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NewsGator Desktop Sync Beta (Windows RSS Platform / NewsGator Online Synchronization)

Back in March at MIX06, Greg Reinacker and Waltor VonKoch demonstrated and blogged about their demo of synchronizing the Windows RSS Platform with NewsGator Online.  Since then, IE 7 RC 1 was released with the finalized version of the Windows RSS Platform API and eventually the task of finishing and cleaning up our synchronization application and making it ready for the public fell to me...  and now it's ready for you!

NewsGator Desktop Sync Beta is the evolution of the MIX06 demo and offers full synchronization between the Windows RSS Platform and NewsGator Online.  Desktop Sync is a system tray application that keeps your feeds, folders and read states synchronized between NewsGator Online and the Windows RSS Platform.  This means that any application that uses the Windows RSS Platform will be automatically synchronized with your NewsGator Online account!

You can download NewsGator Desktop Sync Beta here:
http://www.newsgator.com/download/desktopsync/ngdesktopsyncsetup.exe

Keep in mind that this is a pre-release, which means it's not done yet! So please don't download it unless you're comfortable using incomplete software that still contains bugs. 

Requirements
Internet Explorer 7 RC1 or Windows Vista RC1 
Microsoft .Net Framework Version 2.0 

Any issues can be reported using the "Submit Support Request" option on the Help menu, or by posting to the Desktop Sync beta forum.

I'll post about some of the configuration settings later on, but for now go ahead and download the install and tell us what you think!

Posted by Nick Harris on September 18, 2006 at 04:06 PM | Permalink

Comments

I am very interested in the work put into this project! Does this suggest that newsgator believes in many cases that the IE7 system will be preferred over a newsgator client?

The sync tool installed without a hitch. I am not sure that I would want to see the sync window everytime the sync tool starts up although I like the option to hide when minimized.

Seeing the IE7 default feeds pop up while I was browsing my newsgator subscriptions online made me chuckle. The merge function obviously seems to function well.

To be honest, I had never tried to use IE7s feed reader before this. However, it is certainly easy enough. The sync tool has added all my feeds and has correctly identified where I had unread posts.

The tool seems to work well from here. Strong work!

Posted by: davak | Sep 19, 2006 12:06:20 PM

My god this is sweet...

Posted by: Mack D. Male | Sep 19, 2006 3:04:44 PM

I am trying this on Windows XP with IE7, and even though my feed list is the same in both (in other words, all my NewsGator feeds exist in both Outlook 2007 and IE7), the read/unread state appears to be completely separate for each. IE7 is synchronizing with NewsGator, but Outlook seems to be ignoring IE7 and NewsGator Desktop Sync.

Is this by design, or is there something funky going on with my setup?

Posted by: Jason | Sep 19, 2006 5:50:55 PM

Nice work! This rocks on Vista

Posted by: Sam Gentile | Sep 19, 2006 7:19:13 PM

Jason -

I'm guessing you're the one who also posted to the forum about this. Check out my comments there:

https://www.newsgator.com/FORUM/Topic21035-41-1.aspx

Posted by: Nick Harris | Sep 19, 2006 8:54:17 PM

davek - I can't speak for all of NewsGator but I personally believe that the power of Desktop Sync isn't the ability to use IE7 as a reader, but more to all the future applications that people will develope that use the Common Feed Store.

Posted by: Nick Harris | Sep 19, 2006 8:57:00 PM

This is excellent-- thank you!

To me, this doubles the value of my Newsgator subscription: my PC, my Outlook, and my mobile device are all in sync. Beautiful!

Posted by: Joseph R. Jones | Sep 20, 2006 11:03:31 AM

Nice tool, very nice. Specially when one uses Newgator Mobile too. Question though: it is correct it is one way sync? Since when reading in Newsgator Online or Newsgator Mobile, the read articles do not show as read in IE7.

Posted by: Robbert | Sep 21, 2006 12:45:20 AM

Robert -
When a post is marked as read in IE7, that read state is sent right away to NewsGator Online. But if you mark a post as read in NewsGator Online, it will not be marked read in IE7 until the next time Desktop Sync does it's synchronization with NewsGator Online.

In the configuration you can set how often this happens.

If it doesn't seem to be working, drop a note in the forum or send an email to beta@newsgator.com

Posted by: Nick Harris | Sep 21, 2006 10:24:11 AM

Excellent news, really liked the "merge" function - it worked a treat - well done!

Posted by: Clive | Sep 22, 2006 3:28:16 AM

Thanks Nick for your reply. Makes sense, could have thought of it myself :-/ Nice program, already don't want to do without it.

