just sit around working out ways to make eachother money while screwing consumers in the process. A little bit like a nation’s defence department working out ways to keep us on the brink of mass destruction in order to keep their budgets up and brass polished.

Foul!! Microsoft, I denounce thee!!

I just had an idea : Get every web developer in the world to write an RSS reader and post it up online. Let’s see how they deal with that. 🙂

feeds, rss

3D News with RSS

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For Vista, when it comes out, here’s an app/widget from Microsoft called UniveRSS.

UniveRSS is a showcase application that demonstrates the use of several WPF features, 3D animations, data binding, and data visualization. Currently UniveRSS uses the RSS Feed Store managed through Internet Explorer 7. Later versions will allow you to manage the Feed Store from within the UniveRSS application.

It looks very nice and very much the type of thing I envisage in Second Life, when (and if) we get html on a prim surface. With all the available data bindings and communications we have at our disposal there, it should be faily easy to build this in the Metaverse.

Thanks to Dave Winer for the link.

feeds, gadgets, grazing, rss, Second Life, secondlife

Zune WILL have Podcasting.. Eventually

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According this post with a snippet from someone working on the Zune team for Microsoft, they will be adding support for podcasting.

Good idea!! Lets make sure it supports OPML (with inclusion), RSS feeds – and the manual adding of each of these.

As long as Microsoft listen to the community about the issues surrounding podcasting, then they’ll be a LOT further down the road than Apple could ever wish to be. Apple have proven they can make nice devices, but they are clearly not experts in the basic technology AND ‘openness’ around podcasting.

Nokia have a competent first stab at a podcasting app on their N91 and you can bet that other mobile manafacturers will be hot on their heels with their own applications.

podcasting, podcasts

How Microsoft could win the portable player game

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I think this looks like a great product.

I hope it can read an RSS feed directly over that WiFi (like a PSP can)! So I can download podcasts too, over the connection (like PSP can).

As well as wifi connectivity (for download) the killer app, for me, would be the ability to record AND upload too. This could be based on something like Nokias old uploader api (which was very easy to implement in any scripting language). Or a simple/simplified ftp client.

If they (MS) offered storage too, along with their desktop client/shop/aggregator based on the account, then they would have it all wrapped up.

Location agnostic consuming and publishing – desktop or mobile device – listening, viewing, subscribing etc. All synced up the next time the device links to the desktop. Full of real statistics, linkage and relevance.

Bingo! You’d have it all.

THEN if your reading AND writing/publishing tools support the core content and organisation XML standards for podcasts of RSS and OPML, PLUS additional support for microformats such as FOAF etc AND OTHER community APIS (though this could be done by any developer community or group of widgetwelders)

If Microsoft did this, they would win – imho

By ‘closing the content loop’ (by effectively flipping one end and connecting it to the other) – publish to receive : AND discover/navigate : subscribe , it would be like APple where things ‘seem’ to be locked in, they wuold have the opportunity to turn the whole network inside out, exposing all the data needed – all the ‘neural’ connections – all the paths, all the people and all the content.

This would ‘connect’ the owners of such devices to eachother, creating the community feel, but also prove they are not going to create a ‘walled garden’ of content – for devices that don’t know (much) about anything else.

[given that i am talking about ‘open’ podcasts here – user generated (argh) – as opposed to music/video/protected shopping/purchases with their own DRM.]

You don’t have to be able to read the ZUNESTONES to see it. Do you?
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ps: When are Google or Yahoo! going to produce a device? They should! 😉

pps: people who know me personally, will know that I am a huge love love and passionate user of gadgets. I have been on this crusade for a while. 😉

devices, feeds, gadgets, ideas, ipod, mp3, podcast, podcasts, rss

My First Ever Email : To Bill Gates – circa 1992

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All this news about Bill’s movements along with other stuff recently has reminded me very much of the first email I ever sent.

I was the only person I knew who had ever even heard of the internet. I had no one else to try sending one to. I very much doubt it was ever read – but it didn’t bounce. And back then, well before inbox-overwhelming spam, you’d have known if it did 😉

Here it is/was: [Circa 1992 : Bristol UK]

To Bill Gates:

  Greeetings from the UK.
  [… a short sentence about myself…]
  Twenty years ago people would have laughed if you told them that it will be possible to earn a living sat at a desk in front of a screen, tapping away at plastic buttons, moving a device called a mouse around on a soft pad.
  IN TWENTY YEARS TIME YOU WILL BE ABLE TO EARN A LIVING SAT AT HOME, WEARING SPECIAL GLASSES AND GLOVES, CLICKING YOUR FINGERS WHILE WAVING YOUR ARMS AROUND IN THE AIR.
  MICROSOFT SPACE. MICROSOFT ROOMS.
  Close the Windows, the room’s getting cold.
  Now who’s laughing?
   
  Thank you for your time.
  Jon Kossmann
  Createc.

Anderson & Lembke High-Technology Business-to-Business Advertising

Bristol. UK.
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