February 2005 - Posts

The Podcast Network

Jeremy Wright’s blog had an odd but revealing post yesterday evening. Curious, I checked out the link and learned about The Podcast Network. Cameron Reilly and Mick Stanic of the Down Under G’Day World Podcast are putting the network together which, according to their site, will be a collection of podcasts that will have interest to listeners at both a personal level and a business level.

 My favorite part:

 “You will initially be able to subscribe to as many individual shows as you like and in the near future you will be able to create your own personalised single feed containing all the shows you are interested in.”

 

Microsoft One Ups Google, Yahoo!

MSN’s Yusuf Mehdi told Reuters that its search engine would be upgraded to provide users with more than just links to their inquiries. In an effort to provide more thorough results to search queries, it will make available information from Microsoft’s electronic encyclopedia Encarta.

One of the most interesting points from this announcement came in the second paragraph from the bottom of the article:

“One new capability that Microsoft will be introducing with Monday's launch is the ability to create RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, feeds that allows users to track search results through an incoming data feed on their personal computers.”

It will be interesting to see how extensive the inflow of information will be to an RSS reader on a given topic. How will MSN’s search syndication benefit PR? The ability to aggregate information on a particular company (a client) will allow us to track the changes in what MSN’s searches are bringing up about them.