Posted by: Robbert | Sep 22, 2006 10:55:19 AM

I clicked on the link above and got an error that says Internet Explorer can not display web page. Did I do something incorrect or is the link broken.

Posted by: Curtis Steinhour | Sep 22, 2006 1:32:50 PM

Curtis -
Pretty sure your the same Curtis that posted to the forum, so you can look there for a response to your issue (I moved it from the online forum to the Desktop Sync Beta one): https://www.newsgator.com/FORUM/Topic21187-41-1.aspx

BTW - which link was broken?

Posted by: Nick Harris | Sep 22, 2006 8:06:07 PM

I really liked the integration of RSS feeds in IE7. I recently downloade IE7 RC1 and with Office Outlook 2007 (Beta) imported the RSS.OPML subscriptions into the combined view mentioned in the article.

Not all of the RSS feeds are updating properly. The Outlook view appears to be updating all of the subscribed feeds at a timed interval but items that were previously marked as read are reimported as new again. In some cases I have received 7 or 8 copies of the same article, and are continuing to update and be added. Is this a known "bug"?

Thanks. Keep up the great work with the RSS integration.

Posted by: Charlie Brinkman | Sep 23, 2006 12:26:54 PM

I wish I could appreciate Newsgator's sync tool, but apparently it's incapable of supporting the folder structure I've setup for my feeds. I'm not sure if it was the shutdown of the tool, or the upgrade to a later beta of IE7, but the next sync with Newsgator removed all of the feeds from their folders, and placed them back at the root. Since I chose "combine", I would think the sync tool would ask me if I wanted to keep the feeds in their existing folders. Since Newsgator Online has no ability to create folders, I'm assuming this is a conflict between the capabilities of IE7 and the reduced features of Newsgator Online.

Posted by: Cornelius | Sep 24, 2006 5:00:51 PM

Looks nice but doesn't support my corporate proxy. I am still guessing why on earth there is no System variable one can set in Vista for proxy servers and their authentications. Any workaround?

Posted by: Hendrik | Sep 25, 2006 3:01:14 AM

Charlie - I haven't seen that, but it sounds like an issue with Outlook that should be reported to Microsoft.

Hendrik - The proxy support has been logged as a bug and will be fixed in the next release.

Cornelius - NewsGator Online does support folders. You can use this page http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/WebFolderMaint.aspx to organize your folders. Once folders are created, the web interface allows you to drag and drop feeds from one folder to another.
It sounds like you encountered a bug though, so if you could leave a note about what happened in the forum, I'll take a look at it.

Posted by: Nick Harris | Sep 25, 2006 8:20:35 AM

I have the same issue:

I am trying this on Windows XP with IE7, and even though my feed list is the same in both (in other words, all my NewsGator feeds exist in both Outlook 2007 and IE7), the read/unread state appears to be completely separate for each. IE7 is synchronizing with NewsGator, but Outlook seems to be ignoring IE7 and NewsGator Desktop Sync.

Is this by design, or is there something funky going on with my setup?

Posted by: Jason | Sep 19, 2006 5:50:55 PM

Posted by: Ken Mages | Sep 26, 2006 12:08:12 PM

Ken -

This was brought up in the forums: http://www.newsgator.com/FORUM/Topic21035-41-1.aspx

That should explain what you're seeing (it's an issue with Outlook 2007).

Posted by: Nick Harris | Sep 26, 2006 2:33:32 PM

Every time I start my PC, the initial setup screen keeps appearing, where I have to enter my login details and update options (i.e. it isn't saving the details) - Is anybody else getting this?

Posted by: luvbug2002 | Oct 2, 2006 6:44:58 PM

luvbug2002 - can you open a thread on the forum about this?

Posted by: Nick Harris | Oct 3, 2006 2:49:09 PM

I keep getting the error message 1721 and that there is a fatal error. I also can't delet from my computer using add/remove programs or anything else. I just get the same error message. Please help resolve this issue.

Thanks, brandon
bzappin@woh.rr.com

Posted by: brandon zappin | Nov 11, 2006 12:49:30 PM

I keep getting the error message 1721 and that there is a fatal error. I also can't delet from my computer using add/remove programs or anything else. I just get the same error message. Please help resolve this issue.

Thanks, brandon
bzappin@woh.rr.com

Posted by: brandon zappin | Nov 11, 2006 12:50:31 PM

I am trying to download Second Life ( a 3D virtual world) onto my computer.But everytime I go to their website and click on Join or download,a page pops up telling me that web page can not be displayed.What's going on and how can I fix it?

Posted by: Maria | Nov 19, 2006 3:52:20 PM

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