Newsgator

Newsgator pushes its popular RSS reader FeedDemon into release candidate status, introducing some new features and fixing bugs from the previous beta version.

The big news for FeedDemon 3 came with the fourth beta, which introduced Google Reader synchronization. That feature did not come without bugs, and continued to be refined through the beta development. Several fixes in the release candidate fix Google Reader synchronization bugs, including properly marking starred items as flagged in FeedDemon, syncing tags, and marking feeds disabled. Another big repair to FeedDemon's Google Reader behavior fixes an error that prevented users who had nonalphanumeric characters … Read more

RSS aggregator FeedDemon and e-mail client Postbox both have released recent updates to their not-quite-ready for prime-time programs.

FeedDemon 3.0.0.20 beta 5a continues to build out the feature set of the popular RSS and Atom feed manager. FeedDemon 3 is shaping up to be a must-grab improvement on the last stable release, version 2.7.

FeedDemon 3 is able to synchronize feeds not only with FeedDemon's own Web site, NewsGator, for online news reading, but it can also talk to Google Reader. I jumped away from Google Reader because at the time it was sluggish and … Read more

Already a well-liked RSS readers for Windows and Macs, NetNewsWire for iPhone is the native companion to an already-brawny Web service. True to its word, the app collects NetNewsReader for iPhone and is a repository for feeds you already subscribe to using one of NewsGator's services. You won't be able to add new feeds from the application interface at this early stage, but you will be able to open an account from the app. The time-strapped can also save posts in a clippings folder for later perusal, and read them in full on Safari.

If you don't have content to populate your site, OneSpot has some for you. The Austin-based start-up joins a host of other companies in the business of delivering contextual links for publishers. OneSpot CEO Matt Cohen makes the claim that OneSpot "democratizes vertical or affinity publishing, helping anyone find, select, and deliver links to the best content on the Web."

OneSpot sifts through more than 200,000 RSS feeds to make content selections. Users provide the system with a set of sample sites, and OneSpot identifies related feeds, looking at link overlaps, Cohen told me. The selected … Read more

These well-crafted, standalone newsreaders makes an ideal choice for both novices who've never heard of an RSS feed and advanced users looking to put some oomph and flexibility into their reading habits. As the desktop clients for the online NewsGator, FeedDemon for Windows and NetNewsWire for Macs both can synchronize bi-directionally with their Web-based counterpart, making it easy to get your feeds wherever and whenever you need them.

Other useful features include a built-in Web browser that's built on Internet Explorer--sorry Firefox and Opera fans, tabbed browsing for when you need to open multiple feeds' Web pages, Watch … Read more

NewsGator converted its popular RSS feed aggregation clients to freeware in January 2008, and now that seed has borne fruit: recommended fruit, to be precise.

Partnering with SenseArray, a collaborative filter from Uprizer Labs, NewsGator now offers live RSS feed recommendations from feeds that the user hasn't already subscribed to. Currently available only on the online NewsGator client, the filter pulls information from NewsGator as well as its sibling desktop clients, FeedDemon for Windows and NetNewsWire for the Mac so that users who synchronize their RSS data will be contributing to the list of recommendations.

Brian Kellner, NewsGator's … Read more

Newsgator's FeedDemon, the formerly pay-for-play, now freeware, RSS feed catcher upgrades to Version 2.7 with one useful new tool and a flowering bunch of bug-fixes. The Mac version, NetNewsWire, has also been updated.

FeedDemon now lets users subscribe to multiple feeds at the same time, under the tool name Find Feeds. For longtime FeedDemon users, there are a stack of improvements that should be instantly noticeable to users who've raged against the occasional "flagged" feed drop and other problems synchronizing multiple configurations across several PCs and operating systems.

FeedDemon's biggest claim to fame in … Read more

Hunting down dastardly captcha hackers and spyware slimeballs is busy work, even for a man as talented as Power Downloader. Power doesn't have a lot of free time, so it's hard to remember to check all the Web sites that are important to him. His solution: instead of surfing a list of bookmarks, Power Downloader uses RSS feeds and FeedDemon to make the news and podcasts come to him.

FeedDemon is one of the best programs for managing your RSS collection. The interface is slick and easy to personalize, which is important since Power wasn't too impressed … Read more

The newly free NewsGator suite has a remarkably powerful set of tools for managing RSS feeds, and without a doubt one of the program's best features is its FeedStation podcast catcher. Fully synchronizable with the Webware version of NewsGator, the Windows version, FeedDemon, comes bundled with FeedStation and preset integration settings for iTunes and Windows Media Player, but not WinAmp.

Laugh all you want at the llama, but the latest WinAmp has an impressive feature set, and is far more flexible than the industry favorite iTunes. However, its podcast manager is clunky and only marginally better than iTunes' native podcatcher, and that's frustrating. Using WinAmp's smart view function, I'll show you how to set its Podcast folder to automatically check for podcasts managed by third-party software.

… Read more