Monday, April 25, 2005

Microsoft: Where's the feed? Microsoft has certainly joined the blogosphere in a big way, whether it's the famous Scobleizer or a host of developers (onsite and offsite). Much of the MSDN content is available via RSS. Ironically, however, a visit to the MSDN Blogs page, which lists the most recent blog posts from the MSDN Microsoft clan, fails to turn up the famous XML () or RSS () images. In fact, I have yet to find a master list of RSS feeds on Microsoft's website, although this FAQ about blogging and RSS/Atom points to some helpful feeds and resources. A Google search turns up a page of Microsoft PressPass RSS feeds and a Security Updates page with this feed. I did find a couple of RSS feeds on the Architecture page and a link to a list of architecture-related blogs, but again without a group RSS feed for the list of blogs altogether. You have to visit each blog to find the RSS link. Simon Guest's black-on-blue RSS link is hard to see, demonstrating the disadvantage of diversity in weblog layout. My best guess is that the URLs just map to the blog software of choice for each author (ain't the web grand?). I did unearth a very cool gem while digging through the MSDN blogs, though. Jack Greenfield's blog pointed to a blog by Grady Booch! Talk about cool! I'd only heard legends about the guy, you know, Booch Notation, the "Three Amigos," UML, Rational, etc. He has a blog--how cool is that? And he also has a picture, which I think I will add to my mugroll. Then there's also Martin Fowler's "bliki", or in his words: A cross between a blog and wiki of my partly-formed ideas on software development I need to come back to absorb the essence of his bliki approach to publishing. Fortunately, his hybrid approach still offers an RSS feed. And, of course, Martin has a picture too. Bottom line: Microsoft should make it easy to find RSS feeds on their site, including a link on their site map. Update: I found (after much searching) a page which lets you search the Microsoft site blogs. It serves up RSS feeds and OPML for categories of blogs.

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