A Feed Is Born

July 11th, 2008

NetNewsWire now available for IPhone and IPods

NewsGator has released a free application for the IPhone and IPod. The application is based on the popular and critically-acclaimed Mac RSS feed reader NetNewsWire. And iPhone NetNewsWire can sync with several suite of RSS readers from NewsGator - including NewsGator Online, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire for Macintosh, and Inbox.

According to the press release, the iPhone’s RSS Reader is easy to use.

The application is extremely easy-to-use and features a simple, clear user interface that complements the iPhone and iPod touch experience. NetNewsWire for iPhone makes it easy for users to cycle through all their news by using the “Next Unread” button, which goes from story to story with a quick tap of a single button. Users can also save items to read or blog about later via clipping, and saved items also sync with the desktop and browser-based RSS readers.[Source]

Apparently the application was developed to be in sync with the iPhone’s intuitive sense of use experience. NetNewsWire Creator and Developer Brent Simmons implied as much and said that the “popularity of the iPhone and iPod touch makes it the perfect platform to create an outstanding mobile application that can become a part of people’s everyday experience. [Source]”

NetNewsWire for iPhone is free and available at Apple’s App Store (on iPhone and iPod touch) and here.

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July 9th, 2008

How does Regator do it?

In terms of getting blogs with quality content? In fact how does any RSS aggregator do it. One can explain the latest feature that is empowered with the snazziest software application or GUI, Or how the confluence of the number of text in the first two or three paragraphs would determine the importance and even the tag of a post. But how do you select?

This has been one of the most intriguing questions that can be asked when the term quality comes in. And quality at the end of the day is decided not by a software application or even solely by the number of words an article has but by a human. A mortal such as us decide what goes in and out.

And this is reassuring but it does come with caveats or warning. And prime caveats to this is that the person deciding what goes in and out (even initially) is qualified. And if you are familiar with the old print encyclopedias this is the reason why they place the name of the editors and writers inside each volume. To reassure the reader that this is quality work. Or if you are going to buy a book it details the qualification of the author.

With Regator it is glad to know that they have given the identity and qualification of Regator’s Editorial Director - Kimberly Turner.

What are her qualifications?

1. Kimberly Turner has an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of New South Wales.

2. Turner has edited and/or written for a number of Australian magazines, including ADB, Roost, Massive, and Outdoor.

3. Kimberly is at present a senior staff writer for Atlanta magazine .

She seems highly qualified to lead the selection of blogs for Regator.

Dont you wish other aggregators would be as forthright as this?

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July 7th, 2008

Is Filtrbox worth the price?

Tired of information overload or tired swimming the river of information? Need professional help?

Here is one way of trimming information overload. Use
Filtrbox a business that will filter the river of information for you.

Filtrbox allows the customer to do the following:

1. Add Keyword or Google Alerts to the search. So that you can filter out the noise.

2. Collaborate, share, and give feedback to get the specific results desired.

3. Create custom RSS feeds using contents found

4. Cull feeds that you barely read

How does it work? According to FiltrBox:

Filtrbox is based on intelligent persistent search technology. This means the system searches, and re-searches its sources around the clock looking for new articles that contain the search terms you have entered. What we do once we find a potential new article is the “intelligent” bit.[Source]

Is it worth it?

It might be. However, It is not free. So it might be worthwhile to test it. There is trial version of the service that is worth looking at. Lets try it and see if it is worth the price.

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July 7th, 2008

OblinQ’s Do-It-Yourself Widget

Here is one way of creating a widget like NewsGator. OblinQ offers this service/on-line app that creates RSS widget for display.

Widgets are the new ways of displaying RSS feeds. These can be used several ways:

1. Display your feeds.
2. Display your other feeds
3. Display feeds that are related to your blog/website

At present it seems to accept only on feed. I could be wrong. But it seems better if it could accept more than one feed.

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July 6th, 2008

IM Feeds a useful tool

In my opinion. Although still in beta the service IM Feeds is potentially a useful RSS tool. Why is this? Well … first things first lets introduce IM Feeds. It is a free online service that sends RSS updates to the punter via Instant Messenger/Messaging (IM).

Of course one can also visit their website to read the feeds but this feature seems to distract it from its main service. It delivers updates via IM and that is important. And this can be particularly useful for managing feeds.

Why?

No need to go back and forth to the feed reader to check if a particular feed has a new post.

In my opinion, this would be useful in checking those high priority RSS feeds and not the whole kaboodle, if you get my drift. Unless of course the number of RSS feeds you subscribe to is just below the voting age: If you do not have much RSS feeds then you can also use it for such things.

