Come December and it is the season for predictions for the next year. Steve Gillmor on RSS:
RSS information routers will emerge in 2004 with the following characteristics:
Persistent storage of XHTML full-text/graphics/audio/video of RSS feeds
XPATH search across local and Net stores
Self-forming and reordering subscriptions lists based on the aggregated priorities of user-chosen domain experts
Use of IM notification for post notification to aggregate affinity groups and active conversations
Integration of Hydra-like collaborative tools for multi-author conference transcripts
Videoconferencing routing and broadcast/recording tools
Integration of speech recognition and real-time indexing to allow quoting of linear audio and video streams
Mesh networked peer-to-peer synchronization engine for item propagation across shared spaces on multiple clients, including phones; iPods; and eventually Longhorn PDAs (circa 2006). Armed with these tools, new industries will emerge in rapid succession:
Metadata-driven directories that dynamically create RSS feeds based on affinity
Virtual conferences
IM/RSS presence networks for rich collaboration and e-mail replacement
Content-generation tools based on small, routable XHTML objects
A DRM network with enough creative and hardware support to blunt the Microsoft/RIAA DRM threat to peer-to-peer port hijacking.
RSS+T