There's been a lot written about Microsoft's recently announced plan to bundle RSS tools into the next release of Windows (that is, Longhorn) as well as into Internet Explorer 7, which will run on Windows XP but probably be released until Longhorn ships.

RSS was originally said to be an abbreviation for "Real Simple Syndication" and it has a fascinating history. See What Is RSS? for the story, which only includes developments through 2002 and doesn't even mention Atom, the latest incarnation of a syndication protocol adopted by, among others, Google for its Blogger.com site.

What RSS and Atom do is allow syndication of XML-enabled data. You use what's called a news "aggregator" to subscribe to and periodically poll RSS sites for new stories. It's a great way to keep up with blogs, but it's also useful to keep abreast of technical information, such as Novell's Technical Information Document database. Vendors could use it to keep you informed about fixes, patches and updates.

It's not new and it's not rocket science. You can do it today on any platform. There are stand-alone aggregators, e-mail client plug-ins, Web browser plug-ins and tool kits so you can roll your own. For Microsoft to roll it into the operating system is no more revolutionary than including a Web browser or an e-mail client - something they've done for many years.

There also seems to be a lot of noise (primarily generated by the Gartner Group) claiming that adding RSS will open up many new security holes in Windows. Of course, they also include "spam" when they talk about security, so I'm not sure they really know what they're about. Yes, you could get spam in an RSS feed, but only if it were posted to a site you subscribe to. It's that site, not the RSS, which needs to be secured.

As for allowing new malware to enter your computer, an RSS feed is just a stream of XML data - like all Microsoft Office documents will be starting with the next release.

Either it's the silly season or there hasn't been enough bad news lately!

Tip of the Week

I saw a preview of Microsoft's new Virtual Earth last week, the latest product to come from their MapPoint division. This is going to be really neat!