According to new Microsoft employee Niall Kennedy, Microsoft’s Ajaxy new website, Live.com, will serve as the default homepage for users of Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Kennedy says that hundreds of millions of computer users around the world will visit Live.com when they load up their new version of IE for the first time. Live.com is not an ordinary web page – it is an Ajax homepage that allows users to plug in their preferred RSS news feeds and widgets to create a personalized platform right in their browsers.

For web developers and communicators in general, this is significant for at least two reasons:

(1) This development is going to go a long way towards bringing RSS to the masses, as folks smarter than I have pointed out already. Millions of Microsoft users will be exposed to RSS feeds for the first time when they load up IE 7. This is going to kick start adoption of RSS technology.

(2) Maybe just as importantly, millions of Internet users will be exposed to the possibilities of Ajax for the first time, in the context of a website (I would argue that most people see Google Maps and Gmail as applications rather than websites). Live.com does not use Ajax subtlety – it embraces it full on, warts and all. Page elements can be dragged and dropped. The search includes an endless scroll bar. Htting the back button after searching is an iffy proposition.  The Live.com user experience is fundamentally different from the experience most of us are used to when browsing the Internet.

Internet Explorer 7 should come out in the second half of 2006 (it’s already in Beta) and Vista will be released in early 2007, supposedly. As Gary mentioned, companies and organizations should go ahead and get those website RSS feeds up and running. And web developers should get ready for clients to start asking for Ajax the way they ask for Flash now.