For those who are wondering how to ping NewsGator’s system when a feed is updated…the ping endpoint is
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
It implements the standard XML-RPC ping protocols.
This has been up for ages, and is used by ping-o-matic, pingoat, feedburner, and others…but I don’t believe it’s actually documented on the site anywhere. So, rather than my having to dig around looking for it every time someone asks, this will hopefully get it google-able. :-)
The San Francisco Chronicle is the first customer to go live with NewsGator’s private label hosted solution…you can see it live at http://www.sfgate.com/myfeeds/. It’s a complete RSS experience, integrated into their existing web site, with content chosen by their editors that they feel will appeal to their users.
Users can of course subscribe to any content they wish…but a big part of this is the fact that their editors can add value for their users in a couple of ways. First, they can select feeds for their feed “catalog” – helping users get to the content they might be interested in quickly. And second, they create “editor’s choice” feeds with snippets of content from around the net. They of course use NewsGator’s tools to find and select this content, and we distribute it to users who have selected that content. Their users are no longer limited to only SFGate.com content – they can view content from anywhere, right within the SFGate.com user experience.
Take a look! We’re very excited to be providing this technology to the San Francisco Chronicle and other publishers, and we’ll be demonstrating some of the capabilities of the system at DEMO this morning. If you’re here at the conference, be sure to come visit us afterwards!
This is an exciting first few months of the year for NewsGator and RSS. Today, NewsGator Outlook edition 2.6 beta 1 was released…see this forum post for more information. It includes support for clippings sync (the first application in our family to include this!), podcasting (with the super-cool FeedStation), and lots more.
A couple of weeks ago, we rolled out FeedDemon 2.0 beta 1 (see Nick Bradbury’s post on the topic), with some pretty radical changes including complete sync with NewsGator Online.
And last but not least, we have internal builds of NetNewsWire that also sync with NewsGator Online; a few lucky folks got to see this live at MacWorld. We expect to have a beta release available in the next few weeks.
The coolest part? As of these three releases, you can use any client you want, on any platform you want – and your subscriptions and content will be seamlessly sync’d between them, and to NewsGator Online. I’ve personally been using all three clients and the online system for quite some time now, and it’s been smooth as silk.
A quick warning – don’t install the beta of any of these products unless you understand what you’re getting into. It’s not done – that’s why it’s a beta. Stuff will break. Your dog might get sick. Your car might quit. But if you’re up for it, give it a shot – you’ll get an early look at the future of these products, and we would LOVE to hear your feedback!
The other night, on the way home, an idea came to me…so I pulled up my development environment and decided to write some code. I think my terrified development team is probably locking me out of the source control systems as we speak… ;-)
My thought was this. I’m a visual person, and a lot of the feeds I subscribe to have images in the posts. If I could see all of those images together, I could make some quick decisions about what I want to read now, vs. what I will read later. And thus was born the image aggregator.
Take a look for yourself – click here, and use your NewsGator Online username/password.
If you’re one of those types who is completely caught up with all of your unread feeds, you won’t see anything. But if you have unread stuff, you’ll see a compilation of all of the images in your unread posts. If you click on one, that post will get marked as read in NG/Online, and you’ll get linked out to the post.
Here’s an example of what I see for my own account (click for larger version):
It lets me get an idea, at a glance, of what’s available to read.
This is obviously an EARLY prototype of something, which may or may not see the light of day…but I think it’s an interesting concept. Any thoughts from you about it? Useful or no?
Aside: this was all written using the public NewsGator Online API.
A week or so ago, we loaded a cool new feature in NewsGator Online…and I wanted to let you know about it in case you haven’t had a chance to look at it.
NewsGator Online provides a hierarchical folder stucture for you to organize your feeds, and it provides a “organize folders” function so you can arrange them how you wish. This worked, and we actually had a lot of customers praise this “organize folders” page versus what some other tools are doing.
But now we’ve gone one better. The way I figure it, if you just want to move a couple of feeds around, you don’t want to have to go to a whole other page…you just want to drag them around. So now you can! Take a look:
This shows me dragging a feed into the “NG blogs” folder. Nothing to learn, nothing to think about…just drag it in there. Unsubscribe, rename, and more are in the right-click menu on each feed/folder:
So anyway, take a look, and let us know what you think…we have a lot more coming for you soon! And NewsGator Outlook edition, FeedDemon, and NetNewsWire are all nearing new releases…and after using all of them over the last few weeks, I can tell you that the synchronization and usability story is awesome. More to come!
At the RSS Industry Night Roundtable (thanks Rok for setting this up), most of the discussion centered around individualized RSS, including both truly individual feeds and also feeds that contain instrumentation for metrics gathering. Both kinds of feeds exist in the wild today, and both cause some problems for hosted aggregators like Yahoo!, NewsGator, and others, and feed search engines (Technorati, Feedster, NewsGator, and others).
