Cool NewsGator Online Features

As you may have noticed, we've been incrementally adding new features to NewsGator Online.  We have a new load planned for today ... here is a preview of what you can expect to see.

New Features:

• Overall, we are working to improve the "look, feel, and functionality" of NewsGator Online.  Our ultimate goal is to provide you with an online aggregator that is clean and useful - with no extraneous graphics, colors, or steps that may impede your feed reading.
• You will notice that the function icons are larger with more space between them.  This feature will help you mark as read, save to clippings and forward posts via email with more ease.
• The date, time and publisher of the feed now introduces the feed, instead of being below the feed.  (This was actually one of my pet peeves.  Knowing who the feed is coming from when doing general knowledge management work is a big help when determining if you will click through...and, if it is a long post, scrolling down is inefficient.)
• If you have "Group by Feeds" enabled, you can now expand or collapse feeds by clicking on the ">>" icon.  Again, this is a time saver for power users.

Below are before and after screenshots.

Here is the "old skin."  Click on the image to enlarge.

                                                                                                                                                   

Here is the "new skin."  Click on the image to enlarge.

                                                                                                                            Let us know what you think.  Customer feedback is a driving force behind our product development.  And, stay tuned for more changes in the coming weeks.  As mentioned, we are making incremental enhancements to NewsGator Online ... there is A LOT more to come!               

What's Important to You?

Alex Barnett has posted a great podcast with Nick Bradbury and Kevin Burton of TailRank.  The focus of the podcast is on attention.  We all agree that RSS is great, but if you subscribe to a lot of feeds, you have probably noticed the more content you get, the harder it is to figure out what is content is actually important to you.

Download the podcast in FeedStation to learn more about what Nick and Kevin have to say about attention.

FeedDemon 2.0 Beta Now Available

It's official, the FeedDemon 2.0 Beta is now available for download.  First things first ... the standard beta disclaimer ... please do not download this beta if you are not comfortable using software that is incomplete. 

That said, here are some of the new features:

• Single-level treeview
• Subscription overview providing a summary of your subscriptions (including the feeds you pay least attention to)
• Many UI and usability improvements to make the app more streamlined

Take a look at Nick's blog for more details.  Looking forward to your feedback!

We're Hiring - Part II

Last week I posted about the Sales & Marketing team hiring for 3 new roles. We'll I'd like to add a 4th! We're looking for an Outside Sales person to be located in New York City. I've attached the job specifications. If you, or if you know someone else that is right for the role, let us know....quickly! Send a note to jobs@newsgator.com and put "Outside Sales Role" in the subject line.   job specification: Download newsgator_outside_sales_position_1.9.06 v2.doc

On the Road

Well, the 2006 event calendar is filling in nicely!  One of the cool things about working for a company that is on the cutting edge of technology is that you can see the early adopter crowd embrace the technology and products that you produce, and over time, you get the chance to see it permeate into the mainstream.  We will be speaking and attending at a variety of events in 2006.  Some of the events will be will general RSS oriented of course, but others are events that focus on specific vertical markets who are starting to embrace RSS, social computing, wikis and other Web 2.0-ish technologies.

January 31-February 1 - ASAE (Association of Association Executives) Technology Strategies & Solutions Conference in Washington D.C.  Brian Stern, VP of Enterprise Sales, will be speaking on a panel that will focus on The Long Tail, Social Media and the Future of Associations.  For non-profits with shoestring budgets, you really can't beat the power of Web 2.0 technologies.  Glad to see them embrace it!

February 5-8 - Enterprise Software Summit in Sundance, Utah.  JB Holston will be presenting to an executive audience about building brands using RSS, Blogs and Podcasts.  This will be a great way to get in front of a really high level audience and introduct them to the power of RSS, blogs, podcasts and more.

February 6-8 - DEMO 2006 in Phoenix, AZ.  Walker Fenton, Director of Product Management, and Greg Reinacker, founder & CTO, will present a super cool new RSS aggregation solution (which we cannot talk about until Feb. 6th) on-stage at DEMO.  This is a great honor and we are really excited about the opportunity.  Read the official press release.

February 27-March 1 - 2006 RSS Summit in Boston.  Greg will be speaking on a panel about how to prove syndication value with metrics.  This event is meant to teach marketers how to harness the power of RSS. 

February 21 - Emerging Software Technologies - Beyond the Blogosphere.  Greg will be speaking on a panel that revolves around, you guessed it, RSS.  This is a local event - believe it or not, Denver and Boulder are have a very active tech community!

