Microcontent. It's a big big idea.

My shot of Dave Winer taking pictures over spicy noodles. Everyone had a camera; tres postmodern.

Mine was the smallest (excluding Steve's phone cam) and cheapest. $32.94 on Amazon. Digital. With micro USB cable and a lanyard to wear around my neck.

Steve Gillmor, at last night's Jing Jing Blogger Dinner, had two comments on my email as syndication client post.

First, he thinks I have it backwards. RSS (and its decendents) won't fold into email. Email will fold into newsreader tools. This may be semantics, but I don't think so. Echo is extensible. You will see a wide variety of microcontent formats. Box scores. Supply chain orders. Cat pedigrees (it's a blogging world, after all). Each type with its own editing, display, and storage. So email is just an instance, a special case of microcontent syndication and management. 

Second, he sees Microsoft too entrenched in Outlook. So dug in, they can't reimagine it as a general microconent client, let alone completely re-engineer the plumbing. I'll trust him on this; Steve knows many more people at Microsoft than I do. He says that clicking on a link in an Outlook message shouldn't launch an external browser; it should stay in the reader context. If they got it, they'd be working with all forms of content internally.

Meanwhile, all the independent software developers are getting creative. Mail service providers jump at RSS to differentiate themselves. NewsReaders gain features people use to manage overflowing email. Portal makers flow RSS feeds in and out. Blog hosters bake RSS into default templates. Social network and digital ID elements are touching syndication, promising new value for getting messages via syndication server vs. email server.

But aren't InfoPath and the deep XMLization of Microsoft Office evidence of microcontent thinking? RSS/Echo is hot buzz at Microsoft developer conferences. Will Redmond politics amid the product silos fuel the reinvigoration of Outlook as a microcontent client before the third party world completely redefines microcontent messaging?

Maybe.

I think Steve just wants RSS feeds delivered to his Blackberry. For now.