Another in a series of posts describing the new NewsGator 2.0 and NewsGator Online Services:
Imagine this scenario. You’re at a conference, and your community of bloggers (who are also in attendance) are talking about getting together that night to meet for a drink. You’d love to meet up with them, and put a face to the names. There is a lot of discussion on everyone’s blog, talking about where and when to meet.
But you’re without your laptop. Or the battery died. Or you forgot your Wi-Fi card. Or you just can’t get connected. Whatever the problem, you’re off the air. But you _do_ have your cell phone, which can connect to the net.
So you pull up your favorites, click on the link for NewsGator Mobile, and you see a list of the recently updated blogs you’re looking for. You click a link, and there it is – the meeting place and time you needed. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
That exact scenario came up this year for me at PDC – and that’s when I realized the value of a mobile edition (which was only an early prototype at the time). But more recently, an even better situation came up:
You’re at a conference, waiting to meet with an important member of the press to do an interview about your company’s new product. While you’re waiting, you pull up NewsGator Mobile Edition on your phone, and read some comments from people talking about your product, how they use it, and what they think of it. One of these posts is a great testimonial and use case, and you use it in the interview.
Yep, that one’s for real, too. I can’t emphasize how cool it is to have instant access to your feeds – any time, any place. Or a subset of your feeds, if you prefer to set it up that way.
And it’s not the same as some of the other feed readers for mobile devices. The others make the assumption that you’re going to read your content on the device, and the device only. But that’s not really the way most people work; most folks tend to use their mobile devices as a companion device to their laptop or desktop. And NewsGator Mobile is designed around this premise – tightly integrated with the NGOS synchronization system…so it makes you more productive.
Greg,
I’m sold! I’m Excited! When is it actually going to be available? Enough announcments :-)
Just kidding, I’m looking forward to this release. Kudo’s to your team for a great product.
Chris, lol…I’m just trying to keep you excited while the clock ticks down. :-)
Everything I’ve been talking about will be available this coming Monday (Jan 19).
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Greg,
Congratulations on the evolution of Newsgator into a product that is as just necessary as a web browser! As a previous beta tester and long time user I’m also pleased that you are offering release 2.0 as a no cost upgrade to us early adopters.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this – the cost of 2 licenses (home & work) and the NGOS cost of $5.95 is rather high for non-corporate users. Are you considering offering a consumer bundle license (2 desktop licenses + 1-2 mobile licenses + NGOS) for a lower cost?
Congratulations again on a fine product!
Venky
Venky, here’s $29 off for you right now. :-) Our license agreement specifically allows use of a single NewsGator license at home and at work, as long as there is no simultaneous use. So it sounds like it’s likely that would cover your situation.
And, the mobile version is included in the NGOS price…
New Technorati beta! Boy, this is fast! The New Technorati features a 100% new event engine that currently comes…[more]
I don’t believe it. A software release that is on time. Well done.
Actualy here in Australia our timezone means it was a tad late ;-)
Ian – lol! I guess we’ll have to start announcing release dates in GMT. :-)
Greg, how the heck do I access the Mobile Edition once I pay for a subscription? Recommend something more obvious, have hunted for an hour on your site and no luck except an unhelpful comment in the Help section referring to configuring the Mobile Edition page (naturally without any hints on where this might be located).
Michael – shoot a note over to support at newsgator.com, and they should be able to help you out. In a nutshell, if you’re a premium subscriber, click on “Edit Locations” from NewsGator Manager, and click “Settings” in the Mobile edition section.