Dan Olsen extolls the virtues of RSS in his latest entry comparing Blogs with Blackboard (a course management system). There's a subtle point in what Dan says. If I were working for Blackboard and read Dan's comments, my first reaction might be to say "let's create a customizable student dashboard that shows all the course information at one shot." Not a bad idea, but its still proprietary and leaves out other solutions. If Blackboard merely added RSS, their product would integrate nicely in a feedreader along with RSS information from other sources as well. The browser showed us the power of moving away from closed applications suites. That's where I believe the future is headed.