Do you live inside Visual Studio all day?  Ever wished you could keep track of all those RSS feeds in a side pane so you wouldn't need to exit to read the lastest cool news on Blogs.MSDN.com?  Well, your wait is over…and it's Open Source!  Get it here.

This open source plugin ships as part of SharpTools 2.0 and is a full-featured RSS / Blog aggregator which integrates into the familiar dockable panes of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. You're gonna love it when you start blogging from within the development environment! Features include:

• Support for folders or individual feeds

• Drag-and-drop support for feeds and folders

• Preview a new feed as you add it

• Easy control of all feed properties

• Automatic and on-demand refresh of feeds

• Automatic feed search based on a site URL

• Keyword searching for published feedsusing Synic8

• Keyword search within all subscribed feeds

• Import of feed subscriptions from an OPML file

I found this brief summary of the Morgan Stanley report (full report) on the world of online publishing on Real Lawyers Have Blogs. It pays particlar attention to blogs, blogging and where they believe it is all headed. If you're a published of traditional or online publications you would do well to have a good look at this.

A recent report from Morgan Stanley's analysts Mary Meeker, Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald is a must read for law firms who want to understand where the online publishing world is headed. Law firms are not seeking to generate revenue from publishing content per se.

But understanding how to distribute information online and how your target audience is receiving such content is critical in keeping up with innovative law firm marketing professionals. Large law firm clients are reading this report, you ought to as well.

Not that there aren't hundreds of "success" stories like this, but I just couldn't resist this becuase of it's relative obscurity on the RSS stage. Two guys, and a dream to document road reports for Baja California. The Baja Insider. Check it out if you're headed down to Baja.

Once again, by using the newest in web technology www.BajaInsider the webzine for those traveling, living and working in Baja California, Mexico, has had an incredible surge in its readership. With the use of the latest in Blog and RSS feed technology the Baja Road report has created a lot more exposure and traffic to the site.

"We knew by having current road reports for the whole of the two states of Baja California that it would prove a valuable resource to our readers." As Tom Zyber, co-publisher of www.BajaInsider.com explains, "We recently began using the "Blog" technology to receive and make new posts, making it even easier to keep current. Then by converting it to the Atom, XML and RSS forms of syndication we have been able to provide a stream of steady updates that is really useful for those concerned with the road conditions of the 1000 mile long Trans-Peninsular Highway known as Baja One".

Ever since my first post on the plethora of complimentary tools for Del.icio.us, a number of others have hit the scene to fill this niche or that void.  As a result I figured it was about time for a follow up. So, without further ado…  The Del.icio.us Redux…redux (the newest links that I've found or had submited are at the top, but not neccessarily in their order of release).

Konfabulator Widget - a Konfabulator widget for all you Mac (soon to be Windows also) based Del.icio.us users out there.

Wetaste.com - Sometimes, you may find yourself in this situation: you find a good piece while surfing the Web, however, you may almost forget where  you have been reading about it after a few days. Even Google can't help you find your reference. Del.icio.us provides a fantastic way to help you collect and archive useful links. You may want more, not just the url and a simple description, but the key part of the content you read (including pictures and visual effect). So is born this tool, wetaste.com. The working model of wetaste.com is very simple: You browse and digest (by selection or copy) —> wetaste.com (visiual editing, e.g. highlight) —> del.icio.us (archiving)

Foxylicious - Foxylicious is a Mozilla Firefox extension that integrates your del.icio.us bookmarks into your browser bookmarks. The first time you use it, it will import all your del.icio.us bookmarks, and separate them by tags into bookmark folders. Subsequent imports will add any new del.icio.us bookmarks you've created since the initial import.

Backup del.icio.us - a tool for backing up your bookmarks

sid.vicio.us - creates ontologies for tags on del.icio.us

nutr.itio.us - javascript bookmarklet which allows you to select the text for the description field of the link you want to add to your delicious links.

avar.icio.us - another posting interface

extisp.icio.us - from the extispicious FAQ "Aside from the obvious keyword-quantity/font-size ratio, the representation isn't very meaningful at all - tag positioning is entirely random. Extisp.icio.us may do more meaningful things when it can get bite-sized correlation data from del.icio.us, but for now the tags are just randomly juxtaposed, allowing you to draw your own meanings and revelations from the overlapping entrails. Take what you will from it. "

taga.licio.us - "I found a lot of ways and hacks to integrate your delicious links into a page, but I wanted to fetch all links for a given set of tags, not just mine, so I wrote my own hack : introducing taga.licio.us, yet another del.icio.us php hack"

loqu.acio.us - Another javascript bookmarklet that adds some additonal information.  "These are two things that you might like using if you use a del.icio.us account with other people, or if you use more than one account. The first one lets people leave comments on your shared account without stomping on earlier comments: the second one lets you login and post to one account with a single click."

