Why Microsoft needs RSS

Everyone knows that Microsoft announced at this year’s Gnomedex their support for RSS in their Longhorn (now Vista) release. A quick search on Google or Technorati comes up with plenty of people who have already weighed in on the subject (I particularly like Nick Bradbury’s post here). Most of the talk, however has been around how RSS integrates into IE (see the IE blog post on RSS integration here) and the associated ease with which IE users will be able to subscribe to feeds, create feeds and some of the ways they are extending RSS to handle lists and a common data store, etc. The rest has been centered around Microsoft’s RSS effort for developers to enable them to more easily pull feeds from applications. All great stuff, but that’s not at all why I’m excited about Microsoft embracing RSS and since no one else was writing about it I thought I’d throw my 2c into the ring. Love it or hate it, the Microsoft Office suite is a critical part of most businesses (with apologies to Star Office . . . ). Unfortunately their organizational/search/storage/retrieva paradigm is all wrong. While trying to ease users into the computer age, Microsoft has unfortunately created programs that attempt to mimic how people use and store information in the off-line world (i.e., in logical hierarchies, folders, etc) – which limited the power of the new computing medium. This is true both within applications and between them; in our file folder hierarchies and in how we store mail; in how we save bookmarks to the admin of an LDAP directory. Anyone who has ever tried to search in Outlook for a contact for whom you had only limited information or for a file that you misplaced understands the limitation of this system – it works great for structured data, but not so great for unstructured data (i.e., if you know you’re looking for Joe Smith in your contacts you’re fine; if you remember meeting someone name Joe who was an investment banker and who you met sometime in the summer of 2003 you’re screwed). The current system is fine for storing basic information, but lacks the database like ability to assign attributes and then search on those attributes (there are some limited ways to do this both in outlook, in contacts and for files – i.e., you can create different categories of contacts or add certain information to file properties but neither is very powerful and neither is meaningfully searchable). Enter the Internet age and people have discovered the power of unstructured data. Google built an entire service around it in the form of Gmail (lots of storage is great, but their real innovation was the elimination of folders in favor of fast and easy search and what essentially amounts to the ‘tagging’ of conversations). Both Google and Microsoft recognize it in their efforts in desktop search. And companies like del.icio.us and social text really really get it in allowing us to control how we label and categorize information. Perhaps I’m stretching some or perhaps being a bit too hopeful, but I believe RSS can bring Office into the 21st century. Imagine being able to tag a contact or a file with various attributes that you can later quickly and easily search on. Imagine being able to subscribe to a shared document folder to know when someone in a workgroup updates a file (enabling shared folders to function almost as a wiki). Imagine being able to stop placing files in work folders altogether but rather tagging then with the pertinent information which will enable you to much more easily find them later (and remember what they were for). …

September 20, 2005· 3 min read

Dogs on blogging

From the New Yorker . . . Blog_1

September 15, 2005· 1 min read

A little perspective

My dad sent me the following link that shows a map of the New Orleans flooding overlayed on a map of Boston (great UI). Being from Boston, this is a particularly relevant scale for me (particularly since I’ve spent a total of only 2 days in New Orleans in my life). Even if your’re not from the Boston area I think you’ll find the perspective helpful in understanding the true extent of what happened last week.

September 8, 2005· 1 min read

Accidents in North American Venture Capital

As a member of the American Alpine Club I look forward each year to the arrival of my copy of Accidents in North American Mountaineering. This is a book that the club publishes annually that documents climbing and mountaineering accidents that are reported each year in the United States and Canada. The idea, of course, is to educate the climbing community on things that can go wrong in the backcountry in an attempt to make everyone safer (as if the threat of dying were not enough, we also have to worry about being written up in Accidents. . . ). A typical entry might be titled: Fall on Snow – Unable to Self-Arrest, Faulty Use of Crampons and would then go on to describe how someone fell on a snowfield (in this case not far from Boulder, CO), dropped his ice-axe and wound up breaking his legs when he inappropriately tried to stop himself with his crampons (ouch!). Other titles this year were: Stranded, Exposure-Hypothermia, Inadequate Clothing/Equipment, Climbing Alone, Weather, Exceeding Abilities (apparently this guy got it all wrong); or my personal favorite: Stranded, Exceeding Abilities, Incompatible Partners – Poor Communication (I like that having crappy partners is an official designation of the AAC). …

September 7, 2005· 2 min read

Was Hobbes Right?

