Steve Ballmer Q&A;: RSS not huge, but important | Next MS office to have blogging tools
Recently, at a tech conference (tiecon.org), I had a chance to ask two questions to Steve Ballmer about RSS - before he headed down to the Xbox 360 launch event. The questions and responses are not verbatim, because 1) I sorely lack any journalistic training and 2) I had no idea he was going to be there - or I would get in .. but this is what he said..
Q1. How important is RSS? A fad, important, huge or will replace the web/html dominance of the internet?
A. We believe RSS is important and will be around for a while but it is not going to change the world. It is a little too simple, that is also the reason everyone’s using it. We are working on more existing powerful stuff, around XML/web services [sic] that will address many issues beyond RSS. RSS will be around, but whatever we are working next will be cooler and more prevalent.
Having said that, there are groups in MS that believe RSS has the potential to change everything and many future technology will be built around RSS, the internal debate goes on.
Q2. How do you, Or do you see Google/Blogger and similar tools being a threat to MS Office dominance?
A. Not at all, people will always need office for the complexity of tasks they perform and as such Google’s offerings in the strain of Gmail/Blogger will not replace it. We think it will be part of what we offer in future versions of Office. Besides the next release of MS Office will have the tools to publish blogs as part of its collaborative tools, watch for them <wink>.
MS PR: If you guys have transcripts, I would be happy to post those instead.
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Not sure if there are transcripts or not, but looking for them now...
frank shaw
waggener edstrom
Ballmer's comments seem awfully benign and quite consistent with public perceptions of the company strategy before he said them. Where's the controversy here?
I suspect that part of the problem hinges on precisely how you define RSS... are you talking about blogs as well, or simply web feeds, a specific web feed format, and simply one narrow potentiality of web feeds at that? When you say RSS, are you excluding Atom and any follow-on formats to RSS, or are you using RSS as an umbrella term for everything to do with blogging, syndication, and aggregation of web feeds?
Here's one of Jack's Laws: Sloppy use of terminology is *not* an aid to effective communication.
-- Jack Krupansky
If the quotes are not verbatim, as you wrote, perhaps you shouldn't present them in a Q & A format, which by design implies that they are the exact words (usually from a tape recording).
I am hoping that I get the right ones from MS.. meanwhile.. (since, the drinks were after the event) I am pretty sure I am very close on recording what was asked and said and am not mis-representing either party.
I have been traveling, evangelizing the use of RSS in the enterprise no less, so I am late in commenting on this entry. I find it interesting that Ballmer both gets it, it’s simple and that’s why people use it, and then disses it for the same reason. RSS is breathing life into the use of XML. RSS takes the presentation layer of an application architecture discussion largely out of the discussion; it’s a reader (thin, thick, rich, whatever). It also defines the “transform to” schema… it’s fixed, it’s decided, it’s primitive. As such RSS is very well suited to solving the 80% case of information *and* data dissemination within an enterprise at 20% of the cost of other integration, broadcast, mediums.
RSS is breathing new life into the web and internet technologies as well. As we all know RSS puts the control back into the hands of the recipient (subscriber) rather than the publisher. RSS allows information you need and want to find you --- goodbye browser favorites.
It’s my belief that most problems that need solving in a business don’t need “powerful web services” and the hoards of programmers required to create custom applications. They need fast, elegant, cost effective ($ & time), “80% solutions” so they don’t die at inception or on the vine as implementation times drag out. RSS allows for this.
Now RSS does have its’ problems in that it’s a request/reply polling mechanism which will wreak havoc within an enterprise over time (remember PointCast?). This will be solved by use of servers, true push technologies, etc. over time.
Perhaps Ballmer and some within Microsoft are threatened by the simplicity of the “client” side of this equation. Like the browser and html before it RSS makes you wonder why you need need complicated virus infested client software……
Footnote: I have met many strong supporters of RSS within Microsoft such as Kyle VonHaden at MSN, Scoble, etc. Microsoft is definitely investing in simplicity and RSS in parallel with classic enterprise software complexity. I put my money on the simplicity and KISS camp within Microsoft.
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Samsung officially announced five new super-slim handsets today. From left-to-right we see the 0.59-inch SGH-Z510 which Samsung claims is the world’s slimmest W-CDMA (3G) handset, the SGH-Z540 3G clamshell which (gasp) we haven’t actually seen before, the love-it-or-hate-it vintage-TI-calculator styled SGH-P300, and finally two tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE SGH-D800 and D820 sliders. So what's the deal above? The http://sonygirls.com got to love this. Have you guys noticed all these gadgets are becoming more and more popular among the girls? All five models feature MP3/AAC playback, Bluetooth, MPEG-4 video recording, and 1.3 megapixel shooter. By the way so how's the upcoming http://playstationgirl.com heard that it's going to be release on year 2007. The D800, Z510 and Z540 also feature WMA playback with 80MB, 138MB, and 150MB embedded storage respectively while the D820 is quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, packs in 73MB, an MicroSD slot, and even, er, TV-out if our Babelrean is working correctly. Oddly, the P300 is rumored to have 90MB of flash storage yet there is no mention of any storage in the press release. Oh my, such a long wait, think we should just simply stick to http://xboxgirl.com for now. All models should be available in Europe later this year. Pics of the P300 after the break with a slightly different key layout than we’ve seen previously.
RSS becomes more important every day.
So we created a RSS & blog search engine
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check this link to submit your newsfeeds: http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp
greetz...
sven
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