Happy birthday today to my wife Lisa. She has put up with me and has made some very stressful years of school and moving not just bearable but enjoyable because of her continual wit, humor, and energy. Plus she makes sure that I keep on my toes!

While I'm wondering about the market adoption of existing flavors of RSS, Dave has officially released RSS 2.0.

Looks like Jay got into the Xbox Live trial. I guess there's no NDA on participation :). This is good--we'll get some really good perspectives from him about how that's going. The man thinks critically about his gaming, a trait I admire.

First thoughts from Jay: "...the bad news is that I cannot log into the server where I have to register. Evidently, Microsoft is overloaded and cannot handle the situation! Hah, how funny is that, an online service that won't even let you register."

I hope it's just congestion on the backbone between Redmond and Boston...

Dave and a bunch of folks have been fighting out the question of how to take the next step forward for RSS. This is an important fight, but I have a different question: how big is the RSS market?

Dave has a good idea about the market for producers and consumers of RSS feeds from a tools perspective. But how many websites are out there actually producing RSS feeds? How do they break down by number of unique users--how many 1000 pound sites like the BBC produce RSS to increase their reach? Same questions apply for other syndication formats, too--like the New York Times' custom headlines format.

Another question: Are websites that have to make a choice to adopt the technology (i.e. RSS syndication doesn't come from their backend software for free, as it does in Manila, Radio, or Movable Type) doing so to extend the number of people who read their content--simply to grow traffic? Or do they find value in the contributions of people who consume their RSS feeds and comment on them?

Days like this, I wish I were totally self directed and could spin the cycles on figuring this out. But I'm hoping someone out there whose business is in RSS has actually done this. What does the market for RSS generation look like? I'll be blogging a bit about this for a few days.