ICE melted?

["Kenneth J. Hughes" <kjh@entel.com>]

I'm trying to get a fix on the status and adoption of ICE.

First, here's some ICE background of which I'm aware:

ICE is a protocol for the exchange of content between syndicators
(publishers) and subscribers.

http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-ice
  "The Information and Content Exchange (ICE) Protocol"
  is dated 26 October 1998.

http://www.icestandard.org/spec/SPEC-ICE1.01-20000511.html
  Latest ICE spec ("Final Review Draft").  Name implies an update of
  11 May 2000, but the last entry in the change log is
  "15-November-1999 Release 1.1".  "This document is for final review
  and comment by the ICE NETWORK and other parties intereseted in
  ICE. The ICE authoring group intends to submit this update to the
  specification to the W3C as an update to the ICE Note."
  Did the update to the W3C ICE Note ever happen?

http://www.icestandard.org/releases.asp
  Latest press release date: 29 August 2000

http://www.icestandard.org/spec/icecookbook2.pdf
  "ICE Implementation Cookbook" was last edited 29 November 2000.

http://www.internetweek.com/ebizapps01/ebiz050701-2.htm
  was written 7 May 2001 and is the most recent article I found on ICE.
  "Despite all of ICE's potential benefits, backers conceded adoption
  has been slower than many would have liked. Laplante said one major
  challenge is to get e-businesses to think of themselves as content
  syndicators. Once a company understands the role that syndication
  can play, ICE is usually deployed very quickly, she said. "But that
  decision to adopt syndication technologies has to come first,"
  Laplante said."

Specific questions:

(1) Who's using ICE now?  How?
(2) Are there any general tools/products that use ICE?
(3) Are there plans to maintain/advance the ICE protocol?
(4) Has anyone tried to integrate ICE with later-occurring
    developments in in areas in which it's related, such as
    communication protocols (SOAP) or constraint languages (XML
    Schema or RELAX NG)?

Thanks for any information or insights.

Kenneth J. Hughes                                        kjh@entel.com
Entelechy Corporation                            http://www.entel.com/