For those of you who will be at Web 2.0, please come join us for a drink Thursday 10/6 at 5:30pm! We’ll have some interesting news at the conference, and several folks from NewsGator will be there to chat with.
Time: Thursday Oct 6, 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Location: Moscone Suite, 33rd Floor, Argent Hotel (this is the conference hotel, just jump in the elevator!)
Hope to see you there!
Yep, it’s true…on Friday night, Sep 30 (yes that is Q3!), the final bits for NewsGator Enterprise Server 1.0 were burned to a master CD. It’s being duplicated and shipped to customers this morning.
I’m still in a bit of shock. This product has been a long time (about a year or so) in the making…and nearly everyone at NewsGator has had a hand in it in one way or another.
So to the team that got this out the door – you guys rock!
And to that team, I _know_ you’re all reading my blog…because I pushed out a group subscription to all “Domain Users”. Ah, the perks of being an administrator… ;-)
On the heels of our NewsGator Online API launch, NewsGator has announced an API developer competition…basically, we’re looking for the coolest applications that use the NewsGator API, in three categories:
First prize in each category is your choice of a Dell D610 or an Apple Powerbook laptop, and second prize in each category is an iPod nano.
So warm up your developer tools, and give it a shot!
[update: this post still gets a ton of traffic, but the contest is definitely over.]
As many of you know, Nick Bradbury had surgery on Tuesday 9/6 for an acoustic neuroma. I’m happy to report that the doctor didn’t sneeze – Nick is doing very well, is in good spirits, and has started his rehab process.
Please join me and all of us at NewsGator in wishing Nick and his family well, and a speedy recovery.
It’s been a while in coming…but the NewsGator Online API – the next major piece of the NewsGator platform roadmap – is now online and ready to use. And you heard it here first…because the press release isn’t going out for another day or two. :-)
Using the NG API, you can build applications that synchronize with our online system, and thus synchronize with other products that are connected to it. So if someone is using NewsGator Outlook edition at work, FeedDemon 1.6 or NewsGator Online at home, and you write a cool mobile application (for example), they’ll be able to read the same content and sync with your new application.
And this goes far beyond earlier generations of our API, and other folks’ API’s – you can now synchronize not only subscriptions and content, but read/unread state. Mark an item read (or unread) via the API, and it will be auto-magically marked as read (or unread) in NewsGator Online, NewsGator Outlook edition, FeedDemon, and any other connected product that’s using the API.
This is the same API that our own desktop products (NewsGator Outlook edition 2.5 and FeedDemon 1.6) use, and it’s a subset of the NewsGator Media Platform API.
It’s free for non-commercial use (and licenseable for commercial use); you’ll need to get an API product key (sign in first with your NewsGator Online account), and then you’ll be off and running. The API documentation is online, and our support team will help you if you run into problems. We even have a sample application that implements a 3-pane aggregator, with full synchronization support, that one of our engineers wrote in a couple of hours.
We consider the API a work in progress. It’s solid and reliable – our own products are using it, after all – but we’re definitely looking for any feedback from the community about how we could make it better and easier to use. So take a look, build some cool stuff, and let us know what you think!
You might not have noticed, if you read my blog often, but we’ve never actually announced NewsGator Enterprise Server. Well, all that changed today!
It’s officially announced, and will ship in Q3. Which, if you look at a calendar, is pretty soon. :-) Here’s the info:
Product Info – there are links on this page to the product brochure, white papers, and lots of other cool stuff.
Here’s a comment from one of our beta testers:
I just got beta 2 of Newsgator Enterprise Server setup. WOW. Nice stuff. Honestly I haven’t seen a 1.0 product look this good, well, ever.
We’re pretty excited about it…and now that there is actual information available about the product, I’d love to hear what you think!
It was announced back in March…and today, the Denver Post News Hound application was launched. It’s a custom Denver Post application, where their customers can view news and other content from the Denver Post and other publishers (including any RSS feeds). Here’s a shot of the main window (click for larger):
If you happen to live in Denver, be sure to check out the full-page ad in the paper that will be running for a while.
This is the first public application built on the NewsGator Media Platform…stay tuned for more! :-)
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about NewsGator’s subscription plans, and the way our desktop products (NewsGator Outlook edition and FeedDemon) would work with them. Nick Bradbury posted about it a day later. What we were really surprised about is the sheer volume of feedback about this, most of it not-completely-positive. :-)
For those that didn’t notice, Nick posted two days later announcing that we had re-thought this decision. Basically, when you buy NewsGator Outlook edition or FeedDemon, we’re making some changes so those products will continue to work forever, rather than stopping when your subscription runs out. Certain features (that rely on parts of NewsGator Online) will likely be disabled when your subscription runs out, but the software itself will continue to function.
The plan is to still use the same activation system for this that we have in place already. So you’ll still need a NewsGator Online account to activate the products…however, even if your account expires you’ll still be able to activate the versions of the products that you had access to originally. We’re still working out the details, but we’ll definitely let you know as soon as we have something concrete to talk about.
