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As 2004 came to a close every business and technology magazine, Web site, and blog made their predictions about what will be the next big technology or tool for 2005. So it is only fitting that I put my $.02 into the mix on what I predict will be BIG in 2005. We start our predictions with Really Simple Syndication or also known as RSS.

RSS - Really Simple Syndication

RSS, Atom, or just plain old syndication. It doesn't matter what technical term you put on it, but RSS began to grow in 2004 and it is going to be BIG in 2005. Starting to gain speed at the tail end of this year, online publishers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and a variety of other online publishers are all accepting the medium, it will only be a matter of time before the little orange icon is everywhere. RSS aggregators such as Bloglines, Feed Demon, and even MyYahoo! are bringing the medium into wide spread use.

If you don't know what RSS is, and this means beyond the acronym, here is a quick lesson.

RSS History. RSS is the brain child of Dave Winer and was developed to syndicate content to the masses over the Internet back in 1997. The development was picked up by Netscape and now three versions exist, all working very similar in style. The "really simple" part comes from the fact that the text is not heavily formatted. RSS is not "new" technology; it has just become more popular in the last year and a half. Now you will see little orange "XML" icons on many Web sites.

Technically Speaking. RSS and Atom feeds are XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) files and when initially clicked on you are presented with a bunch of code. The code is not what you are worried about, it is the URL of that code that you want to copy and paste into a news aggregator to "subscribe" to it. Your news aggregator interprets that XML code and displays the content in a simple to read format.

How it works. When a Web site is updated with new content an XML file is updated with either an excerpt or full content of the new information. That XML file sits on the Internet in a single location. A news aggregator that you either download locally to your computer or have an account with online with a Web based aggregator pings that XML file on a time interval. Sometimes the interval is every 15 minutes, other times it is once a day. When the XML file is read by your news aggregator the new content is syndicated and you are able to read either the excerpt or full content of the new information posted to your favorite Web site or online publication.

Why it works for me. RSS has changed not only the way I gather information, but how I read information. I don't "surf" anymore. I rely on other bloggers and Web sites to direct me through links to similar information sources, most of which have RSS feeds of their own. I now have roughly 200 feeds in about a dozen categories in my news aggregator. I handily download my feeds, most of which are full text feeds, in the morning on my laptop and read them on my hour long train ride to the office. Bottom line, it works. I get the information I desire to stay on top of key topics in the legal industry and I don't waste hours going through bookmarks, sifting through online ads, or wondering if I missed an e-newsletter by an over zealous spam filter. The best way I can describe RSS is this: Information you want, delivered to your desktop in real-time, spam free.

Desktop Search

It only seems natural that the concept of search move from the Internet to your desktop. Not only for you to search the Internet from your desktop and not via a Web browser, but also to search your own files. Microsoft has done a pretty good job of providing a difficult and slow search tool in Windows and Outlook.

Desktop search again started to pick up at the tail end of 2004 with the release of Google Desktop. Companies and products like X1, Google, Copernic, and Blinkx are taking the desktop search category by storm. Microsoft has a lot of catch-up to do with Longhorn, their next OS that will have a new search functionality built into it. I use X1 on my laptop and Copernic on my desktop. So far I'm impressed with both and have to say that this will be big when you find that Outlook search is too slow to find that one e-mail in your over-cluttered inbox. Both are time savers when searching e-mail, files and documents, as well as attachments.

Technically speaking. Similar to Internet search engines, a desktop search engine indexes your hard drive. Since the first index will always take the longest time it is wise to build an initial base index. The index grows as you add more files and e-mail messages arrive. Then when you need to search for a specific file or word the index is searched and results are given to you much like an Internet search engine. You can preview the file or find the directory that it is located in.

Why it works for me. It never fails that there will be a time when you need to search for that one piece of crucial information for your job. How many times have you said "It's somewhere here in my e-mail?" You begin to sort and search yet it is taking too long to find the information you need. That is because each time you do a search in Explorer or Outlook it is actually searching your directories at that time. The indexing is the key for the speed of a desktop search. Outlook it notorious for being slow when searching for keywords in your inbox and sub-folders. Desktop search is fast and efficient. I can find files as I type with X1 and almost just as easy with Copernic.

Collaboration Tools

Last on my list of predictions are collaboration tools. These include blogs, Wikis, and forums, also known as bulletin boards. I start by asking a question: how many e-mail messages are in your inbox right now that are either a) conversations about a specific project you are working on, b) a version of a document you are working on with others, or c) messages of ideas from a group project? It seems to me that half of my disaster of an inbox is a combination of all of those. I work with three to five other staff members to publish e-newsletters, e-mail promotions, and Web site development. Most of those e-mail messages are versions of the same message with everyone's corrections on it before I can format it to send to our member base. It can be very daunting to keep track of it all.

Collaboration tools such as a Wiki can save my inbox and yours too! A Wiki is basically an online whiteboard. It is a Web page that is instantly editable by anyone with little to no HTML knowledge required. When working on a single document or project a Wiki can keep all of your information in one spot and many contributors can correct, add, or delete information. Blogs are good for collaboration to an extent as they initially are more of a one way conversation with the functionality for others to comment back. The ability to instantly update that a Wiki provides seems to outbid any feature a blog has in my opinion. Companies such as Basecamp, SocialText and Jot Spot are providing these services now and seem to be doing a good job. Expect to see more companies to move into this space.

Blogs and forums are good for knowledge bases from what I have experienced with using products and services. Forums are great as an online community tool. Forums are a combination of a blog and a Wiki. Anyone who has an account can post a message, and anyone with an account can reply. Some good examples of forums can be found at SitePoint.com and Macromedia's Developers Forums.

Conclusion

It should be no surprise when you see some of these tools becoming more prominent this year. I can guarantee you will see the XML icon on more Web sites in 2005. If you are looking for an aggregator you can find a good list by doing a Google search on "RSS Aggregator." I hope you can find these tools helpful in your online life and work. We'll check back this time next year to do an evaluation of these predictions.

This article was adapted from Fred Faulkner's blog post Big in 2005 at http://www.frederickfaulkner.com.