Webware

FeedDemon 3 will synchronize your feeds with Google Reader.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

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 I wanted to get my podcasts out of my music jukebox, but I've always regretted losing the convenience of having my e-mail and my RSS reader online and smoothly talking to one another. Google Reader integration means that users will have more flexibility in how they use the program and should broaden its appeal. Beta 5 synchronizes Google Reader and FeedDemon tags as well as the feeds themselves.

FeedDemon 3 comes with a slight interface refresh, too, although it's mostly done in service to the new features. The aforementioned tagging is new, bringing a bit of modern convenience to those who use keywords. Sharing has been made easier with a new Share icon, and shortened URLs such as bit.ly or TinyURL support mouse-over tooltips now.

This is becoming a must-have security feature as phishing attacks adapt to more pernicious methods, and works well in FeedDemon 3's stronger support for Twitter. Author names, replies, and hashtags are automatically linked, and profile pictures also appear. Fun stats such as how many unread items and how many flagged items you've got are surfaced, too.

If you do decide to try out the FeedDemon beta, back up the current version first. Go to File, Manage Cache, Backup, and create a back up folder to deposit the backups in. Full release notes for v3.0.0.20 beta 5a can be read here.

Postbox beta 12 for Windows and Mac updates the well-received remix of Mozilla's Thunderbird. New features include search suggestions when you're typing and smoother integration of folder search with global search. Switching between the two is now marginally simpler. The inspector pane on the right side of a message has been tweaked, as well. Sender details, image thumbnails and dimensions, and the revamped search options for messages, images, links, and attachments have been rolled into the pane.

Mac users should find better support for native Mac address books and Growl notifications. Firefox 3.0.10 bug-fixes have also been integrated into this version of Postbox.

Postbox beta 12 is a small update overall, but because of the bug- and security-fixes that have been implemented I'd strongly recommend upgrading. Full release notes are here.

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 content can be delivered via Web pages, widgets or through e-mail newsletters. For example, OneSpot can supply a retailer with relevant content links for a newsletter to customers.

An optional edit interface allows editors to curate the content, blocking or approving different feeds and pieces of content.

In addition, OneSpot offers its customers Digg-style ratings and discussion pages. Fees are based on the number of topics, page views, or e-mails, Cohen said.

OneSpot currently has less than 20 customers. For example,TheRoot, a Washington Post site for African-Americans, uses OneSpot to fill out the site with a relevant content feed.

TheRoot pulls stories from around 9,000 feeds crawled by OneSpot to surface on its news page. Every story has its own detail page and a permanent URL optimized for search engines.

OneSpot has many competitors that offer some form of contextual content aggregation. They include memetrackers, such Techmeme, Reddit, and Blogrunner; keyword-oriented and linguistic analysis-based services that provide related content such as Sphere, Inform, and Smartbrief; and feed aggregators such as NewsGator and Netvibes.

Cohen believes that the link structure approach, similar to what Google does for search, to selecting sources and content provides the best results. But the choice of content aggregation service will depend on what a publisher wants to accomplish. Other services could be better at finding timely content related to a particular article, rather than for a topic area. OneSpot is currently angel funded, and plans to raise an A series round this summer, Cohen said.

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.

NewsGator's new Recommended Stories filter introduces users to stories and feeds they aren't already subscribed to, but might like.

(Credit: NewsGator)

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 vice president of products, compared the process to more common Web-based ratings systems. "It takes attention from the client or online site, just like your rating on Amazon, but you're rating it with attention." That attention, he said, comes from marking a post as read--essentially telling the filter that you like it. If enough people do that and the post matches your interest, it might be suggested to you as news you'd like but haven't seen yet.

Kellner said that NewsGator will be making two kinds of recommendations. The first, a general news category, is "wide-open," as he puts it, but limited to posts from the past two days. The second is narrowed down to categories, such as entertainment or sports, and more heavily utilizes the SenseArray filters. These more specific recommendations are limited to not more than a week old, and should be adjustable to the tastes of the user.

The challenge, Kellner added, was how to recommend current stories that users aren't already getting. "We pull in six million events per week that we think are relevant." But the system won't be perfect initially. "Over time, we'll see what adjustments we need to make."

NewsGator does have plans to push the recommendations feature out to its desktop clients, but there isn't a timeline for that, yet.

