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As there’s an RSS theme to today’s postings, here’s a couple of links to some resources that may help answer the question “What is RSS, then?”

The BBC has been making extensive use of RSS for its news and current affairs for some time now, and they have a page that explains the how, what and why in good general terms.

But if your PHB doesn’t consider the BBC credible source, then every management type has heard of Tom Peters. The godfather of gurus has just started providing RSS feeds for his blog (yes, you heard that right – Tom Peters is blogging) – and he’s got a good explanation here.

And finally, here’s a couple of gratuitous plugs for our favourite newsreaders – Newsgator for the PC and Outlook, and Shrook for the Mac.

It seems that RSS – Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summaries, depending on your point of view – is starting to make it onto the corporate IT radar. eWeek, a well-respected enterprise IT publication from the Ziff-Davis stable has just published a slew of stories on the subject – a summary of the technology and potential benefits in RSS Makes Enterprise Headlines, a case-study in RSS Aids Relief Organization, and a cautionary view as Jim Rapoza says “Don’t Believe RSS Hype“. When there’s contrarian views under the same masthead as breathless hype, it’s a sign that the technology is on it’s way to maturity in our experience Separately they’re reviewing Moveable Type – a blog engine getting the same treatment as the latest corporate heavyweight application from Microsoft. Add to this the fact that management guru Tom Peters is using RSS to distribute his views, and it’s clear that there’s something going on.

The key to enterprise take-up of RSS in our view doesn’t necessarily lie in the strategic approaches that eWeek is featuring, however. Our experience is that the desktop – or rather the news aggregator – is the stalling factor in the widespread adoption. Several of our corporate customers have been wowed by the power of weblogs and wikis in capturing enterprise information and intelligence, but rather less ecstatic once they realised that there’s a client implication. Although it’s the best news aggregator implementation for the PC that we’ve come across, surprisingly it’s Newsgator that’s caused some of the sharpest intakes of breath – it seems that the somewhat cranky nature of Outlook that makes a wide deployment of a plug-in something that corporate IT functions are wary of. As one systems administrator commented, “We can’t keep up with patches for 30,000 desktops – never mind installing a paradigm shift”.

In the instances where employees have the ability (legitimately or otherwise) to control their own applications to an extent, the path of RSS introduction has been somewhat smoother – individuals can go ahead with an installation and become a maven for the technology once it transforms their working life. (And we don’t think that’s breathless hype.) There’s a lot of debate around about the rise of DIY-IT and how corporate IT policies might be holding back the adoption of beneficial technologies, so it will be interesting to see how quickly RSS finds its way into the mainstream. Perhaps we’re waiting for Microsoft to retro-fit newsreading capabilities into their out-of-the-box software – or perhaps this is an occasion when Redmond can’t move quick enough to ride the wave, and others can get there first?

The awesome 43 Folders is compiling a meta-list of OS X apps, and is cadging pings to other lists. So here goes, a trackback ping to a long list of useful Mac apps…

Remember I raved about Desktop Manager being the only app you’d need to show to a Windows user to make them think about switching? (And got Scobled for my pains, too ) Quicksilver is the application that will make them switch on the spot. They’ll fight you for your Powerbook, I promise.

Unless you see it demonstrated, it’s one of those applications which takes a little while to mentally click with – but once it’s clicked, it becomes an essential. Dan Dickinson has written a quick introduction that makes you go duh! and promote Quicksilver to somewhere around “I’d rather donate my right arm/left arm/genitals (delete as applicable) than be without it” status. If at first you don’t get it – stick around – believe me, it’s worth it.

I don’t care how wonderful Longhorn is when if it finally arrives – if it can’t do what Quicksilver can do, then I’m sticking with my Mac…

Q: Why are you sitting typing on a Powerbook instead of being asleep?

A: Because of the cat.

Q: How so?

A: Because being a feline with a brain the size (and processing power) of a walnut, he disappeared back outside about 10 minutes before we went to bed, despite having just been found, picked up and brought inside. And then reappeared outside the bedroom window at 01:30am, crying to be let back in again because a) we don’t yet have a functional catflap; and b) it was cold out. So your correspondant cat-slave gets up to let him in, upon which he gets a prefunctory greeting from the ungrateful animal before it buries its nose in the foodbowl.

Q: Where is the aforementioned cat now?

A: Asleep on my wife’s feet.