Video On Demand Through NewsGator

One of the most exciting recent Internet innovations is the rapid rise of streaming video. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Net users would have the ability to find pretty much any kind of video content - from television programs and news segments to classic historic clips - simply by clicking a mouse.

A good example is the enormous popularity of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.  Though a lot of people watch it on the Comedy Central channel, many more watch clips of the show on their computers and mobile devices. Disney just announced that soon you will be able to download television programs onto the video iPods. Missed the latest episode of Desperate Housewives? No problem.

One of the more interesting streaming video companies is blinkx.com. which allows users to search for video (and podcast) content and create their own unique RSS feeds that track new video content for that subject or keyword.

Newsgator has partnered with blinkx.com to provide our subscribers the ability to build their own personal video/audio feed in their Newsgator reader. It's simple - just go to the Find Feeds area, click on Streaming Video, click on the blinkx.com logo and follow the easy directions to build your own personal video feed on any subject or program you want.  It's just one more step toward our goal of providing our user-base the content they want, when and where they want it.

Scheduled Maintenance

Just a quick heads up that the NewsGator website will be down for scheduled maintenance on Saturday, October 22, 2005 from 7:00 p.m. (MST) until 7:45 p.m. (MST).  There may also be (very) brief intermittent outages until 10:00 p.m. (MST).

Enhancing Private Label With FeedBurner

In case you missed the announcement this morning, NewsGator has partnered with FeedBurner to extend the value of our market-leading Private Label offering to commercial publishers.  Currently, the Private Label solution offers all of NewsGator's state-of-the-art features in customizable, branded applications that reflect the look and feel of our clients.  It is, literally, an extension of their brands.  The partnership with FeedBurner now gives us the ability to leverage all of FeedBurner's publisher services for optimizing reach, promoting new subscriptions and monetizing the channel.  And, the new Unified Dashboard (our single point of entry for access to all metrics) will provide end-to-end details regarding feed delivery and consumption numbers whether provided by NewsGator or FeedBurner. 

We're pretty excited to be able to offer online brands not only the best solution for providing aggregated content to their subscribers, but also the ability to monitor in great detail the audience response to it.  Look here for more information on the partnership.

Yahoo!'s Ipsos Research

There's been a great deal of traffic about the real meaning of the valuable Ipsos research Yahoo! funded on RSS consumption.

Some of the more interesting reactions we've witnessed have come from the big online brands (both mainstream media and others),  many of whom have said to us in the last few days that that research, and Google's move, will spur them to do more, faster, with RSS.

The logic thread is simple:

1.  The Ipsos research verifies that valuable people ('end-users') love RSS ... if it's brought to them with a non-technical interface, via a trusted brand.

2.  Google's entry verifies that the portals are very focused on ownership of the end-user, by enriching the portal with RSS aggregation and reading

3.  Given #1 and #2, big online brands need to enable RSS aggregation and reading directly within their own brand  ... before that valuable RSS-orized end-user migrates forever away ... ...

We're getting lots of calls about #3 ... as the BBC says (via PaidContent);

Ashley Highfield, head of BBC New Media, spoke to the UK's Association of Online Publishers Conference in London today, telling them that in the future, major broadcasters like the BBC would actually produce less content not more, and act as aggregators and trusted guides to user generated content like blogs.

NewsGator Acquires NetNewsWire

It's true, the deal is done.  There's been quite a bit of speculation on what we might be announcing next, and the cat got out of the bag this morning.  Phew!  It was hard not talking about this one.  We are VERY excited to announce the acquisition of NetNewsWire.  As you know (or should by now because we try not to miss a single opportunity to point this out), the NewsGator Online Platform provides highly integrated and sychronized reading across multiple devices (the web, mobile phones, media devices and e-mail clients like Microsoft Outlook).  The FeedDemon acquisition extended this to the Windows desktop, and now NetNewsWire extends our platform to Mac OS X.

For anyone not familiar with NetNewsWire, it's the award winning RSS reader for Mac OS X.  NetNewsWire has great user interfaces and a loyal following among Mac users.  Best of all, it has Brent Simmons (the brilliant mind behind NetNewsWire) who now joins the NewsGator team.  Believe me, we can't wait to start working with him.

So what's the plan?  First we'll work on releasing a new version of NetNewsWire that will synchronize seamlessly with the NewsGator Online platform (which means it will sync with all our other product offerings).  Of course there will be more to follow, but that's where we'll start. 

You can get more details here.  Also, for anyone attending Web 2.0 in San Francisco this week, Greg Reinacker and Brent Simmons will be there ready to chat.  Also, if you happen to be there, don't miss the opportunity to party with them at the NewsGator Web 2.0 party, Wednesday evening at the Argent Hotel (where Web 2.0 is being held), Moscone Suite (33rd floor) from 5:30 to 7:30.

Stay tuned for more details on NewsGator and NetNewsWire!