Checking Web sites by typing in the URL feels like firing up a rickety 56k baud modem and logging on to CompuServe. It gets the job done, but really should only be used under extreme duress or nostalgia. Syndicated feeds bring the Web site to you, and when NewsGator made all its RSS clients free on Wednesday, they suddenly made a top-notch suite with tools for Windows, Mac, mobile, the Web, a podcast manager, and a Microsoft Outlook extension incredibly appealing. And by appealing, I mean you might not be able to imagine feeds the same way afterwards. It's that good.

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NewsGator is making its latest consumer news readers available for free.

The updated products are FeedDemon 2.6, NetNewsWire 3.1 for the Mac, NewsGator InBox 3.0 beta, NewsGator Online, and NewsGator Go for mobile gadgets. Premium subscriptions formerly cost $19.95 or $29.95 per product.

The tools synchronize content fed to the Web, as well as to desktop and handheld devices including the iPhone, BlackBerrys, and those running Windows Mobile.

Each account will include features that were formerly offered only in premium editions. Users who have paid for NewsGator products on or after December 9 can request a refund.

NewsGator aims for the move to help it better aggregate data about user behavior anonymously, precisely tracking the popularity of feeds and articles. Users who don't want their reading preferences tracked can opt out but may lose some synchronization features.

The company will cease its e-mail tech support, leaning instead on Web-based forums.

Over the past few years, I've tested various NewsGator offerings and found FeedDemon excellent for newshounds who manage thousands of feeds. However, after a while, NewsGator InBox, which I packed with nearly as many news feeds, tended to slow down Outlook.

The Denver-based NewsGator has raised some $30 million in outside funding, most recently with a fifth round of $12 million last month led by Vista Ventures. NewsGator has faced an uptick in competition from free news reader services such as the Web-based Google Reader.

Many bloggers put a "blogroll," a list of other blogs they like, on the sidebars of their pages. Blogrolls help the bloggers who create them feel like they're in a club with writers they like. Reciprocal blogrolling makes everyone feel all warm and fuzzy. But blogrolls aren't very functional, since static lists of links quickly become invisible to readers.

Lists of dynamic content are different. That's why Webware recently launched a news ticker (see the right-hand sidebar). It pulls related--even competitive--content from blogs we respect. We think it's useful, and we also think all site publishers, from retailers to highly focused bloggers, would do readers a service by offering something similar.

We use a Newsgator product, customized for CNET, to do this, but it's not the only solution. I also tried out two other services that anyone can plug into their sites: MineKey and RollSense. These services select content that's automatically custom-tailored to each site visitor. Google Reader and RSSMixer (review) are other options, without the fancy automatic story selection.

Minekey's auto-populated item list. Scroll down for the live version.

Both MineKey and RollSense let you feed in a list of blogs you like or respect, and then they create embeddable widgets that display items from those blogs that they think your readers will like. Based on what individuals click on, the list is further refined over time.

Of the two products, MineKey is simpler and easier to set up, and by default it makes more attractive widgets. If a user logs in, it will also give the person a history of what they've clicked on, which is useful. MineKey gives publishers detailed reports on what users are clicking on.

RollSense offers publishers more capabilities, including the option to turn off the personalization feature, which you may want to do if you your goal is just to keep readers up to date on the latest stories from your blogroll. You can then filter stories by keywords. RollSense also offers "packs," or pre-built blog collections, on specific topics. Like MineKey, it also creates reports, but they're not as useful.

How do they perform? Both need time to zero in on user preferences before they begin to deliver their best recommendations, but my quick testing shows that MineKey is better at automatically selecting content, although it doesn't seem to give enough weight to new items. But RollSense offers the control freak more influence over what is displayed. See for yourself. I've embedded both widgets in this blog (you may have to skip to the next page, depending on where you're seeing this), and fed them both three feeds: Webware, Crave, and News.com.

As I said, Google Reader and RSS Mixer are also options, although they don't have the automatic content selection of MineKey and RollSense. On Google, if you "share" posts from your feeds, you can display that list as a widget on any other site. Go to the "Your shared items" page to get the code. Google Reader doesn't automatically populate the widget; you have to manually select items to share them. But doing so is wicked fast, so if you want to maintain ultimate control over your news ticker, Google's the way to go. For just a river of items from feeds you select, see our writeup on RSSMixer.

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