It what seems to be the strangest news story I've read this year I find out Sun snatches up XML guru what I found particularly interesting in the story was the following excerpt
One of the areas Bray expects to work on is developing new applications for Web logs, or "blogs," and the RSS (Resource Description Framework Site Summary) technology that grew out of them. "I think that this is potentially a game-changer in some respects, and there are quite a few folks at Sun who share that opinion," he said. Though RSS is traditionally thought of as a Web publishing tool, it could be used for much more than keeping track of the latest posts to blogs and Web sites, Bray said. "I would like to have an RSS feed to my bank account, my credit card, and my stock portfolio," he said.
One of the areas Bray expects to work on is developing new applications for Web logs, or "blogs," and the RSS (Resource Description Framework Site Summary) technology that grew out of them. "I think that this is potentially a game-changer in some respects, and there are quite a few folks at Sun who share that opinion," he said.
Though RSS is traditionally thought of as a Web publishing tool, it could be used for much more than keeping track of the latest posts to blogs and Web sites, Bray said. "I would like to have an RSS feed to my bank account, my credit card, and my stock portfolio," he said.
Personally I think it's a waste of Tim Bray's talents having him work on RSS or it's competitor du jour, Atom, but it should be fun seeing whether he can get Sun out of it's XML funk as well stop them from spreading poisonous ideas like replacing XML with ASN.1.
Update: Tim Bray has a post about his new job entitled Sunny Boy where he writes
That aside, I’m comfy being officially a direct competitor of Microsoft. On the technical side, I find the APIs inelegant, the UI aesthetics juvenile, and the neglect of the browser maddening.
Sounds like fighting words. This should be fun. :)