I found this brief summary of the Morgan Stanley report (full report) on the world of online publishing on Real Lawyers Have Blogs. It pays particlar attention to blogs, blogging and where they believe it is all headed. If you're a published of traditional or online publications you would do well to have a good look at this.

A recent report from Morgan Stanley's analysts Mary Meeker, Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald is a must read for law firms who want to understand where the online publishing world is headed. Law firms are not seeking to generate revenue from publishing content per se.

But understanding how to distribute information online and how your target audience is receiving such content is critical in keeping up with innovative law firm marketing professionals. Large law firm clients are reading this report, you ought to as well.

Podcasting.  Fad or value add…that's the question.  David Coursey ways in with his opinion, on the value (or lack there of) of Podcasting when he offers…

Is "Podcasting" just another outlet for egomaniacal bloggers?

David goes on to say…

At one level, this is blogging for people with even larger egos, folks who think they need to be heard as well as read. On another level, RSS feeds are a good way for commercial audio producers to make their programming widely available via automated downloads for offline listening.

I believe that audio distribution, of certain types of content, via RSS has significant value. Look at the success of audio books.  But I don't belive it has a place in blogging as we know it today. It's hard enough sometimes to read the rantings and ravings of some bloggers…myself included on occasion ;)...I can almost visualize the wild gesticulations and profanities flying, so why would I want to hear this? Again…just my opinion.

Lets reconvene in three to six months and see where Podcasting is.  My bet, gone in large part, but not forgotten all the way around

Just caught this one on the wire from PocketPCThoughts.com.  Adobe has released version 2.0 of their Acrobat Reader for the PocketPC.  No word on version 2.0 for the Palm or Symbian operating systems though.

Adobe® Reader® for Pocket PC 2.0 extends the value and capabilities of Adobe PDF files by adapting them for high-quality viewing on smaller screens, while preserving their rich content. Working with the ActiveSync filter, which runs on Windows®, Adobe Reader for Pocket PC enables you to view PDF files from your desktop computer anywhere, anytime. Adobe Reader for Pocket PC also makes it easier for you to take digital editions and slide shows along on your Pocket PC device.  

Among the key new features / enhancements are:

- Wireless printing support
- Faster rendering of pages
- Ability to download "digital editions" of books.
- support for Adobe Photo Album slide shows

Following on from the launch of two very successful projects (WIX and WTL) on SourceForge.Net, Microsoft has now launched its third open source project, FlexWiki.  I'm not even going to get into the potential for hidden agendas and other ramifications of this most recent OSS venture, other then to say…interesting…VEERRRYYY INTERESTING.

Microsoft's three projects allow developers to build collaborative online content, build installation packages for Windows products and create graphic interfaces for Windows programs. The Windows Installer XML software, posted on SourceForge.net in April, has received over 100,000 downloads while the Windows Template Library, in its fifth month on the site, has received over 23,000 downloads — placing both projects in the top 10% of active projects on the site.

Moreover Technologies re-introduced their "free" RSS feeds however there's a catch.  The feeds are now advertising-supported.

The company now plans to make money from an "intelligent" advertising system that pairs targeted promotions with news feeds, Moreover CEO Jim Pitkow said. People can sign up to receive headlines on a news-reader Web page, and they will receive one related text ad per day, which should mean they won't be inundated with ads.

"We can control the frequency with which ads are placed," Pitkow said.

Hype about the promise of RSS has been seismic, but the question of how to profit from the news-syndication technology has remained unanswered for many Web outfits and investors. Several companies, including Moreover, are attempting to find the answer in online advertising.

Alright, well maybe it's not a "hit single", but it's pretty amusing in my humble opinion.  Without further ado I bring you…The R S S  BANDWIDTH BLLLLUUUEEESSSS…... ;)

Correction: Apgologies…I incorrectly attributed this to the Lockergnome.  In fact it comes from Alex Williams on DecisionCast .  Apologies Chris.

