The story of how NewsGator attempted to corner the market on consumer RSS has taken another strange turn. In an interview with Steven Hodson published on Hodson's Shooting at Bubbles site, Bradbury admits that he is no longer employed by NewsGator, but has retained the full rights to his popular FeedDemon RSS reader. NewsGator continues to offer FeedDemon, and the application is still NewsGator-branded, but the clear implication here is that NewsGator no longer owns the rights to the most popular native Windows RSS feed reader.

It's no secret that NewsGator almost single-minded focus on capturing the lucrative enterprise market allowed its efforts in the consumer space to falter, ultimately leading to NewsGator shutting down their once-popular NewsGator Online feed reader, having conceded the online feed reader battle to Google's upstart Google Reader, which has iterated faster, and performing better than NewsGator's online reader for a few years.

It's unfortunate that NewsGator has given up on this market. While it's certainly true that Google has a powerful and successful product on its hands, there is certainly room in the RSS space for more than one dedicated company. What this means for FeedDemon's Mac equivalent, NetNewsWire remains to be seen, but since NewsGator's current push for more enterprise business relies on the talents of Brent Simmons, NetNewsWire will likely remain a NewsGator property for the foreseeable future.

Whether that is good news or not is anyone's guess.

UPDATE: The previous headline of this post turned out to be incorrect, as Nick Bradbury points out in the comments. The relationship between FeedDemon, NewsGator and Bradbury is a bit confusing, but what he said in the interview was this: "I'm no longer employed by NewsGator. FeedDemon remains a NewsGator-branded product, but I'm 100% in charge of it now, and I'm once again an indie developer. FeedDemon is my sole focus – and my sole source of income." So, NewsGator owns FeedDemon, Bradbury works on FeedDemon, but Bradbury does not work FOR NewsGator any longer.

Bradbury also pointed us to a post by NewsGator's Greg Reinacker, explaining more about where things stand.

NetNewsWire, the Mac OS X RSS client from Newsgator, has reached version 3.2, bringing out of Beta the application's Google Reader support.

Formerly used to connect to Newsgator's own servers, NetNewsWire entered a period of rapid change on 30th July, when it was announced on Newsgator's blog that the consumer back end service was to be discontinued on August 31st 2009.

Although NetNewsWire has always been a great application, I think many users, like me, were torn between the excellent online service that Google Reader offered and the leading desktop client experience provided by NetNewsWire. Thankfully the shift by Newsgator to the Google Reader back-end made this problem go away. Hurrah!

As well as Google Reader compatibility, Instapaper posting, the ability to subscribe to authenticated feeds, improved Snow Leopard compatibility and a host of tweaks and fixes, the new release makes another significant change - the move to an ad supported model. Previously NetNewsWire was completely free, however there is now a small advertisement in the bottom left corner that can be removed by registering for the very reasonable price of $9.95.

Newsgator's Windows client FeedDemon has also undergone the same changes (and shares the same pricing model), as we covered earlier today.

It was a pretty big deal in the RSS world when NewsGator, the company behind two of the most popular desktop feed readers, decided to drop its web app and syncing services and sync with Google Reader instead. NewsGator's web version was scheduled to go dark August 31st, but fans of the service are getting a short reprieve.

The web reader will now shut down September 10th, instead. Why? Well, the new Google-friendly versions of NetNewsWire (Mac and iPhone) and FeedDemon (Windows) aren't quite ready for release yet.

While September 10 is the target date, NewsGator promised in an email not to turn off its web services until the desktop apps are ready. This gives NewsGator web users a little more time to run through the (pretty simple) transition instructions and get a Google Reader account set up. Make sure you don't waste that extra time and miss the opportunity to migrate your account and shared clippings to Google.

A few days ago we let you know that NewsGator was planning to shut down its once-popular web-based RSS reader. But it looks like the NewsGator web client isn't the only product on the chopping block. The company is also killing off NewsGator Go! and NewsGator Inbox.

NewsGator Inbox is an application that works with Microsoft Outlook to let you read and manage your feeds from the email client. NewGator Go! is a mobile application for BlakBerry and Windows Mobile phones and PDAs, as well as other Java-enabled smartphones.

NewsGator will be launching a new iPhone app soon, but for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry users, the company has this bit of advice: Find a new application that syncs with Google Reader. The company's existing products like the FeedDemon and NetNewsWire desktop RSS readers will be able to synchronize your feeds and read/unread items with Google Reader. It looks like the company decided to retired Inbox and Go! rather than build the same functionality into those apps.

How do you get your news on the go? Do you use a mobile RSS reader for BlackBerry or Windows Mobile? Or do you just use the mobile web interface for Google Reader? Let us know in the comments.

