Microsoft is known to be a rather conservative company that rarely launches innovative technologies or uses its influence to back some standard that is not coming out of the Redmond labs.

That's why Microsoft's decision to jump in the RSS boat after ignoring the phenomenon for years comes as a huge surprise, especially considering the fact that RSS is announced to be one of the main technologies to be used in Longhorn. If Microsoft would have said that RSS will only be integrated in the Internet Explorer, that perhaps would have been less shocking.

The fact that RSS will be a technology integrated in the Longhorn core offers a great development potential for a large range of applications, from e-mail clients to organizers, whose updating system will be a much simpler one.

Moreover, the desktop-Web integration will reach new heights due to the RSS support offered by Microsoft's almighty operating system.

It's quite obvious that, as it did in the case of other standards, Microsoft will add something of its own to the RSS and has announced the launch of Simple List Extensions, an improvement to the standard which will offer the possibility of generating criteria-oriented content lists.

Microsoft's contribution to the RSS will be licensed within the Creative Commons licensing conditions, which means that other software developers or RSS dedicated services will also be able to integrate the Simple List Extensions.

It's still hard to say what exactly Microsoft has in mind for the RSS, but nevertheless it's clear that now we are witnessing a full-fledged revolution.