Day: 30 June 2005

Talking to Microsoft

I dont believe theres anything wrong with mentioning the recent conversations I had today. One with Mike Munn from Apple and the other with Sean Lyndersay from Microsoft. I didnt plan it that way, it just turned out that way. Anyhow I wanted say the phone conversation with Sean was very interesting in regards to Microsoft's love of RSS. So I had to blog a couple of things.

Simple List Extensions.may not be the only module from Microsoft and although writen with RSS 2.0 its not exclusively for RSS 2.0. Sean's fully aware of rdf:Bag and rdf:Seq and all the beautiful fuctionality of RDF but suggests that the marketplace has spoken when it comes to RSS 1.0. However there parser will support all the extensions/modules which are practical and bring some benefit to the end user including the well known syndication, dublincore, etc modules. I asked about commercial type modules like Yahoo's and now Apple's iTunes Media module and Amazon's Opensource modules. Sean was clear that the same benefits need to be met as with all modules but they need to be very careful about the licences with commercial modules, Microsoft putting out there module under a creative commons licence was mindblowing and Sean suggests thats only the start of things – but also hopes it pushes other commercial modules makers to consider how they licence the modules much more. He actually hopes Microsoft have set the standard and all modules will be very clear about there licencing from now on. xml:lang at the item level was discussed and may make it into the microsoft rss parser as a way to tell language and somewhat directionality. We talked about the smaller language bases which tend to be ignored or at least missed by the mainstream media outlets and how we could foster RSS usage and subscription within these languages with IE7 and World Service content. Interestingly IE7 is coming out in to public beta quicker than I first imagined. However network/bamdwidth usage was discussed and Sean was serious about the huge number of undisclosed users IE7's release could send to
our or anyone else website. Its certain, this is the year when RSS grows up and hits the mainstream

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Cass Creatives: Read All About It, but where exactly?

I forgot to mention the Cass Creatives event I went to last week. Paul at work gave me the heads up on this series of events/talks which are also free and full of interesting creative people just like the AIGA London ones. Anyway, after finally finding the place in the city near London wall, there were a small selection of drinks to wet your mouth before heading into the nicely cooled (it was about 27 degrees outside) lecture theatre. I wont go into much detail about what people said as its much better covered here at interactive knowhow. My own thoughts on the discussion was first why didnt they show the Epic 2005 version which is much better and realistic. I was quite amazed when a huge percentage of the audience said they had never seen Epic 2004. Anyhow if you seen these pieces and look at the Panel, you will know roughtly how the night went. Nico Macdonald wrote a very good piece in net imperative titled Media replies to the bloggers while on the other side Sunday's Observer has a piece. Yes generally the Death of the Journalist was debated but no conclusion was ever met, as expected. Interestingly enough Jemima Kiss from journlism.co.uk wrote a piece titled Yahoo! editor slams mainstream news. I would quite call it that but it would have been really nice to have had someone from google or even digg there to back up some of the points Yahoo's Simon Hinde made.

The talks went on for about 90mins and seemed to fly by. There was about the right amount of discussion and questions from the floor as well talking from the panel. And although we went around the forrest a bit in the discussions it was enjoyable and well worth it. After the talks, there was nibbles and drinks to further discuss the death of journalism with the panel and others. So generally the night was very enjoyable and I look forward to the next one in November sometime.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]