The next version of Windows, Longhorn, will support RRS - the framework of blogs and podcasting - in a big way. What’s more, they are releasing their new RSS specs into Creative Commons, which means it will be open to all. Lawrence Lessig blessed it in a video thanking Microsoft for doing so. This is an serious big deal earthquake.
Internet Explorer will support RSS feeds that will be searchable. These feeds will reside in a common open repository that any Windows application can use. Part of their new RRS spec includes lists.
What does this mean to the non-tech user? Lots.
You’ll be able to -

Do a MSN search, say “antiwar podcasts”, and effortlessly turn it into an RSS feed that you can access in your browser, Outlook, Word, or whatever; a feed that is updated everytime a new antiwar podcast appears.
Amazon wish lists that are searchable and sortable so you can track real time what everyone wants for Xmas.
Download calendars from websites and have them appear in Outlook or any other calendar program, with the dates and times automatically updated if they change.
Create screensavers out of photo blogs.

Microsoft demo’ed the above apps today in their first public showing of IE 7.0. These apps already exist!
Here’s another idea. You are using Craigs List to look for an apartment. How about having a list of apartments that interest you automatically uploaded to your cell phone. Using RSS, this can happen.
Yeah, Microsoft is a Borg. Do they have their own agenda? Well, of course they do. But their initiative to release the new RRS spec into Creative Commons makes things open for all, and this is truly a big deal that will have impact for years to come.
PS More later. My brain is full right now!

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The wireless net here at Gnomedex is part of the Bell Harbor Convention Hall, a facility operated by the city of Seattle, and the net has run fine through many a conference. Chris Pirillo, organizer of Gnomedex did warn them, saying Gnomedexers would be creating a serious stress test of their net, so they better be ready!

And so we did. Half an hour after the conference started, with 400 attendees online with their notebooks, we used up all the IP addresses. They added more networks. Didn’t really help. The nets are mostly up but very slow. 400 normal users is one thing. 400 blogging geeks running news aggregators, uploading and downloading podcasts, checking email, etc. put a stress on a net that even this net in Seattle, the most wireless city in the country, couldn’t handle.

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You could just walk into a conversation and you knew what they were talking about. Lots of video bloggers, podcasters, techies; some from startups, others from Microsoft or Feedburner or a CGI company or whatever. Most have multiple interests and/or blogs. A smart, creative crowd.

I was happily surprised by the positive reaction to Polizeros, which I described as an antiwar blog. Several already read it, others really liked the idea. As far as I know, Polizeros is the only political blog there.

This opening reception was last night. Gnomedex starts today for two days of solid non-stop talks and panels about the future of blogs and podcasting. Panels include “Tomorrow’s Syndication” , “Today’s Citizen Media”, “Tomorrow’s Open Source”, with keynote speeches by Dave Winer (who invented blogs and RSS) and Dean Hachamovitch of Microsoft who is expected to make a major announcement about Microsoft, RSS, blogs, and podcasting.

Blogs allow everyone to have a voice. We fly under, through, and past the radar of major media. Someone in a position to know told me he mentioned Daily Kos, the biggest of all the political blogs, to someone at a large newspaper and got swearing in return. It wasn’t even about Kos’s progressive politics. It was about this little upstart of a blog that now gets more hits (450,000 a day) than the newspaper’s website gets. That is the power of blogs.    

PS On the bus shuttle from the airport the driver said Boeing was the largest employer in Seattle, 48,000 employess, with Microsoft at 16,000, yet their payrolls are the same,  so “either someone is overpaid or someone is underpaid

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Rumsfeld: US not losing Iraq war

Meanwhile, Bush approval sinks further

Most striking: A startling 60% of registered voters disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy, with 63% of Americans rating the national economy as “bad, very bad, or terrible.”

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Protest anti-immigrant racists in Baldwin Park
Stop attacks on immigrants!
No to SOS/Minutemen/KKK!
 
This Saturday, June 25, 11 am
3875 Downing Ave
(Corner of Ramona & Downing - Free parking on Ramona)
Baldwin Park, CA

More info at ANSWER LA, one of the many groups mobilizing to be there.

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