SIP and SIMPLE – acronyms explained

I was trying to find a decent explanation of the differences between SIP and SIMPLE the other day for a presentation for a customer when I came across this useful link which explains all of the acronyms and gives an overview of what each protocol does during a session. http://web.archive.org/web/20051210032337/http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/plan/rtcprot.mspx

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a fairly obvious one but SIMPLE (SIP Instant Messaging and Presence Language Extensions) blew me away.  I’ve been presenting these sessions, and wanted to know each acronym (a pet hate of mine is where presenters don’t know all of the acronyms on the screen), and I’m blown away and impressed by this one.  It gets my vote for the longest Microsoft acronym I’ve discovered in messaging so far..

RSS feeds and how to use them

I know that for all experienced bloggers out there, RSS feeds are a piece of cake, and the little orange XML button by the side of links actually mean something.  But, I’m a Systems Engineer, not a Developer, and the world of XML is completely mystifying to me. 

Well, they’re RSS feeds.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  If you have a newsreader like SharpReader http://web.archive.org/web/20051210032337/http://www.sharpreader.net/, NewsGator http://web.archive.org/web/20051210032337/http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/default.aspx or RssReader http://web.archive.org/web/20051210032337/http://www.rssreader.com/ all you do is press the little XML button on the site you’re interested in, get a page of code, and post the URL that you wish to subscribe to into your newsreader.  Then, whenever something new appears on the site that you’ve subscribed to, it appears as a new item in your news reader.  You’ve got the information in one place and don’t have to go to the web site.

Simple isn’t it?  And yet it took me some time to decipher what everyone was trying to tell me about the various types of newsreaders, code and RSS feeds.   I’ve pressed the buttons on several sites now and automatically subscribed to sites I use regularly, like the Exchange team blog (paste this URL into your reader http://web.archive.org/web/20051210032337/http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/Rss.aspx). 

Bloggers block – already?

Well I’ve done it.  After several weeks of planning to create a blog, I’ve finally stopped prevaricating, and worked through the simple process of setting up and getting a site.  Now this is where the problem starts.  What on earth am I to say?  Watch this space to see just how much writers, or bloggers block I’m going to get.  This should be interesting. Lets see how it goes