Louisiana are pretty remarkable. Gunmen targeting medical convoys. Widespread looting. Here’s some aerial photography that shows the water covering neighborhoods. Here’s a link to a photo series from the WashingtonPost (if this link doesn’t work for you there’s a link from the post home page). Its unbelievable to see what’s going on and disheartening to watch some of the behavior that is emerging in what has become somewhat of a lawless area (I’m not talking about people stealing groceries to live on – I’m talking about the people looting from jewelry stores and the like). Reports of the devastation in …

September 1, 2005· 2 min read

Less than Zero

I wrote a post a month ago about the US personal savings rate falling to zero in June – its 2nd lowest level since the great Depression. It’s worth reading the comments to that post, which pointed out the following: 1) people are stupid; 2) don’t get too hot and bothered about just one data point; 3) the savings rate was actually slightly positive – at 0.02% – not actually zero; 4) there’s hidden savings in the US in the form of R&D, education spending and gains in home equity values that, while not exactly putting money into a bank account, is the equivalent of ‘investing for the future’; and 5) higher savings rates don’t necessarily translate into economies growing more quickly (using Europe as an example, although Japan would be another prime data point for this argument). All very good points and well taken (particularly the point on ‘hidden savings’ – I hadn’t thought about that before). However while low savings rates clearly have short term benefits to the economy (in the form of more money going into the economy itself – on a macro level this is a key driver in Keynesian economics) they are probably not sustainable in the long term (certainly not at or near zero). Also, given the current administrations insistence on expensive outlays of capital and preference for tax cuts which are causing us to run quite a deficit, combined with our large current account imbalance, we’re reliant on someone’s savings to fund our economy (and if American’s aren’t saving, then we’re 100% reliant on other nations to fund our debt). Perhaps some economist readers might jump in here with their thoughts. …

September 1, 2005· 2 min read

RSS – Hot or Not?

A recent Nielson/NetRatings poll (story here) showed a huge gap between the have’s and the have-not’s. Specifically they asked respondents about their usage of RSS and found that 66% either hadn’t heard of RSS or didn’t know what it was used for and that only 11% of web log readers used RSS to monitor blogs (less than 6% of users overall use RSS according to a Pew Research study from January). There are definitely some implications for those (increasing number) of us who are investing in and trying to grow RSS related businesses (and we’re clearly still in the early stage of the adoption curve for RSS enabled technologies – see Bill Burnham’s great post on the subject here) …

August 30, 2005· 3 min read

Josh King and the corporate development perspective

HHere’s today’s shocker – VC’s don’t have all the answers. Those of you who are not VC’s have known this all along, but for people on the inside it’s a slow process of realization (I think I’m on about step 8). Seriously, though, as much as its amusing to poke fun at VCs (and our increasing propsnsity to blog), I do really like to see new non-VC folks throw their hats in the ring to talk about the world of operating growing businesses. Because of my background, I’m especially fond of reading what people in the corporate development world have to say (which is in part why I encouraged Daniel to write a guest post for my M&A series). …

August 26, 2005· 1 min read

Fun or Funny

I’ve had a few frustrating things going on this week and my attitude around them forced me to remember an old adage that I used to use when I was guiding back-country hiking trips (when inevitably we’d get rained on or someone would have forgotten something and people would get upset). It’s either fun or funny. Choose. Depending on my mood my response can range from laughter to “fuck you – it’s neither and I don’t want to play this game” (talking to myself, of course). Of course most times it really is either fun or funny (or feels better when put in one of those categories) and when forced to choose it typically puts me in a better mood.

August 26, 2005· 1 min read

Lost in translation

I love playing around with Google Translate – mostly to look at web sites or read blogs that are written in other languages. I’m also a big cycling fan and after this year’s Tour I decided to write to the German cyclist Jan Ullrich – one of my favorite riders and the third place finisher in this year’s contest. I wrote my note in English but also translated it into German using Google. I had forgotten about this note until a few days ago when I actually received a note back from Jan (I’m actually pretty sure it was really from him – it certainly made my day!). I translated it back to English also using Google, but decided that it was too important to leave to chance, so I forwarded it to a German friend of mine in Frankfurt for a second opinion. Turns out Google did a pretty nice job translating his response, but was apparently too literal in translating my original note. I found it pretty amusing and thought I would repeat it here – a good lesson in lexical vs. conceptual meaning. …

August 22, 2005· 2 min read