Newsgator
Posted by Bill Ives, 6/6/04 at 9:09:47 PM.
I am using Newsgator and find it very easy for a non-technical user. All you do is click on the Newsgator button on your Windows tool bar when you are at a site you want to subscribe to. Newsgator then analyzes the feed and adds it to a newly created Outlook folder if it is RSS enabled. Then I can browse these feeds when time allows and my email box does not get cluttered. I am now going to cancel all the newsletters and news sources that hit my main email box and replace them with RSS feeds. When I get tired of the feed I just delete the Outlook folder. I am not qualified to compare it with all the other tools on technical features but I am very qualified to represent the technically challenged user who has little time or patience for non-intuitive interfaces.
While I find Newsgator very helpful as a personal productivity tool for the reasons above, what excites me even more is its potential use as an enterprise communication tool and its moves to provide more features that support this objective. With its on-line services, Newsgator has moved beyond reliance on Outlook usage for news aggregation to offer a web version on their site, the means to use other e-mail tools, and the ability to hit mobile devices. They also allow you to read updates on selected text and multimedia content on your TV through Windows XP Media Center. You can customize feeds by machine so you can designate separate content to your home and work computers.
As I understand it, the vision for the Newsgator on-line services offering is to provide an enterprise platform for user controlled communication through multiple devices. There are many opportunities to build off this platform with custom applications targeted to specific business needs. Many people are saying that RSS is one of the next big ideas for both personal and business communication. It seems that Newsgator is going after both of these objectives.