- A freeware MAC OS X client

Podcasting.  Fad or value add…that's the question.  David Coursey ways in with his opinion, on the value (or lack there of) of Podcasting when he offers…

Is "Podcasting" just another outlet for egomaniacal bloggers?

David goes on to say…

At one level, this is blogging for people with even larger egos, folks who think they need to be heard as well as read. On another level, RSS feeds are a good way for commercial audio producers to make their programming widely available via automated downloads for offline listening.

I believe that audio distribution, of certain types of content, via RSS has significant value. Look at the success of audio books.  But I don't belive it has a place in blogging as we know it today. It's hard enough sometimes to read the rantings and ravings of some bloggers…myself included on occasion ;)...I can almost visualize the wild gesticulations and profanities flying, so why would I want to hear this? Again…just my opinion.

Lets reconvene in three to six months and see where Podcasting is.  My bet, gone in large part, but not forgotten all the way around

I just couldn't pass this up. I was perusing the Del.icio.us full RSS feed which is a running list of all postings on Del.icio.us.   Anyway, I was just perusing this list. which by the way generates a few thousand posts a day, and I noticed all the "add-ons" for del.icio.us, so I couldn't help but create a list of them here.  As I am very fond of the site, please help me build a complete list by sending in tips of new/updated add-ons and I'll feature them here as they come in.

For now, the list is as follows:

sid.vicio.us - creates ontologies for tags on del.icio.us

nutr.itio.us - javascript bookmarklet which allows you to select the text for the description field of the link you want to add to your delicious links.

avar.icio.us - another posting interface

extisp.icio.us - from the extispicious FAQ "Aside from the obvious keyword-quantity/font-size ratio, the representation isn't very meaningful at all - tag positioning is entirely random. Extisp.icio.us may do more meaningful things when it can get bite-sized correlation data from del.icio.us, but for now the tags are just randomly juxtaposed, allowing you to draw your own meanings and revelations from the overlapping entrails. Take what you will from it. "

taga.licio.us - "I found a lot of ways and hacks to integrate your delicious links into a page, but I wanted to fetch all links for a given set of tags, not just mine, so I wrote my own hack : introducing taga.licio.us, yet another del.icio.us php hack"

loqu.acio.us - Another javascript bookmarklet that adds some additonal information.  "These are two things that you might like using if you use a del.icio.us account with other people, or if you use more than one account. The first one lets people leave comments on your shared account without stomping on earlier comments: the second one lets you login and post to one account with a single click."

Cocoal.icio.us - A freeware MAC OS X client

Update: Added Backup del.icio.us - a tool for backing up your bookmarks

The Geekzone has a quick write up of a new RSS reader for Symbian based devices.  So, if you've got that flashy new Sony Ericsson P910 and you've been waiting to kick the tires a bit…check this app out.

doHeadlines is an RSS reader for symbian phones. It allows you to use any RSS feed available on your favourite website, whether this is the latest news headlines from the BBC or keeping track of when your favourite application releases a new version

Moreover Technologies re-introduced their "free" RSS feeds however there's a catch.  The feeds are now advertising-supported.

The company now plans to make money from an "intelligent" advertising system that pairs targeted promotions with news feeds, Moreover CEO Jim Pitkow said. People can sign up to receive headlines on a news-reader Web page, and they will receive one related text ad per day, which should mean they won't be inundated with ads.

"We can control the frequency with which ads are placed," Pitkow said.

Hype about the promise of RSS has been seismic, but the question of how to profit from the news-syndication technology has remained unanswered for many Web outfits and investors. Several companies, including Moreover, are attempting to find the answer in online advertising.

Alright, well maybe it's not a "hit single", but it's pretty amusing in my humble opinion.  Without further ado I bring you…The R S S  BANDWIDTH BLLLLUUUEEESSSS…... ;)

Correction: Apgologies…I incorrectly attributed this to the Lockergnome.  In fact it comes from Alex Williams on DecisionCast .  Apologies Chris.

Da-na-na-na

I woke up this morning
Da-na-na-na
To check the server logs
Da-na-na-na
And much to my surprise
Da-na-na-na
It was an RSS terabyte demise

I've got the RSS bandwidth blues
Da-na-na-na
Oh yeah, I've got the RSS bandwidth blues

I called up the doctor
Da-na-na-na
She said no more full feeding
Da-na-na-na
Uh-uh. Don't want that kind of news reading
Da-na-na-na
Well, she said, you better do something
Da-na-na-na
About all those dumb feeds
Da-na-na-na
That ping endlessly, like friggin' zombies

I've got the RSS bandwidth blues
Da-na-na-na
Oh, yeah, I've got the RSS bandwidth blues

Da-na-na-na
I called The Godfather
Da-na-na-na
What's the matter with you? He said with dismay.
Da-na-na-na
Aggregated feeds?
Come on. One blog, one feed…stop aggregating all those blogs today!

