Fun at Gnomedex

Sheila and I had a great time at Gnomedex. Many thanks to Chris and Ponzi for doing such a fantastic job!

One of the obvious things to mention about this year’s Gnomedex is the Microsoft announcement that they’re adding RSS support to IE7 and Longhorn. Microsoft doesn’t come up on my radar all that often—I’m a Mac developer, see—but I was aware that they hadn’t done much with RSS yet. By doing RSS features they give a major boost to syndication.

Even as a Mac developer I’m glad because it means more and more people will use RSS and more and more sites will have feeds.

Some people have quibbled with this and that about the announcement, and some of the quibbles may be valid, but I personally don’t have an interest in picking nits. I did talk to some of the folks on the RSS team at Microsoft, and I liked them—they seemed very excited about all this and at the same time open and wanting to be part of the community, which is cool.

Of course, everything Microsoft does will be scrutinized by many people. Since it’s the 800 pound gorilla, it’s only right that people pay close attention to what they’re doing. But for me the thing to do for now is look at the big picture. Will Microsoft’s support of RSS help make syndication more and more popular? Yes indeed, and that’s a good thing, and so I’m glad.