From next generation RSS readers (with benefits for marketers as well), Microsoft's integration of RSS into IE, to adding additional information to the content items in your feeds, here's the latest RSS news.

Attensa Working on Next Generation RSS Reader
I've had the pleasure of meeting the Attensa guys in San Francisco at the Syndicate conference. The next generation RSS reader they are working on, taking advantage of Attention.xml, is certain to provide end-users and marketers alike with many benefits going far beyond existing tools, for example being able to prioritize and suggest content based on user's RSS reading history. For marketers this on the other hand has the potential of providing enhanced behavioral tracking and segmentation. I'll be writing more about this shortly, but until then, here's a recap from ZDNET.

FeedBurner FeedFlare for Providing More Content Item Information
FeedBurner just released FeedFlare, a service that allows publishers to integrate various Web services with RSS. In essence, this means that using FeedFlare publishers can add "footer" information to any content item in the feed, which includes these initial options: most popular tags via del.icio.us; tagging the item via del.icio.us; number of links to this post via Technorati; Creative Commons license for the item; number of comments for the content item for WordPress feeds; e-mail this item; e-mail the author. Excellent for providing additional content about the content item and adding more interactivity directly from the feed.

Microsoft Adapts the FireFox RSS Icon
Microsoft was doing a great job at Syndicate demonstrating what the next IE browser is going to look like, especially from the RSS viewpoint. While they're still missing the ball right now on handling secure RSS feeds, their synchronization and integration do look great. What they haven't shown us at Syndicate is the icon they decided to use within the browser to notify users of feeds available on the site. They just did that on their blog, and I have to say I'm somewhat dissapointed. Instead of going for a clearer "Subscribe" or simillar button, they just decided to adopt one that doesn't actually say anything to most users.

FeedForAll Mac Supports Microsoft Simple List Extensions
FeedForAll, the leading desktop RSS generation tool, just added support for Microsoft Simple List Extensions to the Mac version of their software ... and unfortunatelly still not for the PC version.

Your 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan
MarketingProfs chooses my RSS marketing article as one of the top 7 of 2005. Thank you guys, I'm honored.