"MICROSOFT BETS RSS IS NEXT BIG THING"

RSS aggregators and other blogosphere cousins should be afraid. Very afraid. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the Evil Empire has begun to focus its attention on this space:

Internet Explorer users accustomed to surfing the Web will be able to use a future version of the program to make waves of information come automatically to them.

Microsoft said yesterday that the Web browser in the next generation of Windows will be able to detect, display and subscribe to streams of news and information in a format called RSS, an increasingly popular method of receiving content online.

The feature, already included in rival browsers, is part of a broader push by the Redmond company to add RSS functions to the next Windows version, known as Longhorn, due out next year. (full article)

Mitch Radcliffe has more and some good commentary:

Shows MSN Search on "Gnomedex," which returns an RSS feed for the search results. No more searching again and again, because you can subscribe to the results. (Hmm, Microsoft is aiming at Technorati, PubSub, etc.) (full post)