Da-na-na-na

I woke up this morning
Da-na-na-na
To check the server logs
Da-na-na-na
And much to my surprise
Da-na-na-na
It was an RSS terabyte demise

I've got the RSS bandwidth blues
Da-na-na-na
Oh yeah, I've got the RSS bandwidth blues

I called up the doctor
Da-na-na-na
She said no more full feeding
Da-na-na-na
Uh-uh. Don't want that kind of news reading
Da-na-na-na
Well, she said, you better do something
Da-na-na-na
About all those dumb feeds
Da-na-na-na
That ping endlessly, like friggin' zombies

I've got the RSS bandwidth blues
Da-na-na-na
Oh, yeah, I've got the RSS bandwidth blues

Da-na-na-na
I called The Godfather
Da-na-na-na
What's the matter with you? He said with dismay.
Da-na-na-na
Aggregated feeds?
Come on. One blog, one feed…stop aggregating all those blogs today!

I've got the RSS bandwidth blues
Da-na-na-na
Oh, yeah, I've got the RSS bandwidth blues

And so I ask you
Da-na-na-na
What should I do?
Da-na-na-na
About RSS, that's looking more like Denial of Service, II

There may be a cure, said the geeks with glee
Da-na-na-na
They're just talking machines
Da-na-na-na
You have to give them a voice
Da-na-na-na
A little ingelligence, too
Da-na-na-na
Bring on the semantic web, please!

Sara Williams, the head of MSDN responds to the hailstorm of criticism spun up around blogs.msdn.com having trouble with their feeds due to bandwidth consumption and as a result, needing to make significant changes

Robert and I just had a nice chat about what we're doing with RSS on blogs.msdn.com. In a nutshell, our RSS traffic is neglible compared to all the traffic generated by Windows Update, MSN, downloads, and the rest of microsoft.com. We were motivated to reduce the size of the blogs.msdn.com home page primarily for operational efficiency's sake - why serve up 400k of content when we know that folks (except for Robert) don't read 400K of content on a web page. The truncation idea is borrowed straight from newspapers - read the first bit on the front page, turn to page 12 for the full story. We hear you that you don't want the aggregate feed to be truncated, so it's not. And we increased the limit from 500 to 1250 characters on blogs.msdn.com. We're also working on some smaller OPMLs, so that you can easily subscribe to a subset of our blogs - say, all the security blogs, or all the web services blogs. When we had 20 or so bloggers on MSDN, it made sense to have 1 opml. We've got 959 now, so a single OPML isn't as easy to deal with any more. Yes, RSS has room for improvement, but it's not bad today - you just have to understand what you're doing. At the same time, there's tons of headroom for improvements to the spec, improvements to the client software, and improvements in server implementation

Looks like Microsoft Community, in an effort to step up the transparency, is providing a portal into the blogs of Microsofts internal employees.  It's searchable based on categories or keywords.  So, if you need some inside err…..insight into Microsoft Exchange Server, you can find all the bloggers who cover Exchange and so on.  On…and it also contains a feed of the most recent posts aggregated from all the blogs in the portal.

Quite nice I might add.  I love the way that Microsoft is embracing blogging instead of trying to shut it down.

Check out the portal here: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalHome.mspx

I just love it when NYC tries to stay on the cutting edge, yet falls flat on its face.  Case in point, the New York County Daily Juror Call-In Message feed.  Last updated when?  December 2003.  Our tax dollars at work.  God I love this city ;)

RSS feed

Check out Scobles response to the CEO of Adobe, on why he shouldn't lose sleep over Microsoft.  In it he talks about how Adobe has always embraced new technology and how Adobe has been bold in the past in taking on industry leaders such as Apple and Microsoft. 

Let's go back to 1984: Did Warnock and Geschke worry about what Apple would do to them? After all, back then Apple was far bigger than Adobe (and, if you talk to pioneers like Dave Winer, they were scary back then too). I watched Adobe back then. Adobe came out with Postscript, a ton of fonts, and later Illustrator. Served a new market that hadn't been served. Took advantage of new trends and new platforms from Apple.

Jump forward to 1995. Did Adobe worry about Apple (which was still bigger and still controlled its major platform) or Microsoft (which was bigger yet)? I don't know, but the 1990s saw Adobe come out with Photoshop, Acrobat, Indesign, and tons of other stuff that served markets that Apple and Microsoft simply didn't see.

Talk about a feel good letter.

Bruce, how can Microsoft work with you to help you find new unserved markets? How can we work with you to rebuild your existing apps to take advantage of the new platform technologies in Longhorn? How can we help you come up with a "killer app" for Longhorn? That's what I'm losing sleep about.

Ever have a Sharepoint site that you wish had a webpart for displaying RSS feeds to your users?  Do you have a Sharepoint site that would benefit from the ability to generate RSS feeds of it's webpart like News or other lists?  Well, thanks to Jan Tielens, now you can.

