Microsoft’s geek blogger, Robert Scoble has been bugging folks at Microsoft to publish their content as RSS feeds for a while. He’s had some noteworthy successes, and I tip my hat to him for that.
Except that someone in Redmond needs to go kick whoever is in charge of actually, you know, updating those feeds. Cases in point:
- The Windows XP Expert Zone Community. I write for this site occasionally, and I enjoy reading the articles there. It’s a great source of information with something for just about any Windows XP user, from rank beginners to experts. But I haven’t received anything new in NewsGator since April 27th, nearly a month ago, which is the last time the XML feed was updated. It looks like no new columns have been published there in May. But there have been plenty of online chats, new downloads, and other additions to the page. Those should be showing up in my aggregator.
- Microsoft Security Bulletins. Is there a better use for RSS than this? If so, I can’t think of it. I want all security bulletins to show up in my news reader, but the Security Bulletins XML feed hasn’t been updated since April 13. There’s not a word about the May 11 update. Is that because it wasn’t listed as Critical but rather as Important? Hey, I’d like to know about the Important ones too. I might even want to decide to receive bulletins with Moderate and Low severity ratings. No reason the Security Bulletins site can’t have two or more feeds, right?
- The Microsoft Download Center is another ideal candidate for an RSS feed. New stuff appears here all the time, and it’s of extreme interest to people who either obsess over this stuff or write about it for a living. But there’s no RSS feed to let me know when new stuff is posted. How wrong is that? (Well, actually, there is an RSS feed, but it’s an unofficial one. I have no idea how I discovered this, and I’m sure it gets a fraction of the traffic it should get.)
Hey Robert, if you can provide personal support for Infoworld readers, surely you can help me out with this one!
Ed Bott 