[via The::Unwired]

It's sad to see NewsGator go, especially if you hate using Google Reader. On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious that Google Reader's userbase is huge, and this move gives NetNewsWire and FeedDemon a chance to pick up some of those users for themselves. Personally, I never used Google Reader because I couldn't sync NetNewsWire with it, and, and if I'm not alone, Google might get a few new users out of the deal, too.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

FeedDemon has been the best RSS news reading application on the Windows platform for a long time. The folks at NewsGator certainly thought so, and instead of building their own standalone news aggregator for Windows, they bought FeedDemon. The best news is that though FeedDemon was at one time a commercial product (and worth every penny), it's now available for free.

Even when it was a standalone application FeedDemon got news reading right. The user interface is easy to interact with, and the application is solid. But now that it is a client for NewsGator's web application, it has gained another whole level of usefulness. FeedDemon synchronizes with your NewsGator account giving you the ability to keep your feeds in sync between it, your NewsGator web account, and any other clients you choose to use from NewsGator, including ones for most mobile phones, and even Macs.

At first glance, the latest version of RSS Bandit looks just like pretty much every other desktop RSS reader for Windows. In other words, it looks like Outlook. But this week saw the released of RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha with one killer new feature: support for synchronization with your Google Reader or NewsGator feeds.

Here's how it works. You download and install the open source application, and then click the File menu and select Synchronize Feeds. Pick your service and enter your login information and RSS Bandit will import your feed list in a matter of seconds. Any actions you take using the desktop reader should then be reflected at your online feed reader. You can mark items as reader, unread, or shared. And you can subscribe to feeds or remove feeds using RSS Bandit and the changes should apply to your online account.

At least that's the theory. In practice, we're still waiting for our changes to show up in Google Reader. We read a few items, unsubscribed from a feed, and over an hour later Google Reader is showing no sign that it's noticed. This is still Alpha software, so it's possible speedier updates could come at a later date.

RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha also adds a new podcast download manager.

[via Digital Inspiration]

NewsGator, the company behind award-winning RSS readers FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Go!, has just released an update to its widget platform, in the form of Editor's Desk 2.1.

Editor's Desk is a web-based tool for creating widgets that can display dynamic content (using RSS) that can then be embedded into your website, Facebook page (as an app), Blogger, TypePad, NetVibes, iGoogle,Pageflakes, Live.com and Live Spaces.

Version 2.1 boasts an improved interface that is not only better looking, but easier to use. Version 2.1 has also added two new widget templates, a search tool (for premium subscribers), the ability to clone widgets and a way to monitor the feeds within your widgets for problems.

We played around with the new version of Editor's Desk and were impressed with how easy the whole creation process really was. To create a widget, you can either add your own RSS feeds or choose a collection of feeds from categories provided by NewsGator. The free version of the service only provides minimal customization options for your widgets, you can select from a set a templates and then modify some of the colors, but if you pay for the premium version of the service, you can customize the CSS and HTML of the widgets. Some companies like USA Today and The Discovery Channel have already done that with spectacular results.

How many of you subscribe to an RSS feed because you liked one post you read? Raise your hands please. No, seriously, raise your hands please. Now how many of you stay subscribed to that feed because you're either too lazy to unsubscribe, don't know how to unsubscribe, or don't want to hurt the bloggers' feelings by unsubscribing? Us too.

NewsGator is coming to our rescue!

Starting today, NewsGator, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon will start recommending stories and feeds for you to read and subscribe to.

Using some Harry Potter magic sauce from a company called SenseArray, NewsGator will start showing you suggestions based on things that other people think are interesting. Hooray!

What's the catch? Well, to make this technology smarter, you'll have to interact with your feeds a little. That's OK. We know that the earth isn't run by Terminators machines...yet. Right now, SenseArray's technology uses forward and share numbers, as well as tags and comment data to calculate what might interest you. You'll be able to thumbs up and thumbs down stories to customize the experience though, so no worries. Rage against the machine, y'all!

Soon, NewsGator hopes to accurately predict your tastes, even before you know what your tastes are.

It looks like the company is also hoping to help us deal with our severe information overload (the 3% of us junkies) by letting us unsubscribe to those dormant feeds that we don't like anymore and keep us up to date with the Right Stuff. The stuff we'll actually, you know...read?

Oh, and no worries, it's not just for the geeks. Their new recommendation service will cover Top News, Entertainment, Sports, Fun Stuff, Science and Technology. While we're not sure what "Fun Stuff" actually is, we'll wait for T2 to suggest something.

Oh and please feel free to subscribe to the Downloadsquad feed. We're humans.

NewsGator has released an updated version of FeedDemon, the company's desktop RSS reader for Windows. FeedDemon 2.7 features a ton of bug fixes, a handful of new features, and best of all, it's still free. NewsGator used to charge for its desktop reader, but starting with FeedDemon 2.6 and NetNewsWire 3.1 for Mac the company started offering desktop clients for free.

Here are just a few of the changes in FeedDemon 2.7:

• Quicker navigation of the subscription tree
• Subscribe to multiple feeds at once from the "find feeds" menu
• Copy a multi-line URL into the address bar and it will be shortened to one line
• Support for multiple enclosures in a single post

Note that the FeedDemon home page still says the latest version is 2.6. But if you click the download link you should get FeedDemon 2.7.

