RSS and Microsoft
A story, and a parable:
Back in 97 or 98, when I was working at Adobe, the company's co-founder, John Warnock, sent a note to me and a bunch of other strategic thinking folks, outlining the basic idea of what became RSS. He talked about the value of syndicating content, and what we could do if we added syndication capabilities to individual websites. I didn't get the value, and wrote back that anyone could write code to grab content from other web sites. He wrote back to explain more... I still didn't get it... etc.
Long story short: Warnock got it. Regardless of who invented RSS, Warnock was thinking way ahead of the rest of us mortals, yet again.
But where was Microsoft on this front? Recently, Bill Gates said that "as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has gotten more sophisticated and value-added search capabilities have come along, this thing is really maturing."
C'mon, if Microsoft had half the brains of some of these really forward thinkers like Tim Bray and John Warnock, they wouldn't lose the real smart thinkers like Bosworth and Silverberg, to other companies.
So, one simple question to sum up: where has Microsoft been when it comes to innovation?
Back in 97 or 98, when I was working at Adobe, the company's co-founder, John Warnock, sent a note to me and a bunch of other strategic thinking folks, outlining the basic idea of what became RSS. He talked about the value of syndicating content, and what we could do if we added syndication capabilities to individual websites. I didn't get the value, and wrote back that anyone could write code to grab content from other web sites. He wrote back to explain more... I still didn't get it... etc.
Long story short: Warnock got it. Regardless of who invented RSS, Warnock was thinking way ahead of the rest of us mortals, yet again.
But where was Microsoft on this front? Recently, Bill Gates said that "as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has gotten more sophisticated and value-added search capabilities have come along, this thing is really maturing."
C'mon, if Microsoft had half the brains of some of these really forward thinkers like Tim Bray and John Warnock, they wouldn't lose the real smart thinkers like Bosworth and Silverberg, to other companies.
So, one simple question to sum up: where has Microsoft been when it comes to innovation?
2 Comments:
Dave Winer invented RSS -- not John Warnock. Get it straight.
By
Anonymous, at 5:04 PM
Dave Winer didn't INVENT RSS. He contributed to a Spec for a version 0.91, which was then revised, presented by Netscape, and published as RDF/RSS. Therefore, Netscape can be credited with RSS invention, imho.
By
Anonymous, at 12:14 PM
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