FeedDemon – Getting Started

Another tool that NewsGator Offers is FeedDemon. This is a downloadable desktop application for Windows. They do offer another tool for Mac’s called NetNewsWire. I think the best place to start is at the beginning.

When you go to the NewsGator web page towards the bottom of their home page you will see NewsGator Free RSS Readers. Select the link and you are taken to another page that has a listing of the all the NewsGator RSS offerings; such as the NewsGator Inbox and FeedDemon. When you select Free Download under FeedDemon the application will begin the download process. If you are using Internet explorer simply select Run. In Firefox it will be slightly more complicated in that you will save to your desktop. Then double click the new icon and select Run. This will launch the installation wizard which will walk you through the basic setup. After you accept the terms and conditions the setup will finish and ask if you want to Start FeedDemon and/or see the release notes. If you select Start FeedDemon then the program will launch. Depending on your choices during setup, the application will be listed in your start menu and (if you selected them) icons on your desktop and in the quick launch bar.

When FeedDemon starts for the first time it will take you through a series of windows so it can correctly configure to your account. Since I already have a NewsGator account I entered it into the Synchronization window and it confirmed my email address. Next it asked if I wanted FeedDemon to add any feeds to my subscriptions. These were either some recommended feeds, none or imported from another service, like bloglines. After that the configuration was complete and the first time startup wizard was finished. After clicking Finish I was off and running.

Since I linked FeedDemon to my existing account it automatically populated with all of my subscriptions, Category folders, Main folders and then updated the posts in each. The reading pane was broken into three windows. The first window contained a view the feeds with unread subscriptions. The second window listed the Feeds I Pay the Most Attention To and the last window was for the Feeds with Flagged Items. My first impression was that this looks a lot like an email client, like Outlook or Windows Mail.

Next time we will dive into FeedDemon’s offerings and see if it as useful as its online and plug-in cousins.