I’m a big fan of (good) newsletters. Have a good look at the History of the Internet: newsletters are the only tool that have been there since the early beginnings of the wild World Wide Web. There must be a reason why

In the recent weeks, I’ve been restructuring my newsletters portfolio. I was receiving way too many newsletters and couldn’t read 10% of them. (I should do the same with my RSS readers, tabs have been piling up in a very unsustainable way.)

So, now that I’m pretty happy with the remaining ones, here’s the selection of newsletter I decided to remain a subscriber of.

Obviously, please feel free to submit / criticize / recommend additional newsletters – I’d be glad to have a look (unless dismissed already). Please, leave commercial newsletters away – not the purpose of this blog.

There you go:

In English (random sort of sorting, this is not a ranking):

• TrendWatching.com
• The Register Daily Headlines
• Networking Report – Infoworld
• CTO Source – Infoworld
• Infoworld Tech Watch
• Robert X. Cringely – Infoworld
• Eclipse and Open Source Update – Dr Dobb
• SourceForge.net
• Security Report – Infoworld
• Roger Grimes – Infoworld
• SMB Report – Infoworld
• Ask the VC
• Line56 e-Business
• HBS Working Knowledge
• LifeHack.org
• McKinsey Quarterly
• Ziff Davis CIO Minute Editors’ Pick
• Online Business / about.com, by Ana Rincon
• Guerilla Marketing Weekly Intelligence Tip by Jay Conrad Levinson & Amy Levinson
• The Latest From TechCrunch
• Emerging Technologies Daily Update – Technology Review, an MIT enterprise
• Biotech Weekly Update – Technology Review, an MIT enterprise
• Small Business info / about.com, by Darrell Zahorsky
• Inc.com Daily Small Business Briefing
• Mike Sisco’s Practical IT Manager Newsletter
• Technology Voices daily headlines
• CIO Minute
• SmartMoney.com Week on the Street
• ECT News Network
• eWeek.com Editors’ News & Views
• Contract Watch – Channel Insider
• Netcraft
• USA Today Tech Briefing
• Dr Dobb’s Java Update
• Fog Creek – Joel on Software
• Baseline briefing / Baseline tools – the Project Management Center
• Enterprise Strategies – Infoworld
• What’s New Now from Ziff Davis
• Economics / about.com, by Mike Moffatt
• Retail / about.com, by Shari Waters
• Knowledge @ Wharton
• Gantthead Newsletter
• Dr Dobb’s Windows & .Net Update
• Dr Dobb’s Linux / Unix Update
• Dr Dobb’s Database Update
• Dr Dobb’s C/C++ Update
• Sun Developer Network Program Newsletter
• Off The Record – Infoworld
• DealWire – TheDeal.com
• PrivateCapitalWire – TheDeal.com
• Bankruptcy Insider – TheDeal.com
• ISN Security Watch
• Strategic Developer / Martin Heller – Infoworld
• Tech Confidential Wire – TheDeal.com
• eWeek Enterprise Update
• Inc.com Connection
• WetFeet Insider
• Russian Analytical Digest
• Dr Dobb’s Global Developer Update
• Dr Dobb’s Mobility Update
• eWeek Strategic Partners Intelligence Report

In French, en vrac:

• VNUnet.fr – la lettre quotidienne
• Finance d’Entreprise, la lettre de Pierre Vernimmen
• Reseaux-Telecoms.net
• Journal du Net
• Journal du Management
• Droit-TIC
• La Lettre de l’Atelier
• ZDNet.fr News Hebdo Business & Technologies
• Ebusiness.info
• Lettre Distributique
• Le magazine des développeur, developpez.net
• En3Mots
• ZDNet Juridique
• ZDNet Informatique
• ZDNet Sécurité
• ZDNet Télécoms
• ITRManager.com
• IFRI Actualités
• Tous les Titres des Echos 4h00
• l’Orient le Jour
• La Lettre JDN Solutions – journalinformatique.com
• Supplément Science – journalinformatique.com
• Focus RH la lettre
• LSA Flash
• Newsletter du Groupe HEC
• Marketing Direct Online editialis cabestan
• Agorabiz.com transmission d’entreprise
• Microsoft la newsletter des entrepreneurs

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When I heard that Jeremy got a job from Microsoft and it had something to do with his blog I was a bit surprised. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before somewhere and there’s no doubt more to that than just Jeremy’s writing skills involved, but still… I mean, how cool is that? Congratulations, again.

So, when Jeremy invited me to write something here I jumped at the chance. This all happily coincided with a piece of terribly misunderestimated [sic] piece of news, which centered on Microsoft, the destroyer of worlds and RSS, the nifty little format to distribute lists – the latter which happened to be something I rambled about a bit in my short-lived attempt to try ‘blogging’. I still don’t like it, I’m waiting for the next publishing format as this chronologically ordered stuff just doesn’t seem to do it to me. Even if it might be beneficial tool to journal project progress. (Yes, I’m waiting them to migrate to SPS 2007 at my organization. It’s going to be so cool.)

Anyway, back to the topic. If I had to choose the hottest tech from 2006, I’d go with RSS. What I mean by RSS here is both RSS and Atom, or pretty much any standard format of syndicating and distributing lists. In my opinion this tech is still emerging and gaining momentum, partly thanks to the blogging phenomenon, which created a need to quickly skim what’s new on so many blogs.

Now, many could argue that in 2005-2006 RSS/Atom started to mature or maybe stagnate, but not me. Maybe the specifications have finally matured enough, but there’s a lot of adopting and figuring out what to do with it to be done. Around Christmas the news broke that Microsoft had ‘patented’ RSS , which of course put everyone at arms and accusing Microsoft of stealing an open format. Of course, the patent has nothing to do with RSS the specification or RSS readers, but with the idea of central operating system level APIs to manipulate subscriptions. Which is kinda nice idea. What I find powerful in OS X are the frameworks, which f.e. enable Adium to take advantage of information in Address Book or SubEthaEdit to do it’s thing through Bonjour. And I really have to mention Growl here too.

Lists are a fun concept, and with RSS and especially Atom, it’s really versatile to go beyond ‘Rich Site Summaries’. And I believe the guys at Microsoft have figured this out. Remember Simple List Extensions or Simple Sharing Extensions ? These extensions enable RSS-feeds to be more than just chronologically sorted lists of new posts from your favourite blogs. Don’t worry if you don’t, I don’t know if anyone besides Microsoft has actually adopted these extensions or anything, even though they were published sometime in 2005. I’m also yet to find a news story connecting these dots to the recent RSS-patent ‘scandal’.

I’ve yet to have hands-on experience with Vista (wink, wink), but at least a while back when it was still called Longhorn, I remember reading that it would support RSS in new, cool ways. And to keep the guys at Cupertino at bay, Microsoft naturally needs to patent their idea of RSS framework. What I can’t understand is why hasn’t Apple already done this? Or did they rephrase their RSS patents differently?

Unlike certain open source efforts, it seems that Microsoft has understood the power of universal standard for lists. Posts in a blog? A list. Your address book? A list. Your calendar? A list (okay, there’s iCalendar already, but in iCal bi-directionality is non-existent at least pre-Leopard). Your contact list in Skype/MSN Live Messenger/whatever? A list. Your photos at Flickr ? A list. Your playlist? A list. Your favourite links ? A list. Your e-mail ? A list. Your to-do list ? Well, a list.

These lists act as database views and it definitely makes sense to centralize these through OS-level APIs. RSS has depreciated and made redundant many niche formats, like M3U and maybe even iCalendar. The simplicity and versatility of RSS has accelerated its adoption. And Microsoft got it.

Kari is an IT project manager at an utility company and when not managing the ensuing chaos finally understood what he studied while reading ‘Freakonomics’ which helped him accept fantasizing about (statistical) models, but still has a secret passion with Veronica Mars .

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