I've got the RSS bandwidth blues
Da-na-na-na
Oh, yeah, I've got the RSS bandwidth blues

And so I ask you
Da-na-na-na
What should I do?
Da-na-na-na
About RSS, that's looking more like Denial of Service, II

There may be a cure, said the geeks with glee
Da-na-na-na
They're just talking machines
Da-na-na-na
You have to give them a voice
Da-na-na-na
A little ingelligence, too
Da-na-na-na
Bring on the semantic web, please!

Scoble has a great post today were he asks users to comment on their favorite IE addins.  The post is pretty simple, but check out the comments and you might find some realy gems.  Some pop-up blockers, rss aggregators, etc… stop by and check it out.

I want to write a review here on my blog of the best IE addons. Things like Maxthon or Optimal Desktop. But I want to make sure I know about the best ones. Which are the ones that you use?

Another aggregator gets another upgrade.  This time its the Saucy reader released to Beta 1.7.  New features include…

• Integrated comment download, reading and posting using the Comment API.

• Improved security for handling potentially unsafe HTML in feed items.

• Support for common operations (e.g. delete item) from inside the browser window.

• Feed reading with the browser window maximised (2-pane view).

The only thing that I find newsworthy about this, and the reason I am ranting about it, is that I don't understand the ridiculous number of Windows, Java, blah blah aggregators out there.  Sure, lots of people are reading RSS feeds…and sure, competition is good, but for god sake people, how many aggregators do we need.  It is clear to me that a few have emerged as dominant in the space, Newscrawler, NewsGator and Sharpreader to name a few. 

Enough is enough…let's get on with the consolidation already.

Sara Williams, the head of MSDN responds to the hailstorm of criticism spun up around blogs.msdn.com having trouble with their feeds due to bandwidth consumption and as a result, needing to make significant changes

Robert and I just had a nice chat about what we're doing with RSS on blogs.msdn.com. In a nutshell, our RSS traffic is neglible compared to all the traffic generated by Windows Update, MSN, downloads, and the rest of microsoft.com. We were motivated to reduce the size of the blogs.msdn.com home page primarily for operational efficiency's sake - why serve up 400k of content when we know that folks (except for Robert) don't read 400K of content on a web page. The truncation idea is borrowed straight from newspapers - read the first bit on the front page, turn to page 12 for the full story. We hear you that you don't want the aggregate feed to be truncated, so it's not. And we increased the limit from 500 to 1250 characters on blogs.msdn.com. We're also working on some smaller OPMLs, so that you can easily subscribe to a subset of our blogs - say, all the security blogs, or all the web services blogs. When we had 20 or so bloggers on MSDN, it made sense to have 1 opml. We've got 959 now, so a single OPML isn't as easy to deal with any more. Yes, RSS has room for improvement, but it's not bad today - you just have to understand what you're doing. At the same time, there's tons of headroom for improvements to the spec, improvements to the client software, and improvements in server implementation

MSMobiles.com has the scoop on the updated released (v1.2) of FUSD.RSS.  It doesn't add many new features, only a few, but it does fix quite of few of the broken ones.  Check it out if you're one of the cool/lucky/daring SmartPhone 2003 beta test…errr..owners.

Sometimes I wish Smartphones were cooler and smaller.  I tried one of the first generation Smarphones that I picked up from Expansys about two years ago.  Beside the phone crashing (or needing to be rebooted every 12 hours or so, it was great.  Anyway, I got rid of it and now I'm sorta into my Bluetooth enabled Sony Ericsson Z600.   I love using the BT connection to download mail from my IMAP server and sync my RSS feeds into my IPAQ 4155, but I could be coerced into trying a new SmartPhone 2003.  Any offers? ;)

LiveMessage from MessageCast, Inc. is the first enterprise level service that I have seen that claims to perform live message delivery of RSS feeds to a wide variety of platforms including IM (MSN Alerts and Jabber at the moment), SMS and e-mail.  Right now they claim 10,000 subscribers and growing.   Their largest customer, MSN, has implemented the service for their Fox Sports site alert subscribers.

Sidestepping the lobbyists and Washintgon pundits, Chairman Powell has taken to blogging like white on rice.  You can check out his first piece here at his blog or from the AlwaysOn feed.  In his firt post, Powell discuss deruglation in the telecomunications industry, paying special attention to the impact of VOIP. I encourage you to check it out.

One reason I am participating in AlwaysOn Network's blog is to hear from the tech community directly and to try to get beyond the traditional inside the Beltway Washington world where lobbyists filter the techies. I am looking forward to an open, transparent and meritocracy-based communication—attributes that bloggers are famous for! Regulated interests have about an 80 year head start on the entrepreneurial tech community when it comes to informing regulators what they want and need, but if anyone can make up for that, Silicon Valley can. This is important not just for Silicon Valley—it's essential to insure that America has the best, most innovate communications infrastructure.

Have our policy makers finally decided that blogging might be a good way to check the pulse of America?  Come on dubbya, lets here some of your bright ideas.