BuzzMachine

The Party’s party
: The Daily Kos takes a page from Howard Dean’s playbook and says Meetups have worked so well for him that plain ol’ Democrats should meetup, too:

The progressive grassroots can start wielding the influence it deserves on the Democratic Party by self-organizing as well. And I’m not just talking about the DNC, but also state and local parties.

We can do a lot of good by banding together and working to help elect Democrats at all levels of government. MeetUp can provide the vehicle for that self-organizing — especially in places were the local Democratic Parties are moribund, ineffective, or non-existant.

I’m thinking of setting up a meeting for real liberals (read with a German accent, as in real politik) but I’m afraid only Roger L. Simon and Michael J. Totten would show up.

RSS and sliced bread
: Lots of people are jumping on the mail-is-dead-long-live-RSS bandwagon. See Chris Pirillo and Steve Outing. In theory, I agree: RSS is a good delivery mechanism for newsletters (but clearly not personal email) because there can be no spam; you get only the feeds you ask for.

But, as I’ve said before, there’s a problem: RSS readers are not ready for prime time. They’re getting better. After Newzcrawler ate all my feed info and hard work, I started using Bloglines, web-based reader, and, by Outing’s recommendation, Feed Demon, a downloaded client and they’re both good. (Yeah, I know, you Macites have great readers but you are, sadly, a minority smaller than one-legged, left-handed, stuttering, albino Navajos.)

Here’s the problem: The audience using RSS readers is tiny. That isn’t going to stop me from publishing lots of RSS in my business — headlines and, yes, newsletters. It’s a good thing and a coming trend.

But the truth remains: If you’re an email newsletter publisher and you have to convince your customers to have to download and set up a new program, you’re sunk.

The only way RSS is going to work for business is if it is integrated into Internet Explorer.

So, at last, here’s my point for all the RSS evangelists out there: You should be making a pilgrimage to Redmond to sell Microsoft on the need to integrate RSS into IE (as well as Outlook). Pirillo, Winer, et al: Hop that next jet west. And there are lots of RSS-informed Microsoft bloggers; enlist them in the cause; get them to start selling RSS inside the fortress.

That is the one sure thing that will make RSS take off. Without that, sad but true, RSS will remain just a neat geek thing.

: A commenter reminds me of a point I forgot to make: Of course, the Mozilla folks and other open-sourcers should be integrating RSS into their work to put additional pressure on Redmond. But, of course, IE is the homerun for it is the ubiquitous client.

Oh, and putting pressure on AOL would be good, too. AOL is providing RSS feeds of its new blogs (pat them on the back) but not providing its huge audience with a way to utilize them (hello, left hand, I’d like you to meet the right hand).

‘I’m here to move love to the top of your to-do list’
: It’s a mistake to judge a series by its preseason promos but if we were to do that, Alicia Silverstone’s Miss Match would be sure be be a bomb, based on lines like that.

Send the man some Prozac spam
: Matt Welch points to evidence that Bill O’Reilly is starting to crack under the strain.

: More evidence here.

A simple request
: A simple request to the wonderful group blogs I read (you know who you are, Corante and Hit & Run and Command Post and Harry): Put the name of the post’s author at the top of the post so I can hear the right voice as I start to read. Also, put your authors’ names in the RSS feed. Thank you.