Since all of our widgets here at NewsGator are powered by RSS, we're continually staying abreast of changes related to all things RSS.  One of those changes is the advent of a federated distribution model for RSS.

As Dave Winer over at RSSCloud.org rightly says, "In the early days of RSS, we had the idea that instantaneous updates would be the next step. That was 2001. It took a little longer than we thought..."  He says this in reference to the fact that up until recently, the idea of instantaneous RSS updates (instead of the current "push/pull" method) was not fully banked.

But NewsGator is looking into cool new things that are developing in the RSS space, and at the moment we've got our eyes on the promise of instantaneous RSS updates via a federated distribution model. 

There are two different options we're following: Winer's RSSCloud and Google's interestingly-named Pubsubhubbub.  Though both are still in their early stages, they are both attempting to address basically the same issue.

In the future, we'll probably end up supporting both -- which would be a benefit to both the owners and end users of NewsGator-powered widgets.