Raw

Mary Jo Foley:

According to sources close to the company, Microsoft just last week put the finishing touches on the first beta release of WinFS. And the company is moving ahead with plans to back-port the WinFS technology to Windows XP…

I don't expect a great deal of flexibility and interdepartmental interaction in a lumbering behemoth like MS. But what if…the folks plugging away at RSS in Redmond were looking for a handy store for their data, and happened to look in the spare-parts tray?

While various scruffy 'erberts are beavering with RDF-backed Atom Stores, maybe Bill's gang will trump them all with a WinFS RSS 2.0 (plus lists) setup. Could actually be pretty cool, if old habits don't get in the way.

(spotter: Scoble)

See also: previous comments on WinFS

Update: WinFS beta 1 released to MSDN subscribers (Scoble), WinFS Beta 1 is posted! Ok, maybe a little early though. . . (Tom Rizzo), WinFS blog.

[Danny]