When RSS feeds take over the world

It’s been a day for seeing RSS feeds being used in interesting ways.

This dude has taken Bungie’s RSS feed that reports Halo 2 player stats, and brought it into an Excel application so that you can analyze your fragging ability using all sorts of pretty graphs.  You can even use it to visualize the answers to those nagging questions we used to contemplate back in my Unreal Tournament binge-playing days: am I a better player at certain times of day?  Is my play improving over time or stagnating?  You know: that kind of thing.  Sam, it would be really cool if you let us peek at your code.  Such a great example of Office development!  Anyway, check it out, especially if you’re a Halo 2 fan.  (Me, I still need to buy a TV.)

Meanwhile, over at MSN Search, they’ve given us the ability to obtain our search results as an RSS feed.  It’s in Alpha but it seems to be working just fine for me.  This feature strikes me as an RSS riff on the way Google’s search results can be obtained through their Web Services API.  I suppose there's no reason MSN Search couldn't also offer a Web Service interface.  But (serious question) which would you prefer to harvest: a Web Service, or an RSS feed?