The last option from the Add Subscriptions tool is 
the Advanced button. When you enter this part of the tool there are a number of options. The first allows you to enter the address of the website or feed. So let’s use the TwonSolo example again. Instead of going to www.twonsolo.com and clicking the link to subscribe to the posts and then selecting atom and then copying the feed url and bringing it back and pasting it, we can have NewsGator Inbox do all the work. Simply put in the web address (url) for the homepage that you want to add the feed from and NewsGator will go in search of the feeds for you. Once the url is entered, you have clicked Next and after NewsGator finds the feeds you will find yourself in
the Select Folders screen which allows you to organize the feed within your folder tree (covered in Vol.1). Then it adds the subscription and asks if you want to customize (also covered in Vol.1). Click Finish and you are all done, the update will run and the new post is available in the folder tree.
The next option lets you take advantage of the Smart Feed tool that is in the online version. When you select this option you are presented with two more options, to 
use a keyword or a URL. In the online version I used Soundgarden for the keyword search. Since Pearl Jam just re-released the Ten album it seems fitting to put in a keyword search on Pearl Jam. This is super easy, once you select next you are given the option to customize (see Vol.1) and when you click Finish the feed is placed in your folder tree. The subscription update is run and if there are any feeds they are brought to you. I expected the URL choice to work as it does in the online version, allowing you to track what other sites have linked to a particular URL by selecting the URL choice from the Smart Feeds. I put in my blog (www.twonsolo.com) expecting to see what is linking to it an
d clicked Next. The next screen was the Finish screen as before with the option to customize. This time I clicked Finish and subscription update ran, but the new feed did not populate in my folder tree. I closed Outlook and re-launched it but the feed still did not appear, so I looked in the Subscription manager tool and it was listed. Basically what I found is this did not work like the online version. What it actually did was go out in search of the feeds for TwonSolo and returned those posts under my existing feed folder. This created a duplicate entry for each of the posts.
The next option helps you to create a feed from an NNTP Newsgroup. This stands for Network News Transfer Protocol Newsgroups and is basically a community of discussion pages and/or news feeds. Kind of like yahoo answers or a forum where people can post questions and receive answers from other members of the group. For discussion sake I entered public.teranews.com which I found through a Google search and who is a free provider of access to the newsgroups. In general these are uncensored and unlogged so if you are configuring a NNTP on a work computer you may want to verify that server you are accessing meets with your company’s policies. Also depending on the Newsgroups that you may want to pull in, you may need a username and password. Enter these under the sever name and click next. The next screen will allow you to select specifically which newsgroups within the newsgroups - linux community that you want to receive posts from. Since there are literally tens of thousands of newsgroups within the communities NewsGator allows you to initiate a keyword filter which will sort through all the newsgroups and shorten the list you will chose from. Since I am trying to learn more about
Linux, I chose a newsgroup about Red Hat Linux and clicked next. Then as with the other subscriptions I added, NewsGator asked me where to file it and then I brought to the Finish screen with the customize option (see Vol.1 for more detail). Once the Subscription Update ran, the newsgroup feed populated with posts just like any of the other feeds that we have added.
The last option in the Advanced list allows you to import subscriptions. This can be done buy uploading an OPML file from you documents files, entering a URL or by selecting the check box and importing Windows Common Feed lists. This is a handy tool if you are using another RSS reader like OPML Feeds Google Reader or Bloglines and you would like to have the same feeds in your NewsGator Inbox. Basically all you do is click the folder at the end of the
box and search for the file on your hard drive, select it and click open. Then you are returned to the Import Screen, just click Next. NewGator Inbox will allow you to select all of the feeds in the list or just some of the feeds that you select from the list. I have a pretty big list so I just selected one feed to add from Reuters Top News. Once I selected the checkbox next to the feed I simply clicked Next again. As with the Recommended Feeds (reference Vol.2) you are asked if you want to keep the folder structure of the selected feeds. Then you are brought to the Finish screen again and as usual you can customize. Select finish and the feed (and folder if you selected keep the folder structure) are added to your folder tree. One note, the folder properties will also import so the NewsPage may not be available at the category level if you kept the folder structure.
So next time I will get into the Manage My Subscriptions. Stay tuned!
As always if you have some feedback for me, please leave a comment.
3 comments: