It was a big day of announcements from Microsoft today:

1. Really Simple Sharing
2. Standardizing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats
3. Windows Live Custom Domains

Here is a quick summary of each announcement:

Really Simple Sharing is a pretty important announcement. It represents a very important contribution by Microsoft’s XML/RSS team that adds extensions to the RSS markup language. These extensions essentially turn RSS into a bi-directional technology that will help the process of synchronizing RSS and OPML. This is important as it will make it easier to use RSS and OPML between multiple applications, platforms, operating systems and users. This is a first step in removing some of the usability issues hindering wide-spread adoptance of RSS and OPML. Microsoft has also released these extension under a Creative Commons license, which indicates a move towards openness - which leads to the next announcement…

Next, Microsoft announced that they will be Standardizing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats by bringing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats to a standards body with the intention of eventually making the formats an ISO standard! This should open the door to true interoperability between competitors like Open Office and Corel Office (I think the later is still around). This is a huge announcement. I really don’t need all of the great features that Office has to offer. My needs of these tools are very limited, but I’m forced to use them as I need to exchange and collaborate on documents with my coworkers and clients. So maybe this announcement will mean that in the near future I won’t have to pay a bundle for software that I use in a limited manner, but can opt for the free and able Open Office productivity suite.

Finally, the Redmond company announced Windows Live Custom Domains, which is the launch of Microsoft’s email hosting package. On the outside it looks pretty attractive providing the following features:

• Create up to 20 e-mail accounts within your domain
• Get a 250 MB inbox for each account
• Check your e-mail from any Web-enabled PC
• Junk e-mail filter protection using Microsoft SmartScreen technology
• Virus scanning and cleaning of e-mail

For a cost of FREE it looks like a pretty good package, but you should be aware that it is advertising supported. When I first read this, I expected that the ads would show up when you read your emails - which is acceptable given the fact that they are offering this great package for free. But (yes with Microsoft there often is a but), it appears that early users of this service are reporting that the ads are also appended to all the emails you send! Pretty lame as far as I’m concerned. The other small problem (for me at least) is that this package is only available if you live in the 50 US states and Puerto Rico. I’m from Canada (as are 32 million other people) so I guess I won’t be sending email with Microsoft targeted ads.

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