RSS: Life After Newspaper

As you already know, I do not watch TV and do not buy newspapers. I get 100% of my information feeds from the Internet. It started to be like that a couple of years ago. The first enabler was a WiFi network covering my house and a Compaq Tablet PC as my electronic newspaper. I could sit in any room (yes, the bathroom included) with my tablet and navigate to any site and read. Local news, technology, stocks, email, bulletin boards, blogs... There is the power and freedom to choose exactly what I want. And then RSS technology came along.
RSS has been occupying a pole position on a starting grid of technologies set to transform and revolutionize the Internet for several months now. But it needed an enabler. A good reader application that would help organize the news feeds from various sources. Actually hundreds of RSS readers and aggregators have emerged recently, but to be honest none of them took me by heart. I've been waiting for the One.
And while waiting and waiting, I just have not been able to understand how Microsoft missed the boat. They did it for the second time in a row. First they were challenged by Netscape's web browser in the 90's and it took them enormous amount of resources to regain the position. Now they had their second chance with RSS and missed it again. Has it been so difficult to envision personalized streams of news and information flowing to the Windows desktop? Or was RSS too difficult to implement in IE? BTW the official story is RSS will be native in Vista. Hey, Steve, do you really think the world will stop and wait until your next OS goes gold? You've lost it, it's over!
I have been obsessed by a concept of intelligent and personalized content aggregator for some time. Even thinking of starting my own venture to develop one, I did some research on the subject, pointing as far as the paper by Corin R. Anderson of University of Washington, Seattle. And I still think content aggregator is going to be the killer application in the years to come, as we shift to electronic information feeds, killing the Newspaper for good. And as it could have been anticipated...
...Google has come again to the rescue with the new Google Reader service. I will not try to get in too much details here, pointing you rather to the official FAQ. Just play with it an you will love it. First it starts with a search for new content button, effectively looking for RSS publishers. You will find there your local newspaper, and many other information publishers. One search I would recommend for tech geeks is "TheRegister" - type it in the box, hit the "search for new content" button and then click "subscribe" button below the search result. This will add the newsfeed to your favorite subscriptions and after hitting the "Home" link you will be taken to the lens view, that will allow to scroll up and down through the feed. Oh, have I mentioned you need a Google account for this? I thought you already have one. If not, set it up, its easy and free and you won't regret it.
Now is the part for Google investors. TV is getting killed by the Internet. Newspaper is getting killed by the Internet. Business models shift from subscriber financing to advertiser financing. Ads money flows in torrents to the Internet. But not all Internet ads are equal. Google's are very high quality. The Internet ads will shift from being "provocative and annoyingly repetitive" to "interesting, relevant and useful", and Google's approach will ultimately prevail. If you are looking for some spicy toppings - there is the 20050165615 patent application you should explore :)
And for those of you who want to stay current with my blog - enter http://headworx.blogspot.com/atom.xml as one of your personal Google Reader subscriptions.