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Adoption of RSS feeds by those unfamiliar with it should get a boost when Microsoft unveils its latest iteration of Outlook, its email/calendar/contact application that is a staple in most businesses.

Outlook 12 will include the built-in ability to monitor feeds. Due out as part of Office 12 in mid-2006, Outlook 12 will include functionality that had to be added using products from third-party vendors such as NewsGator. Further, Exchange users will be able to have their feeds follow them from computer to computer.

Writing in his blog, search.subscribe.share, Outlook product manager Michael Affronti says Outlook will address the complexities of RSS with a simple interface.

Interacting with RSS feeds will be extremely similar to managing your mail items now. Since we will have RSS live within the mail module we will keep the standard look and feel of folders, hierarchies, and the drag-and-drop support that users have come to depend and rely on.

All of which should mean that a lot of people who have never heard of RSS will start subscribing to feeds, even if they've never heard of RSS.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.