Friday, February 10, 2006 5:00 AM
Changes are afoot in Internet Explorer (IE), version 7. I have been testing out the beta version of the new IE for a little while now. As you may have heard, IE 7 comes 'out of the box' with an RSS feed reader built in. This reader serves as sort of first glimpse of what is coming down the pike from Microsoft.
Anyone who has seen screenshots of the next version of Outlook, will tell you that an RSS feed reader is also built right into this email client. Personally, as a long-time user of Newsgator, the little I have seen of the new Outlook reader, is more than a little similar to what I have already been using (not too mention Attensa, which also resides in Outlook). Whether Microsoft will offer new features and functions beyond what these two already have, remains to be seen.
Features aside, the bigger picture is that RSS is coming to the masses. With Microsoft's dominant market share, once the business world starts upgrading its desktop, we will see a lot of people who are not using RSS today, suddenly given the option for free and as a standard feature. With easily accessible tools offered up in their standard web browser and email client, many people are going to give feed reading a try. The end result, in my own opinion, is that it is just a matter of time before the 'subscribe' model for information dissemination takes it place alongside 'browse' and 'search." And, the 'time' issue will likely be tied closely to the speed at which Microsoft gets its customers to upgrade their desktops.
So, if you want a quick glimpse of what may be, take a look at IE 7...it just may be the precursor to the future.