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Forget about the world record. Just download and install Firefox 3 today and take a moment to celebrate the significance of open Web standards and diversity of platforms.

Here's why it's important. In order for a robust marketplace of independent products and services to flourish on the Internet, we need the level playing field that open standards provide. The alternative -- the closed, proprietary world that Microsoft and others have tried in vain to promote -- inevitably feeds a dangerous concentration of power that leads to abuses. We've seen this happen all through human history, the creation of walls and toll collectors whose effect is to retard progress and cripple commerce to the benefit of the big and powerful, and the detriment of the individual and the inventor.

Firefox is just a Web browser, and version 3 is just another version. But its success -- and the standards-conforming successes of others, such as Webkit (Safari on Mac, Konqueror on Linux) and Opera -- helps hold at bay those who would capture the Web for their own benefit. Download, install, and celebrate.

I'm an RSS addict. Once you have an RSS reader set up, it's easy to get addicted. But RSS is still a fringe technology, used by a small percentage of the population. Why? Because it's broken. Getting better, but still broken.

The broken part has nothing to do with the competing standards -- RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 (which has nothing to do with 1.0), Atom, et cetera. That's behind-the-scenes stuff and users don't need to care.

The broken part is the subscription mechanism. It's too complicated.

The new round of Web browsers promises to fix that, and Firefox 2.0 actually does. Internet Explorer 7 claims to have two-click subcription capability, but Microsoft has screwed it up, again. Here's what I get when I try click on an RSS icon in Internet Explorer 7:

Apparently this is what passes for usability these days on the troubled Redmond campus. "Internet Explorer requires you to have MSXML3 SP5 or greater in order to view feeds." Huh?

This makes me think of a whole series of additional acronyms, most of them representing obscenities.

What I should see is what Firefox 2 shows me. It transforms the XML feed into a formatted preview and adds a subscription tool at the top. It offers me a choice of popular Web-based readers, or any RSS reader application I've installed on my computer, or Firefox 2's built-in but primitive RSS reader (a dropdown menu). Select, hit OK, and off you go.

I don't understand why Microsoft is so screwed up as a company.

Buying anything from Microsoft is like buying a suit of clothing, then discovering the next day that one pants leg is sewed on inside-out, the zipper is in the back, and the jacket has three arms, and if you don't immediately acquire and install 39 upgrades, a horde of pickpockets will steal your wallet and your car keys.

You have to wonder whether they actually use any of their software.

On the feed side, most of the blogging platforms have finally gotten around to implementing feeds as a standard feature, but it's not well explained to the bloggers. According to the Pew Internet and American Life project:

"Nearly 6 in 10 (59%) say they do not have an RSS feed for their blog content, and close to another quarter (23%) say they do not know if they had a feed, or did not answer the question. It is worth noting that bloggers are not behind the curve when it comes to this new technology. In a general internet-user survey conducted in May-June 2005 only 9% of internet users said they have a good idea of the meaning of the term 'RSS feeds.'"