Liveside has a post informing everyone of the availability of Microsoft's "Feedsync" technology (formally known as Simple Sharing Extensions or SSE).  For those who don't know this is Microsoft's attempt to create an open synchronization standard based on web feeds.  So in theory you could have several different data sources that remain in sync by simply publishing an SSE based RSS/Atom feed.

Part of the risk of writing your thoughts down in public is that you may very well look like an idiot if you miss the next big thing.  I'm willing to take that risk here and say that I just don't see why this technology is that big a deal.

I guess maybe I'm just not seeing the benefit of this type of technology in a connected world.  Sure there are isolated cases in which offline devices need to sync with online data sources but I can't see a vendor using Feedsync over a proprietary syncing mechanism for that.  I also ran across a site (via Wikipedia) that details how Feedsync (SSE at the time) was used in a test Disaster Response Scenario run at the University of San Diego.  But again, provided the world isn't coming to an end that still doesn't get Feedsync anywhere close to useful.

At this point I'm going to keep my eye on the technology because I do find the idea interesting but I still can't see any practical situation in which I would use it.