NewsGator Inbox – Manage My Subscriptions

Today we are looking at the “Manage My Subscriptions” function within the NewsGator Inbox options. As we discussed in earlier posts, it can be found by clicking on the NewsGator Inbox dropdown (probably on the top right of your Outlook window).

As the name suggests this tool allows you to manage all of the subscriptions within your NewsGator Inbox. When you select this tool from the list it will launch a new window. This window will have an exploded folder view of your subscriptions. If you prefer to see just a list, you can click the check box at the bottom of the window and the folder list will be transformed into a simple list view. The window will also have a number of buttons on the right hand side; edit, delete, update, default setting, export and close. The first three will only activate once you have selected a feed or a folder. The way to tell the difference between the feeds and the folders is the feeds are marked with a green RSS icon. I say that because with the edit button you can edit either individual feeds, multiple feeds that you select or all of the feeds within a selected category folder. The edit button will launch a new window and will be the Subscription Settings (explained in detail in the post NewsGator Inbox Options – Add Subscriptions (Vol. 1) ). The delete is pretty self explanatory and will delete whatever you have selected. The update button will run the Subscription update (or synchronization tool) for the feeds that you have selected.

The next three buttons towards the bottom right of the window are not really feed specific. There is the Default Settings, which, as will all defaults, will return the settings of your feed subscriptions to the default (pre-customization) settings. The next button is the export button. This will launch a new window which will allow you to select “All” or just the subscriptions that you select, to export into either OPML or APML format. Note that the OPML format seems to be recognized across a majority of the RSS Readers out there. This will give you a data file that you can use to create or subscribe to the same feeds in another RSS Reader. The last button, close, is also self explanatory but it will close the window.

The Manage My Subscriptions is probably a better way to manage your subscriptions, with respect to the NewsGator Inbox, rather then just deleting the folders from the tree. I found that just deleting the folder or the feed worked ok, and it will update the online version ok, but it was simpler just go use the Manage My Subscriptions tool. There are less windows that will pop up to confirm what you are trying to do if you use the tool. Also it gives you a clear picture of your feeds and clearly marks what will be modified or deleted.

Next time we will start looking into “My Reading Habits”. Come on back!

NewsGator Inbox Options – Add Subscriptions (Vol.3)

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 and 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.

NewsGator Inbox Options – Add Subscriptions (Vol. 2)

One of the other tools that can be found within the Add Subscriptions Tool is the Browse Recommended Feeds button. This works very much like the Recommended Feeds in the online version. Basically it will display a list of category folders like “News”. You can then either check the folder box thus subscribing to everything inside or you can click the plus sign to expand it out and simply select the feeds that you want to subscribe to. So I chose CNN.com from the list, then selected “Next”. It then asks if you want to keep the folder structure of the selected feeds. If you say yes then it will add the folder that was in the Recommended Feeds to your folder tree. So for instance if I would have chosen a feed from the Blogs & Bloggers Recommended feeds and selected Yes when it asked if I wanted to keep the folder structure then it would add a new folder to my folder tree called Blogs & Bloggers. One thing to note if you already have a folder with the same name it just adds the feed to that folder. So since I already had a News folder the feed from CNN.com was simply added to it rather then creating a new folder called News.

If I were to choose NO when it asked to keep the folder structure, then it would open the same window as when you are adding the feed from a URL (as we saw in the last post) and asks where you want the feed to go. You simply assign it as we did before and it will be added into the folder you selected. Also with each feed that you add you have the option to launch the Subscription Settings tool that I described in the previous post so that you can customize each feed. That being said if you choose more then one feed to add then you will update the settings for all of the feeds that you have chosen at the same time. I will get into how you can edit a feed after it is created in a future post when I review the Manage Subscriptions tool.

Next time I will complete the Add Subscriptions section with the Advanced Button. If you like what you see let me know, if not let me know that too. I want this to be useful so I am looking for feedback!

NewsGator Inbox Options – Add Subscriptions (Vol. 1)

Today we will dive deeper into the Tools within the NewsGator Inbox Options menu. The Update All Subscriptions is pretty self explanatory so I will start with the Add Subscriptions tool.

