NewsGator Inbox – Update & My Reading Attention

Before I jump into today’s topic, there is one thing that I want to discuss pertaining to the one of the actions I took during the post, NewsGator Inbox – Add Subscriptions (Vol. 3). When I added the NNTP Newsgroup for Linux I was using Outlook on the Gateway. I noticed that this subscription did not sync with the other tools that I have been using, NewsGator Online and NewsGator Inbox on the Dell. So I went into the Manage My Subscriptions tool from the NewsGator Inbox drop down list. I selected the Linux newsgroup subscription and I found that the Synchronize with NewGator option is not available. It appears that you cannot sync the Newsgroups across all of the platforms.

Another tool that does not seem to sync is the “My Reading Habits” function. This provides you with a bar chart showing which feeds you have spent the most time reading. I found that this did not sync so when I viewed it within the NewsGator Inbox on my Gateway the results were entirely different then they were on the Dell. It is a little hard to tell from these screen shots but the since I have not used the NewsGator Inbox as much on the Gateway, it really has not tracked anything. However on the Dell I have used NewsGator Inbox much more and the green bar show what I have been viewing (mostly the BBC because it is first in the list) I can see some merit to this tool though. I think it would be useful if you had a lot of subscriptions and you wanted to eliminate a few, you could go into this tool to see which ones you are not reading much and you could remove those feeds. However I am not sure that it is an accurate way to check what you are reading because if you happen to have a friend’s blog that is not updated all that often, then it will probably show that you do not spend a lot of time reading it. This could lead you to delete it if you were not paying much attention.

I also noticed that there is a drop down in the upper right corner of the box that opens, however I could not figure out how to get the results to change to what I had selected in the box. There is no refresh or save within the window so I am not sure how to activate any of the other parts of the tool.

Overall I was not real impressed with this in its current state. I do see potential but I am not sure how many resources would be required to make this into a useful tool to help you improve your NewsGator Inbox experience and usage.