Outlook will soon include RSS

Shel Holtz, writing for WebProNews, reports Outlook 12 will soon include RSS. Due in mid 2006, the built-in feature will enable users to monitor RSS feeds without using an external application such as Bloglines, MyYahoo, NewsGator or the like.

Shel picked up from Outlook product manager Michael Affronti’s blog, search.subscribe.share, that Outlook will address the complexities of RSS with a simple interface.

Interacting with RSS feeds will be extremely similar to managing your mail items now. Since we will have RSS live within the mail module we will keep the standard look and feel of folders, hierarchies, and the drag-and-drop support that users have come to depend and rely on.

Here’s a screenshot for you.

As Shel says, “…[P]eople who have never heard of RSS will start subscribing to feeds, even if they’ve never heard of RSS.”