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July 5th, 2008

Netvibes now has search … Google search

Do you want another reason for using Netvibes? Could Google search be one of them. If it is then its your lucky day because it just happened. Came across this bit of news as I was reading the feeds and saw the post from Readburner. What does this mean?

Netvibes citizens can now do Google Search with the NetVibes Universe. This makes life simpler. And I guess in the growing world of information and information pollution this is a welcome development.

Read the Netvibes post about the integration of search into Netvibes here, Netvibes now fully integrated with Google Search.

It seems that all things lead to a simple and no fuss solutions. This is really making RSS very simple. And its all good.

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July 5th, 2008

NewsGator’s Editors Desk 2.1

A few days before NewsGator inked a partnership with the Japanese company DAC. It, NewsGator released its latest version of its widget platform, Editor’s Desk 2.1 [Source].

Features improved include:

1. A redesigned user interface.
2. It has New templates.
3. A more simpler and streamlined procedures for creating widgets.

NewsGators widget allows businesses - in particular brand and media companies - to build, deploy, and track widgets.

NewsGators widgets platform enable business and on-line publishers to engage its readers by using social media and newsGators Web 2.0 syndication productst:

1. RSS Readers
2. Widget Framework
3. Community Publisher
4. Widget Ads

Even without the widget ads and speaking as a blogger. These widgets does seem to offer the tools one needs to better the reading experience of ones visitors to the blog.

More information about NewsGator Widgets can be seen here.

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July 5th, 2008

Regator Cometh!

Are you one of the fortunate 100s who tried Regator’s services? Lucky … because you can test it and tell Johnny Q Public how it actually performs. Regator is a blog feed aggregator that claim to provide a different and more quality read experience. [Soure]

While a lot of aggregators out there hype their focus on number of feeds from blogs and other websites. Regator seems to have taken a different tack by doing a few things different:

1. Focusing mostly on blogs.
2. Selecting the blogs that will be included in the aggregator
3. Setting-up an easy interface for the punters.

What does this mean respectively? Regaor is -

1. Blog focused ( A plus and a minus)
2. Selecting ( More or less a plus)
3. Easy to use interface (Definetly a plus)

Being blog focused is both a positive and negative feature. One , because for the average blog reader it is blessing - no more information overload. Two, for readers who are looking for more feeds from other sources this might be a tur-off. This does seem unique in a growing world were every type and source of information becomes part of an RSS feed.

And it does position itself as a blog feed reader.

Selection is plus because it assures the readers that what they get are posts from reliable and hopefully credible sources. The success of this depends upon the way the selection is done and more importantly how it, the process of selection, is presented to the punter.

An easy interface is always a plus because it makes Really Simple Syndication simple. Ideally one should start and get reading yout feed faster than saying easy peasy. Lets hope Regator does this.

I have not tested Regator but it does loook promising.

Any of you lucky ones care to comment about Regator?

Check out Regator’s blog here. What would a blog aggregator be without its own blog.

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June 30th, 2008

An updated Sage for an updated Firefox

Sean P. Aune at Mashable wrote this post, 30+ Must-Have Updated Firefox 3 Extensions, and as the title aid gave the top or more accurately must-have extensions for Firefox 3. For A Feed Is Born one of the more interesting extensions that came with FF3 is the application called is Sage.

And Sage is an integrated RSS Reader that comes with Firefox. The arrival of FireFox 3 also brought with a new and improve Sage 1.9.2.1.

For those familiar with Sage the improvements and tweaks in this version will be familiar:

1. Jeff T’s enclosure handling code was included.
2. Jeff T’s fix for Check Feeds redirects was included.
3. The separator problem reported by alcyone was fixed.
4. I removed an obsolete file from the XPI. I forgot to delete it in 1.9.1
5. I set the version number correctly in the code.
6. And I made sure that the Sage.jar thing won’t happen again.
[Source]

Further updates about Sage can be found here at the Sage-Too Blog

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June 28th, 2008

Newsgator and Dac sign deal to use widgets

Newsgator just inked a deal with Digital Advertising Consortium (DAC) that gives exclusive rights to DAC to NewsGator Widget Services to Japanese media companies and brands. This will allow DAC to market NewsGator Widgets for content syndication. [Source.]

What does NewsGator Widget Services do?

And why is there interest in it?

NewsGator Widget Services creates widgets that send content to the following:

1. Web sites

2. Blogs

3. Social networks

4. Start pages

And according to NewsGator it can create additional advertising revenue and reach new audiences from using widgets. From the looks of it one thing is sure such widgets make things easy and entertaining for the punter , us , to subscribe.

Well this is another way to get over the RSS apprehension while using it (RSS) to power syndication of posts.

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