There’s been someone posting a lot of spam comments on blogs and forums about this; for an example, scroll down in the comments on Chris Pirillo’s post here. You can find this identical comment lots of other places as well, if you look hard enough. In the middle of that comment is this:
Hi my friend,I want to tell you something about nick’s promising is a lie:
feeddemon won’t work after your subscribtion runs out.
Come on now…no one is lying. The existing builds of Outlook edition 2.5 and FeedDemon 1.6 will indeed not activate if your subscription runs out…however, we are making changes to both products and the online activation system soon, which will rectify this. And in the meantime, everyone who is affected by this has plenty of time in their existing subscription, so no one needs to “wait” for us to finish it.
So anyway, I just wanted to publicly clarify what we’re doing, and try to help stamp out some of the FUD that this individual has been trying to spread.
As many have noticed, and blogged about, NewsGator’s individual products (meaning everything except NewsGator Enterprise Server) are now all sold on a subscription basis. This includes Outlook edition 2.5, and the upcoming FeedDemon 1.6. Actually Outlook edition 2.0 was sold on a subscription basis starting earlier this year, but we didn’t make a big point about talking about it.
Lots of existing customers have asked why we did this…so let me talk a bit about it. Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t have a secret meeting where we tried to figure out how to squeeze every last dollar or euro out of our customers. :-)
So why, then?
Well, here’s the thing. Back in January of 2004, NewsGator Outlook edition 2.0 was launched, along with NewsGator Online (formerly NewsGator Online Services). Outlook edition had a license fee (it was $29), and if you wanted to use sync or any of our online features, the online subscription started at $5.95/mo.
Later, in October of 2004, we made parts of NewsGator Online (most notably the web edition and media center edition) available for free. Other services (smart feeds, premium content, mobile edition, etc) were still available on a subscription basis.
So far, so good, we thought. We were selling stuff the way people were used to paying for it – that is, some stuff for free, a license fee for software, and a recurring cost for services. Right?
Wrong, as it turns out. Problem is, customers were confused. As we started to build more cool services in NewsGator Online, and as we started making more direct enterprise sales, we realized that everyone was confused. As customers learned what was available with the online system, they wanted it…but the whole license + subscription thing was too complicated.
And when we add new products like FeedDemon in the mix, it gets even more complicated, since FeedDemon will also rely on NewsGator Online features.
So what to do. We could just have a license fee, and eat the service cost. That’s what Intuit does with Quicken, as I recall…but they shut off the services after some period of time for each software release, and they piss off a bunch of customers every time they do it. Also, this doesn’t solve the problem for a user who doesn’t want the Outlook client – we’d be back to a subscription for them.
So we went the other way. Get rid of the license fees, and go with _only_ subscription pricing. Include all of the products in the subscription bundles – including Outlook edition, and FeedDemon (real soon now). And at the same time, we dropped the pricing. Outlook edition comes as part of the cheapest business subscription plan, which starts at $1.95/mo or $19.95/year. This is $10 cheaper than the old license fee.
And, we’re constantly adding value to the subscription bundles. For example – subscribers will get FeedDemon 1.6 as part of their subscription. No extra license fee, no nothing. So for as low as $1.95/mo or $19.95/yr, you get both Outlook edition and FeedDemon.
“But wait,” you say. “I don’t care about the online system – I just want the products.” Ok – let’s do a quick analysis over 2 years to get both products:
Old pricing: $29 (Outlook) + $29.95 (FeedDemon) = $58.95 (plus upgrade fees)
New pricing: $19.95/yr x 2 years = $39.90
Cheaper after 2 years, and at the end of 3 years, you’d be roughly money-equivalent.
But maybe you didn’t want both products, but really only one of them. The free upgrades are really the advantage then. Another example:
Old pricing:
– initial fee $29
– major upgrade in 1 year $20
total – $49 for two years
New pricing: $19.95/yr x 2 years = $39.90
With the subscription plans, you get free upgrades, new products, and access to the ever-growing services available on the online site. And we’re committed to adding cool new stuff all the time to these plans – witness what we’re doing with FeedDemon. And hey – tell us what YOU want in these subscription plans…we love suggestions.
But what happens when your subscription expires? Well, the products will no longer activate. But you’re not going to be locked out of your data or anything…you just won’t be able to retrieve new content until you re-activate. You’ll have full access to your data even after your subscription expires.
So anyway, that was a bit long-winded. But we really feel like this was the way to go, given the challenges we were facing selling into consumer, business, and enterprise markets all at once.
And I know we’ve probably already lost some existing customers over this. But we’ve tried hard to make this work for you – so riddle me this. For those who purchased Outlook edition 2.0 prior to the subscription change, we’ve offered you 2 years of free service. Try it out – use it for those 2 years. And then come back at the end of that, when your subscription is up for renewal, and tell me honestly if you feel like you’ve gotten your $29 worth – and tell me if you feel like it’s worth $19.95 for one more year.
We’ll listen – I promise.