Microsoft Corp. today announced that the next major release of the Windows Operating System, Longhorn, will feature built in support for Really Simple Syndication (RSS). The feature will allow both end users and developers to monitor and view RSS feeds within the operating system and its applications.

Microsoft also announced Simple List Extensions, which is an add on to RSS that allows web sites to publish lists of photo albums, playlists and top 10 lists as RSS feeds. Developers will be able to make use of these new extensions as the specification is being released under the Creative Commons license.

“RSS is key to how people will use the Internet in the future by automatically delivering the information that is important to them,” said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for “Longhorn” browsing and RSS at Microsoft. “We are investing heavily in RSS for Windows ‘Longhorn’ to make it easy for users to discover, read and subscribe to RSS feeds as well as enable developers to deliver powerful, smart applications that act on the information on behalf of the user.”

Although Longhorn has been anticipated for quite some time, it is not expected to be released until sometime in 2006. Earlier this year, Apple released Tiger, an update to their next generation operating system, which includes built in support for RSS.






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