NewsGator Online - Adding Feeds & Creating Folders

The NewsGator team has put a lot of thought around what would be useful for its end users. With that it appears that I will need to continue my review of the various offerings through multiple posts. Last time I discussed a brief overview of each of the tools that I have started to use, FeedDemon, NewsGator Online and NewsGator Inbox. So far I have spent the most time exploring NewsGator Online on my Gateway and using Firefox.

Also in the last post I pointed out that NewsGator has integrated a capability for all of the tools that you choose to use to synchronize. You will have to make your own decision, but for me this was a great feature, mainly because of the different locations and computers that I use throughout the day. At work, behind the zillions of firewalls that today’s businesses feel are necessary, it can be difficult to download desktop application (or maintain them if you do get them downloaded, dang security team!). Equally challenging is navigating to WebPages since many businesses block access in the interest of maintaining employee productivity. That is where NewsGator Inbox comes in. It is basically an outlook plug-in so it is easy to install and so far has gone unnoticed by the internet security team in my office. That’s the end of the tangent, I will get into the NewsGator Inbox and more on FeedDemon in future posts. All of the synchronization seems to be organized and updated through NewsGator Online. Although, I have noticed that if you make changes in any of the programs, the others are automatically updated. Each program syncs with the Online version and is updated the next time that you open it and update your feeds.

So I have gotten ahead of my self. In order to enjoy the bountiful benefits of NewsGator Online, you first have to sign up for an account. Once you have an account then you can begin to add feeds and develop your feed folder organization structure. The sign up was very easy, after clicking the “new user” link, and filling in some brief personal information (like username, password, name and address) I was off and running. They also offer some content to help you get started. You can select checkboxes next to the heading that interests you, such as Technology or Business, and then NewsGator Online will add editor’s selections of just a few feeds. I thought this was interesting so I selected Technology just to see what it would bring. Turns out they allow you to further refine the editor’s choice by including a region, specific people and specific URLs you are interested in. I just breezed though these questions and ended up with just about every well known technology site out there….Engaget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Wired Tech Biz, Yahoo News: Technology News…the list goes on. Now that I am inside I see that you can add or delete any feeds or groups of feeds. I also found that through the “Browse Feeds” under the Add Feeds function you can sign up for any of the options that were presented during the account creation phase. I did notice though that when I tried to delete this automatic subscription, the program seemed to flip out. It took it out of my folder tree, but when I added my other feeds (the test feeds) it put the folder back in. So I tried to delete it from the Settings menu and then in Organize Folders. I found that all of my folders had gone missing! So I did the tried and true helpdesk response…..I restarted the program…..and everything seemed to be fine.

Adding feeds is very easy. You have two options basically, you can add the feed by URL (web address for the non-techies) or you can use the Find Feeds option. The first option is relatively straight forward you simple paste the Feed URL into the box and select which folder you want it added to. If you do not have the Feed URL handy and you do not want to go look for it you can try the second option. The Find Feeds option gives you two ways to find feeds as well. You can browse by category or you can put in a search term. So I tried this method for ESPN, but under the sports category it did not work well for just general sports news. In an attempt to bring you exactly what you are looking for, once you click on sports it tries to narrow the scope to a specific sport. This worked well however to add the New York Times feed because under news you could select “Daily News/Newspapers” and the New York Times front page is an option. It integrated the feed into the folder that I had opened which happened to be International (which has the BBC feed). I was able to drag it to the general News folder in my folder tree without issue. To add ESPN I went back into the Find Feeds option and put ESPN as my keyword. The system basically brought up every feed that ESPN has and any feed that references ESPN. The first choice happened to be the one I was looking for and it easily updated into my tree. I could have chosen a folder to dump the feed into but since I do not have all my folder setup I just put it under My Feeds.

So far I have created the two folders and added feeds to both. With ESPN hanging out under My Feeds without a specific folder, I took this opportunity to create a new folder. At first this process seems a little cumbersome. I expected it to be like Outlook where you can simply right click (on a PC) and add a new folder to the folder tree. Although you can right click and select “New Folder”, instead of editing directly in the tree, the reading window takes you to the Organize Folders within the Settings menu. From here you have to click the link “Create New Folder”. Then you select which folder to place the new folder in and name it. Click on Add Folder and wham-o it is added to the folder tree. One note, when you are in the Organize Folders view, it can be confusing if you do not pay attention to what’s written and try to just fly by the seat of your pants. There is a drop down menu with “New Folder” in it and a button marked Move. The first time I tired to create a new folder I selected this option and quickly found that it did not have my intended affect. So remember if you are adding folders you have to click on the "Create New Folder” link. Once I got used to this method of adding folders, it did not bother me too much but I do think that it is kind of weird because once created you can move the folders and feeds around just like in Outlook, through the drag and drop method.

One of the features that I like about the folder tree is that you can hide the folders. In the Settings menu you can select an option that will hide a folder once all of your feeds are read. This is nice because you do not have to waste time looking in a folder if there are no new feeds and it does not clutter your tree. Also as I mentioned earlier, this version syncs with the other versions so any changes I make here automatically push to the other versions. That goes for feeds and folder tree organization as well. In the end you will have a usable space like this…

We have covered a ton of ground today, but just from what I have viewed today in NewsGator Online there is still a lot of features to review.