Longhorn (heart) RSS

Longhorn (heart) RSS

Its excellent to see something I've been beleiving in for along time come to start to come to fruition. Its my belief that subscription based content consumption is the next generation of computing.

Subscription based consumption renders current consepts of composite applications obsolete in many scenarios.

Microsofts plan here is everything you could ask for in an approach - open and standards conforming. Yet at the same time, maximizing the value proposition of the Microsoft OS and Office platform. (whether they'll get it right or not has yet to be seen).

By making data subscription incredibly simple for applications developers and users, application models will need to change again to the fourth era of application interface.

The first era was main frame - accessing data that was shared with others.

The second era was the birth of client/server, where users were enabled to manipulate that shared data, not just consumer or enter it.

The third era was the move to internet (and intranet) based applications, specifically web apps, that enabled users to keep an application ~their application~ accessable.

The fourth era, as I see it, will be the era personalized publishing and subscription for consumption. Include in this area evolutions in existing application models and you will see, once again, revolution in how we view, and use computing.

Many at microsoft seem to think that the fourth era will be the rebirth of client/server (smart clients), but I think this is just an evolution of known tools and techniques - not transforming or evolutionary. Smart clients have a lot in common with the subscription model though!

A critical point in this revolution will however be in realization that we need to continue to offer all the strengths of the previous era's as we move forward.

To this I suggest to the Microsoft RSS platform team, that a user centric list of feeds (including what has been read) not only needs to be cross application (as they have proposed to date), but have the ability to span out of a single computing instance and be consumable and updatable from a multitude of devices and locations.

The statement "these are the users feeds" is the axisis of this. But we must recognize and accomidate that the user is a real living (and moving) being, that won't stay still. The concept of a OS based user must fade and the recognization of a single, cross network, identitiy must be realized.

I'll expand further on this at some point in the near future.