Dave Winer is worried that Microsoft is going to throw its weight around when it comes to RSS. I worry about that too. A lot.

I agree, too, that things have changed. For one, Microsoft is far more transparent than it used to be. If we do something evil you know who to call. I have the head of Internet Explorer team, Dean Hachamovitch on IM and have his cell phone number.

Also, I am here at the Lift conference. During the last session I stood in the back and watched how people were sharing information. Blogs. IM. Email. All live. People are so connected now. If we do something evil it spreads around the world within an hour. Or even faster.

Finally, it takes minutes for this connected world to figure out whether something is good or not. If it isn’t you’ll know and know in a violent manner.

What does this mean? First, if we don’t work with the community we’ll fail. Second, if we don’t have the best products and services, we’ll fail. Third, if we take too long to react to market demands we’ll be left out of the conversation and rendered irrelevant.

Hint: I am using Dave Winer’s aggregator. That said, I wish Dave’s aggregator told the RSS platform when I read a post so that other RSS reading apps on the system (I have several) will know that I read an item already. 

Don Dodge, former executive with AltaVista (the search engine Google basically killed off), interviews Gabe Rivera, founder of Memeorandum. My favorite news page memetracker.

Don also recently interviewed Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List.

Steven Sinofsky, check this out! (Steven is the guy who runs the Microsoft Office team and I believe is the highest ranking blogger currently at Microsoft).
I just was given access to an early version of 30 boxes and it’s going to be hot when it comes out. I have one word for my first trial: wow.
Thomas Hawk has the details. It’s beautiful. I wish Microsoft would buy this company and build this into Office Live and Windows Live.

Along this topic Scott Mace is doing a “Calendar Swamp” blog and is asking questions about the calendar that’ll come with Windows Vista. Steve Makofsky is blogging about the new Windows Calendar (those screen shots look awesome!) I’ll definitely follow up there with a video. I just subscribed to Calendar Swamp. Calendaring is joining mapping as an interesting space to watch.