Nick Bradbury

NewsGator Reborn

As Marc Orchant points out, Monday was a big day for NewsGator. Not only was FeedDemon 2.0 released, but we also:

• Released a new version of NewsGator Inbox (our aggregator for Microsoft Outlook)
• Launched a significant overhaul of NewsGator Online (our free web-based aggregator)
• Fulfilled our promise to get rid of our subscription model
• Pushed out a re-design of our entire site

Now, I'll be candid and admit that I didn't used to be a fan of NewsGator Online - it just didn't look or feel right to me. But this new version is far better. In addition to adding obvious interface enhancements such as favicons, we've also made it easier for us to push out new features, so you can expect even more improvements over time. If you tried NewsGator Online in the past and didn't like it, I hope you'll give it another try - I'm willing to bet you'll like it much better now.

FeedDemon 2.0 Now Available

Yesterday I announced that FeedDemon 2.0 was done, and today I get to announce that it's now available for download. Just stop by the FeedDemon product page and click the "Free Trial" link to get it (or, better yet, click the "Buy Now" button if you don't already own a copy).

If you're using a beta version of FeedDemon 1.6 or 2.0, you can install the final 2.0 release directly on top of it (there's no need to uninstall the beta version). If you're still using FeedDemon 1.5, I recommend installing 2.0 in a separate folder for best results.

I'll have a lot more to say about FeedDemon 2.0 in the weeks to come, but for now I'll just link to the release notes if you'd like find out what's new (in short: a whole lot!). If you have any questions about this release, feel free to ask in our support forums - we'll be happy to help.

FeedDemon 2.0 is Golden!

After months of coding, debugging, refining and performance-tuning, FeedDemon 2.0 is finally done. The code has been frozen, the final install has been built, the documentation has been written, and we're all set to go live with it. The download will be posted soon, and I'll announce it here once it's available.

At this point I feel like I should blog a post-mortem of the new version, but the truth is I'm too pooped to do it - all I want to do right now is shut off my brain for a while and then take a veerrrryyy long nap!

Before I do that, though, I first want to give my thanks to everyone who helped out during the beta. This has been the longest beta cycle I've been involved in, yet through it all we've received an incredible amount of feedback that has helped make FeedDemon 2.0 a far better product than it would've been. And I also have to thank our excellent support team for dealing with the firehose of feedback that results from an open (public) beta. I believe FeedDemon 2.0 is the best work I've ever done, and I know it would not have been possible had I been the only one handling support.

And now, about that nap...zzz...

Media RSS Quickie

Carrick has posted a couple of screenshots that show off FeedDemon's support for Media RSS.

Random thoughts from MIX06 Day One

I'm at MIX06 this week, and I've left behind a full inbox which I'll tackle when I return (so apologies if you're waiting for an email from me). The conference is in Las Vegas, which means I'm far too sleep-deprived for a coherent post, so I'll just toss out some random comments:

• I have to be honest and say that this morning's keynote from Bill Gates started off as the same old robotic marketing pitch we're used to hearing from Microsoft. Things improved considerably, though, when Tim O'Reilly did a "live" interview of Gates. You could tell Gates was far more engaged than he was during the marketing spiel - it's fair to say his personality showed through, and that was a welcome change. We need more of this from Microsoft.
• The live demo of Atlas, Microsoft's AJAX framework, received quite a bit of applause. It looks to me like they've done a nice job hiding the complexities of cross-browser/cross-platform AJAX from Microsoft developers.
• Dean Hachamovitch gave a preview of IE7's RSS features (among other things), and several people around me were visibly impressed with IE7's handling of Microsoft's Simple List Extensions (SLE). It is very cool, but it left me wondering how I'd handle displaying multiple feeds (such as a folder of feeds) when each feed has its own set of filters and/or sorting criteria. Regardless, I agree with Charlie Wood that RSS aggregators will need to support SLE if they hope to remain competitive.
• After spotting Marc Canter in the crowd, I wondered at what point we'd hear his voice boom out when nobody was expecting it. I didn't have to wait long - at the end of the MySpace presentation, Marc called out for them to create an open API (a point he echoed during the brief Q&A session). I know I've got RSS blinders on, but given MySpace's content, it seems to me that they could really open things up through a more aggressive use of RSS and (especially) MediaRSS.
• The demos of WPF by the BBC and Fluid received many well-deserved oohs and ahhs. After watching those demos, I immediately stopped being jealous of the cool UI gadgets that Mac OS X developers get to play with (sorry, Brent!).

Sticking up for my friends

I normally try to avoid getting into public battles, but today I need to make an exception. Yesterday Rogers Cadenhead blogged about a letter sent to him by Dave Winer's attorney, which caused a bit of an uproar in RSS circles. I honestly have no idea who is right or wrong in this case, and I've never had a reason to distrust Rogers, so I'm not going to take sides in this issue. But I was truly bothered by the number of comments made before Dave had given his side of the story. How can anyone possibly take sides when only one side has made their case? The mob mentality shown here, in a word, sucks, and shows why the blog world is no better than mainstream media when it comes to fact-checking.

Also, Steve Gillmor has recently made a couple of rambling posts that suggest he's not exactly happy with the goings-on in the world of attention. For the record, Steve, you're the person who introduced me (and certainly countless others) to the idea of attention, and I'll always give you credit for your pioneering role, no matter how cranky you get.

Going Mobile

Just wanted to extend a warm welcome to Kevin Cawley, creator of SmartRead and SmartFeed for Windows Mobile. Kevin's products have been acquired by NewsGator and he's officially one of us now :)

As Greg Reinacker points out in his blog post about the acqusition, this further extends our synchronization platform, which already enables synchronization between:

• FeedDemon
• NetNewsWire
• NewsGator Outlook Edition
• NewsGator Online

Not too shabby, if you ask me!

What was I thinking?

So, last night I went to a Sevendust concert, and for the first time in almost two decades I got into a mosh pit. Let's just say that today my aching 38-year-old self is very aware of the reasons why moshing is done by a younger crowd...

Year of the Concert

When I was a long-haired teenager, going to rock concerts was among my favorite things to do (I admit it, I grew up in Wayne's World). But my concert attendance has slipped since then - these days, I'm lucky if I see one show a year. Well, this year I decided to change that.

Shortly after my ugly surgery I saw Green Day on their American Idiot tour, and that was a great show. This weekend I'm going to a Sevendust concert, and a week from now I'll see Wilco (I'm really looking forward to that one). And I plan to see several more before the year's end.

But as much as I know I'll enjoy these shows, they'll probably pale in comparison to the time I took my son to see Rush. He was just a hair shy of five years old at the time, and we both had a blast. That was the first time I got to really share something with him that I liked, and it was great to see him enjoying it, too. Yeah, I know - he was a bit young to see a rock concert. But I figure popular culture will try to corrupt him with soulless pop songs performed by surgically-enhanced celebrities, so I might as well get him started on the right foot by taking him to a show where the musicians write their own songs and play their own instruments.

No Bitching!

The other night my wife and I were watching Misery on network TV, and I was surprised by how much violence was left uncensored. Given America's current political climate, you'd think that graphic violence would be as frowned upon as a wardrobe malfunction, but apparently not. The scene at the end of the movie where the characters played by James Caan and Kathy Bates fight to the death was left intact, even the part where a bloody Kathy Bates is bashed senseless with a heavy typewriter.

Before Kathy Bates is killed, though, James Caan calls her "a crazy bitch" - except the word "bitch" was censored out.

I'm not sure what to make of this. The network censors were perfectly fine showing a bloody killing, but didn't want to offend anyone with a swear word? What a strange country I live in.