[via Digital Inspiration]

NewsGator and AideRSS have partnered to add PostRank features to NewsGator's online RSS feed reader. PostRank is basically determined by looking at each item in a feed and determining its popularity based on factors such as how many comments it has received, how many other sites link to that post, how many times it has been saved to del.icio.us, or voted up on Digg. Each article is then assigned a rank between 1 and 10.

NewsGator users can now choose to sort their feeds according to PostRank, which will display the most popular items first, followed by less popular items. Of course, the system doesn't work very well if you're primarily interested in breaking news, as it takes time for an article to become popular. But if you just want to read the top news and skip the rest, PostRank can save you a lot of time.

AideRSS maintains its own website where you can enter any RSS feed to get its PostRank scores. Or you can install a Firefox plugin that will add PostRank to Google Reader. But thanks to the NewsGator integration, you won't need to visit a separate web site, download a plugin, or even know who AideRSS is to take advantage of their PostRank system.

How many of the applications you use on a daily basis are web-based as opposed to locally installed native applications? For me, the answer is way more than I ever would have expected.

Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have vehemently denied that the future of development is on the web. As much as I could see and understand the value of a ubiquitously available web-based application, there's just no way to approach the level of power and integration (not to mention the ability to be always-available) that is possible with well conceived and developed desktop software.

Of course, back then I didn't imagine that web applications could become as useful as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. I also didn't imagine that light - yet still useful - versions of these apps would be available from my mobile phone almost wherever I was.

In fact, and much to my surprise, today most of my personal data today is tied up in online services: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Backpack, Remember the Milk, Facebook, Newsgator, and Evernote to name just a few.

Most of these are probably pretty familiar names, but one is a newcomer in the web space: Evernote. Still in beta, the new version of Evernote contains a full-featured web version, but synchronizes seamlessly with desktop software on either Windows or Mac platforms. And it's a breath of fresh air.

NewsGator, the Denver based company behind ever-popular RSS readers such as NetNewsWire for Mac and FeedDemon for Windows, announced updates for these award-winning products. The full list of the updated products include FeedDemon 2.6 (for Windows), NetNewsWire 3.1 (for the Mac), NewsGator Go! (for mobile platforms), and Inbox (a Microsoft Outlook plug-in). According to NewsGator, users will see improvements in peformance, usability, and relavance improvements.

The second part of NewsGator's announcment is the most exciting - all these products are available for free! Yes, you read that correctly - start downloading away.

NewsGator products' built-in selling point their ability to sync with Newsgator's internet based servers. That is, if you use NetNewsWire at home and FeedDemon at work, you won't have duplicate items to read between the two applications.

Why did NewsGator set these products free? They are obviously shifting gears add corporate resources to monetize their Enterprise offerings such as the NewsGator Enterprise Server. NewsGator wants to take the success they've enjoyed in the consumer market and apply it to the Enterprise environment.

While China has a history of blocking computer users' access to many sites on the world wide interwebs, many clever Chinese citizens have figured out that RSS feeds provided a way around the Chinese firewall. Until now.

Ars Technica reports that China has started blocking any URL that starts with "feeds," "rss," and "blog." That makes it pretty difficult to access the feeds for an awful lot of websites, including pretty much any site syndicated by FeedBurner.

It looks like some Chinese users are having success with online feed-readers like Newsgator. We'll see how long it takes before China bans Newsgator. In the meantime, there's always proxies and anonymous web browsers like Tor.

If you want to find out if your website is blocked in China, Website Pulse has a Great FireWall of China testing tool.

[via TechCrunch]

Feed Each Other is a new social RSS reader. What does that mean? Well, it's kind of a social network and RSS reader all rolled into one, sort of like a cross between Google Reader and Facebook.

As an RSS reader, the layout should be pretty familiar to anyone who uses Bloglines, NewsGator, Google Reader, or any of the other popular web-based RSS readers. You can organize your feeds into folders and you can choose to view just headlines or full articles. Feed Each Other also has a pretty good site discovery feature. Type "Download Squad" into the search box, and our feed will come up right away.

But the social aspects are what really make Feed Each Other shine. When you view our feed, you'll see a list of popular feeds show up in the bottom left corner. These are feeds that users who like Download Squad have subscribed to. You can also view profiles of individual users who have subscribed to Download Squad on the upper right hand side just above our feed's content. You can click on a user profile and see what they're reading. If you like their taste in news, you can add them as a contact.

You can also share interesting articles from your feeds with other users. While Google Reader publishes your shared clips as a sort of standalone link blog, Feed Each Other lets your contacts see your shared items when they login. You can also leave comments on your shared items or others to see and respond to.

Feed Each Other has just emerged from an invitation-only beta, so while it's pretty robust, there are still a few kinks to work out. But the service definitely shows promise.

[via Read/WriteWeb