When you click on Add Subscriptions (within the drop down from the NewsGator Inbox button) a new window will launch which will give you a couple of options. The first is to simply enter the URL of the feed that you want to add. For instance if you wanted to add the feed for TwonSolo then you would simply enter http://www.twonsolo.com/feeds/posts/default into the box and select next. Then NewsGator goes out to find the feed. Once it is found it will ask you where you want to house it, or which folder to put it in. You can either select the top level My News folder or you can select a category to put it in. Then simply select the feed and click the arrow (>) between the two boxes and the feed will be placed into the folder that you selected. Then click “Next” and you will be presented with another option. If you want to customize the subscription you just added you can check the box in front of the sentence stating, “I want to change more properties of my new subscriptions” before you click Next. If not simply click Next without checking the box and NewsGator Inbox will finalize the sync and pull the latest feeds into the folder that you specified.

If you chose to customize the feed a new window will launch when you click Next called Subscription Settings. From here you can change the name of the feed to something you remember, something shorter, or if it comes across as numbers, you can give it a name. There are also a bunch of tabs on this new window that give you several other options. For instance under the “General” tab you can also set up the update frequency for the feed. Theoretically this would be a good tool if you only wanted updates a couple times per day or if you know that the feed is not updated often. This is because it is set up for minutes, you will enter the number of minutes that you want NewsGator Inbox to wait between updating the subscription. This is good for feeds that kick out tons of posts like Engadget or a news agency like MSNBC, but it doesn’t work so well for the Blog that your buddy writes and only updates every day or so. The reason I feel this way is because NewsGator Inbox expends resources to ping the feeds regardless of if there is something new posted. So it is basically wasting resources trying to find an update to your buddy’s Blog in the reference above. It would be nice if you could reduce some of the granularity and select days (or in some of my buddy’s blogs weeks or months!).

These tabs also give you the ability to choose to include the posts from the feed in the NewsPage view. You can also display a web page snapshot (not too sure what this does yet) and allow NewsGator to collect attention data for this feed, which I will get into in a later post. Another helpful tab is the “Folder” tab which gives you the option of creating a new folder for the feed or just adding the posts to the parent folder. I will explore this a little more and provide a review in an up coming post. The next tab is “Credentials” and this allows you to put in a user name and password for the feed if it is access restricted. There is also a tab for “Podcasts” where you can set your preference for podcast delivery, such as a link, attachment or Queue it up in FeedStation. Another thing I am not sure about, FeedStation, so I will have to investigate this as well. The final tab is “Advanced”. This tab is interesting because it allows you to set some criteria around the feed. For instance if you want to unsubscribe to a post if it doesn’t stay active you can have it automatically removed. All you have to do is select the check box and set the number of days that you want it to be inactive before it is removed. You can do the same thing for what they call a Test Drive. This allows you to setup the feed for a set number of days to try it out and then it will automatically be removed. The last tools allow you to set your style sheet and validate the feed.

So now that you have configured your settings click “OK” and the feed will be created. NewsGator Inbox will then launch the Update tool which will run for the new feed. The feed folder should be in your folder tree and any unread posts should automatically populate into the folder.

I will discuss the other two Add Subscription tools in the next post. Stay tuned.

NewsGator Inbox - Options

One thing about NewsGator Inbox that you may not notice right away is a small toolbar that has been added to your outlook view. It can be found in the top right corner of your Outlook screen and simply says “NewsGator Inbox”. There is also a dot with an arrow that creates an open circle around it on the toolbar. This is NewsGator’s version of a refresh symbol and it will basically update all your feeds and Syncs with NewsGator Online.

The “NewsGator Inbox” on the tool bar is actually a drop down list and will provide you with a number of useful options. The first is another opportunity to update all the subscriptions followed by a way to add new subscriptions. You can also manage your subscriptions or learn about your reading habits. There is also a Clean up wizard that you can run to clean up your NewsGator Inbox. This is also where you will find your NewsGator Inbox Options screen. If you have the post to my blog function setup you can also select that option from this drop down.

The next section of the drop down is focused on ways you can find out more about your NewsGator Inbox. This section has Alerts so you can be notified if there is a problem with your NewsGator Inbox. There is also a Help section and a link to the NewsGator Forums. The next section allows you to check for updates or to provide feedback to NewsGator about the NewsGator Inbox. Lastly as will all Windows applications the About section is listed, which gives you information about the version that you are running.

Over the next few posts I will look into these options and provide a review. Check back to see which one I am reviewing next!

