A proposal for the ‘net community at large, and for Microsoft, in an effort to make complaints about/criticisms of Microsoft and its software easier to collect and analyze, with the intent of letting any concerned party at Microsoft sift through them at will for subjects relevant to their area of expertise.

Requirements: a weblog with an active RSS feed.

Methodology: The methodology from the user end is simple: include the acronym ‘YAAMR’ (for Yet Another Anti-Microsoft Rant) in the relevant weblog post; preferably in the title, though including it in the body should work also.

On Microsoft’s end, the process is also simple: create a Feedster search for ‘YAMMR’. Then, as Feedster allows one to subscribe to an RSS feed of a specific search, the MS employee could then subscribe to that RSS feed in their newsreader of choice.

End result: a real-time, constantly updated feed of issues that MS would do well to pay attention to, in order to improve relations with their current user base.

It goes without saying that this same method could be used for other companies or organizations also, requiring only the selection of a convenient acronym or set of keywords that could be used to trigger Feedster’s search results.

I don’t really expect this to get picked up, or put into practice. But I like the idea. Maybe it’d be more useable for smaller companies? In any case, there’s potential here, I think…

More random ideas connected with this: perhaps a Movable-Type powered site, with different categories for different companies or organizations (or one site for a specific company, with categories for the various software packages). These categories would be set up as TrackBack ping receivers for rant posts.

For instance, a hypothetical ‘www.microsoftrants.com’ could have categories for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., then posts about issues with the software could ping the corresponding category. MS employees in the various software groups could subscribe to RSS feeds for the categories, enabling them to keep an ‘ear to the ground’ of what the ‘common user’ faces when using their software.

Hrm. Ideas? Questions? Comments? Words of wisdom?

I think I’ll toss this one out to the LazyWeb community. It’s not really a ‘problem to be solved’, as such, except that I don’t really have the resources (budget) to set this up on my own, and I don’t even know that the idea would catch on (not to mention that as I’m not an ‘A-list’ blogger [or even B- or C-list…probably somewhere around Q-list, I think…], there’s no gaurantee anyone would ever see this proposal otherwise). Better to toss it out to people more integrated with the various tech communities to see if any of them want to pick it up and play with it.

[See also: Two Dave Winer grumbles | Search improvements | RSS feeds updated | No more combined feeds | Seattle Outtakes Pipe ]

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