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Technorati vet to build "syndication platform" at Microsoft

Martin LaMonica Former Staff writer, CNET News
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer covering green tech and cutting-edge technologies. He joined CNET in 2002 to cover enterprise IT and Web development and was previously executive editor of IT publication InfoWorld.
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Martin LaMonica

Microsoft has hired Niall Kennedy to lead development of a syndication platform, which will use RSS and Atom to broadcast information to a range of devices.

Kennedy, a search engine expert who last worked at Technorati, discussed the plans on his blog on Monday.

He noted that Live.com will be Microsoft's primary aggregation point of syndicated feeds for many users.

"Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system," he said.

"I want RSS and Atom syndication technologies to be available anywhere, integrated as the background technology delivering new information when and where it matters most," Kennedy wrote.

Microsoft executives have indicated that RSS and Atom-based syndication software is a significant area of investment for the company. RSS support is being built into Windows Vista and IE 7 for tasks, such as sharing photos via RSS.

Ray Ozzie, one of Microsoft's chief technology officers, has proposed an extension to RSS for synching calendar information.