In both cases, we have a situation where we have a number of independent feeds, which all contain the same or similar content. Some of the content may not be intended for public consumption (for example, it might have the user’s name in it as a personalized message), and other content may be duplicated but slightly different (think per-feed marked-up URL’s used for click-through tracking).
We need a way to avoid indexing this data. [aside: actually, other publishers have reasons for not wanting their content indexed as well – this solution will cover this third case also] Today, if you want Yahoo! to stop indexing your feeds, you call them and they mark your domain as such. If you want NewsGator to stop indexing, you call us and we mark your domain. And so on…which turns into a long list of calls you need to make. :-) At the industry meeting the other night, nearly everyone in the room agreed we needed a no-index indicator.
So here’s a proposal. Let’s kick it around and hammer something out quickly.
<rss version=”2.0″ xmlns:r=”urn:anzu-industry-meeting-2005-12″>
<channel>
<title>My Feed</title>
…
<r:index allowIndex=”false” />
<item>
<title>My article</title>
…
<r:index allowIndex=”false” /> *** see note below
</item>
This shows an “index” element at the feed level, which controls index-ability for the entire feed. If the element is not present, allowIndex is implied to be true.
I also show an item-level “index” element (***), which could specify the index-ability settings for a specific item. I’m less sure about this one…but at the meeting, Eric Hayes at Attensa mentioned it, so I put it in for discussion. I’d love to hear some thoughts about this one, including some use cases.
Implied behavior when a feed like this is encountered would be to a) not index the content, and potentially b) don’t archive the content if you normally do archive content.
So anyway…this is all pretty simple, and it solves an immediate problem that the whole industry is seeing. Please comment, either here or on your own blog (add a trackback), and let’s see if we can agree on something quickly.
This is the first full-length review of NewsGator Enterprise Server that I’ve seen. Lots of screenshots (more than you can see on the NewsGator web site, actually), and lots of detailed information about setting up and using the product.
Newsgator Enterprise Server comes with a very good solution covering these requirements. With its ability to synchronise RSS feeds between Microsoft Exchange mailboxes and its own database I was able to have my preferred “Must Read” feeds organised in folders and have Exchange ActiveSync sending this information OTA (over the air) to my Windows Mobile devices.
There’s even a picture of the distribution CD and manuals, and a cool NewsGator mousepad that I didn’t realize we shipped with the product. :-)
Read the review here at Geekzone.
There’s one week left to enter the NewsGator API developer competition, and win a Dell Latitude, Apple Powerbook, or iPod Nano. A couple of the categories have a small number of entries so far, so there’s an excellent chance of winning if you enter! You have until November 11 at midnight to enter your application…
The rumors and stories this morning are true…NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire. Here’s the press release, and a Q&A about the deal. This is awesome news – we’re all very excited about it!
The rationale here is similar to what I posted about the FeedDemon deal. Our system is designed to let users define the information they’re interested in (by subscribing to feeds, or creating meta-feeds), and then distribute that information to whatever device the user happens to be using. Up to now this has included the web (NewsGator Online), email clients (Outlook edition and Email edition), mobile devices (Mobile edition), Media Center devices (Media Center edition), and the Windows desktop (FeedDemon).
The obvious gaping hole was the Mac desktop. So we looked around for the best RSS reader available for the Mac, and we didn’t have to look very long – NetNewsWire was the obvious choice. Not only does it deliver a great user experience, and have a huge number of loyal users, but it also had Brent Simmons behind it. Brent’s a really smart guy, has thought about RSS and the related user experience a lot, and will be joining our team as a product architect. He’s already has some great ideas!
So what’s coming? In the next few months, we’ll release a new version of NetNewsWire that will synchronize seamlessly with the NewsGator Online platform, and by extension, all other products that use this platform. So, for example, you’ll be able to use NetNewsWire at home, FeedDemon or Outlook edition at work, Mobile edition on the road, and Web edition in an internet cafe. And no matter which product you use, your feeds, read/unread states, and other relevant data will be kept in sync. Good stuff – expect no less.
There have been rumors about this floating around all morning. Most of the questions are covered in the Q&A, but let me just mention one of them here –
Will Brent stay at NewsGator, and keep working on NetNewsWire?
The answer here is absolutely yes. He’ll continue working on NetNewsWire, and we actually expect development and new features to accelerate since he’ll be able to focus more on design and development. He’ll also be contributing in other areas and products, but believe me, we’re committed to NetNewsWire and making sure it remains the best RSS experience on the Mac.
Yesterday in a press briefing, someone asked Brent “so are you going to leave in the next few months, and work on the next big thing?” Brent replied, “I think NewsGator is the next big thing.”
So anyway, come visit us at Web 2.0 – Brent and I will both be there, along with Sandy Hamilton and Jennifer Smith. We’d love to chat with you!
This was too cool not to post…at least I thought so. :-)
Behold, the first NewsGator Enterprise Server CD:
