At least I can count on Chris Pirillo to not hold back. :-)

He’s right – we did have an IM exchange a couple of weeks ago, and I did tell him development is moving forward on NewsGator Outlook edition. In fact, it’s in beta right now, but the beta is pretty small at the moment while we iron out some problems. As I’ve said in the past, there are MAJOR changes in the way we retrieve and synchronize content in this version – and we’re moving slowly to make sure that when we ship, it not only rocks, but it’s rock solid.

An older version of Chris’s subscription list is actually one of the test cases we use for testing. And it works fine…but performance isn’t quite up to the level we want with that many feeds (Chris’s list is about 800 or so feeds, and we test with others with about 1500 feeds).

So Chris, I know you want to be on the beta, and you will be…just give us a chance to get it to a point where it’s ready for you.

As to his point about wasting bandwidth, NewsGator Outlook edition works similarly to nearly every other desktop aggregator – it retrieves content directly from the publisher – so I’m not sure how that’s acting irresponsibly. That said, some of the changes we’ve made in the upcoming version have to do with the way we retrieve content…so stay tuned, and I’ll post more details as we get closer.