Google bullish on Atom, Microsoft bullish on RSS?

Since when is "'using" Quicktime and a PSP supporting it? Are you suggesting Jeff will lead XBOX gaming partners to build a PSP version of Halo2? Now THAT would be supporting PSP. Is Microsoft going to start ensuring the WMV files run on Quicktime? Now THAT would be supporting quicktime. But I'm completely baffled as to why you think an employee would be fired for using non MS products on his own personal time. Talk about hyperbole!

Dmad: using is -- implicitly -- giving support. It might not be much support, but it is giving support. It further validates Quicktime and PSP as media standards and tells Microsoft's customers that they should support them too.

This wasn't on his own personal time. It was on the http://www.on10.net site that's owned by Microsoft (and supported by such).

You had me there for a second... I read the title, "Google Bullshits on Atom, Microsoft bullsh..."

=) Glad to see no one is making stuff up

So Microsofties are no longer scorned for packing an iPod?

Hans: the employees I know never were. That was another made up story by Wired magazine.

Wake me up when we start an industry standards committee on RSS and Atom.

Mike: There already is one on Atom. It's called the IETF.

How does the Microsoft RSS implementation deal with the HTML-in-title problem?

To me, it shouldn't matter whether you choose Atom or RSS. If your application produces feeds, then choose one and stick to it since that's less confusing to the consumer. If your application accepts feeds as input, support both. This is what Microsoft is doing and I see nothing wrong with it.

Atom and RSS both have their own advantages and disadvantages - Atom is an agreed internet standard and has less ambiguity in its specification, whereas RSS is simpler and more ubiquitous. At the end of the day, it should not matter which format you choose.

Let's see...deal with the IETF or Winer. Tough choice.

Seriously, it's "Deal with a rabid wolverine or a pack of insane weasels". Not sure there's a good choice, but the IETF tends to be more open to new ideas.

Simon Willison: "How does the Microsoft RSS implementation deal with the HTML-in-title problem?"

When Microsoft is producing feeds (MSDN blogs) they include HTML in the titles. When they're consuming feeds (the IE7 aggregator) they assume there is no HTML in titles. As a result their aggregator is unable to process their own feeds correctly. You'd think that might cause them some concern, but apparently not.

James: it causes me some concern. I'll send this along to Teligent who makes our blogging software that most employees use.

It's not as simple as that. If Teligent were to change the way they produced titles in order to work with IE7, their feeds would suddenly stop working (with silent data loss) in several other aggregators (I personally can name more than a dozen). The thing is neither your blogging software nor your aggregator have actually done anything wrong - they just happen to be incompatible with each other, because the RSS spec is ambiguous.

Recently the RSS Board starting making an attempt to address this ambiguity (and a number of other issues) when it was rather forcefully pointed out to them that the RSS roadmap did not allow for such clarification. In the words of Dave Winer: "it [the RSS spec] *has* to remain ambiguous, because the roadmap says so." This is, of course, for your own good. I'm now sure how it's good for you that your software doesn't work, but apparently it is.

Follow the troll and keep writing software from shoddy specs.

Is this RSS engine part of Vista or part of IE7? I'd guess that the RSS of IE7 (or the RSS engine/platform) will eventually become de facto standard and other aggregators will follow it.