Today I have a day off, so I decided to work a little bit on my "pet project": RSS generation for SharePoint sites. Scoble asked for it when I released my RSS Reader Webpart. I know there are some good solutions for this problem available (for example from Siegfried Weber and DevHawk), but I was intrigued by this problem so I decided to craft one myself. Et voila: the What's New Rss Feed for SharePoint was born (see the end of the post for downloads). I've re-used to logic of the What's New Web Part to retrieve the latest changes on a SharePoint site so I won't go into detail about that part of the code. The general idea behind this is that the code will go through all the lists.

Following on from Mike's last post regarding RSS readers on mobile devices, here's an excellent thread for those of you who are sometimes connected PocketPC information junkies.  I've been following this thread on PocketPCThoughts.com.  Sorry for all you Palm readers, but I promise we'll get to you soon.

I've become quite addicted to my mobile RSS reader.  I've tried a bunch, but ultimately I chose PocketRSS 1.30 from AtomicDB.com.  Truth be told, I'm a PocketPC junkie.  I just picked up a new IPAQ 4155 and love it.

Oh…and for those of you who want to post to your Moveable Type blogs while on the road and have a your PocketPC handy, there is no better app than they recently upgraded Pocket SharpMT 2.4 from my friend Randy over at RandyRants.com.

Like the rest of the blog world that has an interest in what Nick D. is going to spew next, I wandered over to Kinja.com to check out the launch of the beta site.  My initial thought was that it has a nice clean looking design, a la Kottke...I didn't feel Plastic when I looked at it, sorry J. but thats just my opnion. So, I signed myself up, imported my feed list and away I went.

I hate to say it…well… I don't really hate to say it…more like…I have to say it.  I was thoroughly unimpressed.  So what am I getting from Kinja that I can't get elsewhere?  One more place that I have to import all my feeds to? Fine. What else?

Ok, so they aggregate feeds that they themselves have categorized into digests.  Ok…cool.  But that's it.  Do they have feeds for them?  Errr…Nope.  Why?  More then likely it's because I have to go to the site and see advertising mixed in with the entries.  Can I categorize my own feeds (based on the sites taxonomy of course…my own would probably get a bit unwieldy)? Nope.  Gotta leave that to Kinja…in their defense though, if each user had their own taxonomy then you'd have a system that was out of control and virtually useless like Blogorama or BlogsearchEngine, sans digest functionality. So I'm fine with the classification thing.  Not that I expected any different mind you, but no feeds…man…that sucks.

Further, I don't find the digest page all that conducive to the way I read blogs…but that's just me, maybe some of you will.

Personally, I'm still a huge fan of Bloglines as my online aggregator, Feedster is pretty cool also, but I'm partial to Bloglines…slick interface (I know that it isn't very P.C.SS to say so, but I love the frames), it's also quick, and the notification functionality is very cool.  With Bloglines, at least I can put things into "categories" or folders and then click on a folder and view everything in it or click on the individual feeds and view them on their own.  Kinja…no folders either.

So, what's the bottom line? The bottom line is this…for all the hype of that Kinja.com page sitting around for months I don't know what took so long?  Maybe when it moves out of beta and adds some more functionality it will be worth a second look, I just hope I don't forget my password in the meantime ;)

Update: Meg of Megnut.com is leaving at the end of April.  Check out her quickie post. Very interesting. Also, Jason over at Kottke.org has some thoughts about Kinja.

Joining the ranks of search engines trying to garner as many queries as possible, leading meta search provider Dogpile.com has released a toolbar a la Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and on and on…

Of course it has the standard search features such as highlighting, dictionary / thesaurus search links as well as the gratuitous pop up blocker.  However, the neat new thing about this toolbar is that it's also got a built in RSS aggregator that can be used as a news ticker or to create a local RSS feed page.  You can also set it so that every time you click on an RSS (or ATOM) link, it will offer to add it to your feed reader.  It would be nice if it offered an time it sensed an RSS (or ATOM) feed on a page.  Maybe that will come in the second round.

With the recent acquisition of Blogrolling.com by the folks over at Tucows.com and all the talk of not touching things, I wonder if anyone over there saw this on the horizon.  Enter Stage Left, MyStack.com.  Searcher of things…creator of stacks!  Ahhh… competition.