March 6-7 - Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference in London.  JB will be speaking on a panel about RSS and the Big News Debate.  This should be a lively discussion.  One of the topics is, "Could RSS mean that the consumer is given only information that the sponsors want to give them?"

April 9-11 - Buying and Selling eContent in Scottsdale.  Greg will be speaking on a panel about new aggregators and content integration trends.

April 24-26 - Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technology in San Francisco.  Greg will be speaking about RSS applied to the enterprise at this event. 

If you are going to be at any of these events, track us down, we would love to chat!

DEMO 2006

It's official!  NewsGator has been selected to demonstrate on-stage at the upcoming DEMO 06 Conference to be held in Phoenix February 6-8.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what new product we will be showing off ... yet.  I can tell you, though, that our demo is going to be a show stopper!  Greg and Walker are gonna knock 'em dead!

MarsEdit 1.1 Release to Market

In case you missed the press release yesterday, MarsEdit 1.1 has released to market.  MarsEdit, originally developed by Brent Simmons back in 2004, is a weblog editing tool for the Mac. 

Some of the cool new features of 1.1:

• Universal binary - runs on Intel Macs as well as Power PC Macs.
• Email-like interface makes weblog editing familiar and easy.
• Support for Technorati tags, titles for Blogger weblogs and the ability to specify enclosures.
• A comprehenisive list of MarsEdit features.

Read is Brent's post about the release.

We're Hiring At NewsGator

The NewsGator Sales & Marketing organization needs to hire three (3) people immediately.

Qty 2 Inside Sales Representatives - One for our Enterprise Server business and one for our Private Label business. Each role will report to the respective VP of Sales for those business lines and support our sales efforts. (job spec attached)

Qty 1 Client Services Manager - Reporting to our Director of Client Services this role is to support existing client implementations and be accountable for "client satisfaction" and "expansion revenue". (job spec attached)

NewsGator Technologies is growing rapidly. These positions will be based at our Denver headquarters location. Join the team and be a part of one of Denver's fastest growing companies! If you're interested send an email to jobs@newsgator.com and put the position that you're interested in on the Subject line.Download newsgator_isr_position_spec.doc Download newsgator_csm_position_spec.doc

Check Out the New Features for NewsGator Online

As you know, we're always looking for new ideas or tools that will enhance usability for all of our products.  We're extremely fortunate in that we have a user base that is more than willing to engage in a dialogue with us about what they like or dislike, or additional features they'd like to have available.  Those of you who participate in our forums have been particularly generous in providing feedback on your experiences with our products and, believe me, we've been listening. 

So, as part of our ongoing commitment to innovation and the customer experience, we're excited to announce some new features for NewsGator Online.

• Folder drag and drop - you now have the ability to drag and drop items in the navigation pane.  This functionality includes folders and feeds, resembling how most email clients handle folders and messages.
• Folder management in the read view - right-click functionality has been added to folders allowing instant delete, rename, expand and collapse capabilities.
• Feed management in the read view - right-click functionality has been added to feeds giving options to unsubscribe, rename or visit the feed website.  Also, a new 'Edit' link in the feed banner allows renaming of feeds from the main viewing pane.
• Feed search enhancement - now, when you search for feeds on any topic, the most popular feeds (most subscribed) will display first.

This pretty much covers the big feature enhancements, but be sure to check out the forums for more details. 

This is just another group in a series of feature/functionality improvements that will be coming your way in the next few months, so keep it here.  And - since many of our best ideas come from you - don't be shy about sending us your feedback. 

FeedDemon 2.0 Pre-beta Reviews

As you may know, the highly anticipated FeedDemon 2.0 beta will be public very soon.  Nick posted a couple weeks ago about some of the new features users can expect to see in 2.0.  And, a few lucky alpha testers are starting to publish pre-beta reviews.  Here is an excerpt from Spyder:

"...the improvements in 2.0 are bordering on unbelievable, and for anyone who hasn’t tried the 1.6 beta this is going to feel almost like a new product."

Another alpha tester, Judy Sohn, posted these comments today:

"It took a little getting used to when I first started using FeedDemon 2.0, but after only 3 days I don’t think I can go back to 1.x. It’s a wonderful improvement. If you’re a cross platform user and you’re used to NetNewsWire, switching back and forth between FeedDemon and NetNewsWire won’t feel nearly as jarring as it used to."

Stay tuned for the public beta release - it's coming very soon...