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Some fine Mac enthusiasts have written a little application called the Safari Standardized Feed Icon Installer that replaces the default RSS icon with the new standardized one I mentioned yesterday. Now let’s hope the kind folks on the Safari team make the icon replacement official the next release.
While plenty of nerds, geeks and techheads around the world appreciate the beauty of RSS, it’s having trouble gaining the type of mainstream acceptance necessary to change the way people access their data streams and ultimately change the way the Web works. I believe two recent annoucements will help push RSS into the minds of the masses where it needs to be if it hopes to achieve what it’s capable of.
One of the biggest problems in the past has been the confusing array of icons and terminolgy used. Tiny orange buttons with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’ on them have led to confusion or worse people ignoring it entirely. There hasn’t been a standard way to denote a feed or for that matter to even subscribe to one. Microsoft announced they will be using the new icon created by the Firefox team which likely means the cute new icon will become the de facto standard. Let’s hope Apple plays nice and implements it in Safari sooner than later.
A great example of “Web as Platform” — one of the foundational concepts of Web 2.0 — is Writely, an online word processor. The site doesn’t have all the features of Microsoft Word, but it will certainly work for most writing situations. Even more appealing, it’s free.
WordPress released version 2.0 of it’s amazing and popular open source blogging platform over the holiday weekend. With a focus on easy installation, usability and web standards, WordPress is one of the best blogging tools you can use in my opinion. Available both as an install and a hosted option you can be up and running a site with WordPress in a matter of minutes.
Yahoo Web Hosting recently announced that WordPress will be included in their hosting packages as a simple install. If 2005 was exciting for WordPress, 2006 looks to be very promising as well.
It appears that users of instant messaging technology really do use it for work. A study released last week by AOL indicated that 58 percent of those who access IM in the workplace use it to communicate with colleagues; 49 percent use it to get answers to make business decisions; and 28 percent use it stay in touch with clients and customers.
The study’s results are surprising, but the timing isn’t. Google (which owns 5 percent of AOL) has begun working with AOL to allow their respective IM programs to communicate with each other, a move that will simplify communication for users. Not at the table were MSN and Yahoo, which are working to integrate their own IM applications.