NewsGator Inbox – Subscription Management Tool

One of the tools that is seemingly unique to NewsGator Inbox is the Subscription Management Tool. This is turned on by going into the NewsGator Inbox Options (which opens a new window) and choosing the button marked General Options. This will also open a new window. Towards the bottom of this new window you will see the sentence “Ask me to mark older posts as read when I have this many unread posts:” which is followed by a box with a 15 and up and down arrows. Select the check box next to the sentence in order to activate this function. Then enter the number of posts that you want to have as unread to trigger the tool to activate. You can choose any number up to 10,000. As I have stated in previous post I am easily overwhelmed by RSS readers and the sheer volume of information that they bring to your attention. With that in mind, I have set the number of unread posts to 100.

So once the tool is triggered it will ask you if you want to run the tool. It will give you 30 seconds to activate it or cancel and then it will automatically run. It gives you a total number of unread posts that exist across all of your subscriptions. I twill also give you some options. The first (or default) is “all posts more than 24 hours old”, the second is “older than 48 hours”, then “older than 5 days old” and finally “all posts”. Select “Ok” and it will confirm that you want to run the tool, select “OK” again and it will do all the work. It does not delete all the posts so if you want you can go into the feed folder in the folder tree and you can see all of the posts. For instance I just ran the tool and before hand there were 3 unread Dilberts. Now they are all clear and marked as read, however when I opened the feed folder I can still view and read each of the Dilberts that I missed.

The one thing that I noticed is that it will lock up Outlook and make it unavailable while it runs. Since it does lock up Outlook, before it runs it will confirm that you want to run it. The good news is I have had upwards of 500 unread posts and the longest I have timed it was 24 seconds to run. Even with that, I have to say I really like this tool. I like that it reduces the number of unread posts and thus reduces the number of posts that I feel I have to read. I know I am weird, it’s ok.

NewsGator Inbox – NewsPage (Cont’d)

As we discussed in the last post, the Most Recent Posts column provides a listing of all of the posts from the feeds that you have subscribed too. Just a quick review, the NewsPage setting is the default for any folder that you setup, but does not apply to an individual feed. Basically this means that the NewsPage will be present on any category or higher level folders unless you turn in off in the options prior to setting up the folder. This goes for any folder that is created via the sync function as well. When you select one of these folders (category, like Science, or higher level, like “My News”) the NewsPage will fill your Outlook reading pane (or inbox mail list pane, depending on how you configure your Outlook). One of the things that I noticed about the “Full Post” option for delivery of the posts is that sometimes the full post does not open in the NewsPage view. Even after trying to refresh several times, I could not get the post to load. I am not sure if it was NewsGator Inbox or something on my end, like configuration, hardware, Outlook or internet access. I found it to be a little frustrating but it seemed to be an exception rather then the rule.

Anyway now that we have a good understanding of what we will see in the NewsPage, we can now dive into the functionality of the Most Recent Posts section. As you peruse the headline view that the posts are delivered in there are a couple things that you will notice. The first will probably be the three main function links at the top of the page; Mark All Posts As Read, Delete All Posts and Refresh. The Mark All Posts As Read link will mark all of the posts currently listed in your headlines of Most Recent Posts as read. This will not mark all of the posts in your NewsGator Inbox as read but simply those listed in the NewsPage currently. The number that will be marked as read will be dependent first upon how many posts you have selected to be delivered in this view (this was done in the options, under Post Options). I have my NewsPage setup to deliver 100 posts at a time so it will mark that number of posts read as long as I have 100 in the NewsPage at that time. I have less it will mark whatever number of posts presently listed as read. Delete All Posts works basically the same way, except that it will remove all of the posts listed rather then simply marking them as read. Refresh acts predictably and refreshes the posts that are listed.

So the second set of tools you will notice are in a small box at the bottom of each post. These include a check mark, a X, a disk and something that looks like a sheet of paper with an arrow next to it. These perform the same tasks as the main link tools that I described earlier, but rather then doing it for the whole list of posts they do it just for the post that they are under. The check mark will mark the post as read, the X will delete the post and the disk will save the post (this saves to My Clippings and brings up another box so you can choose the exact folder). The sheet of paper with an arrow next to it is a little more interesting….it will post to your Blog. I have not gotten this to work yet, but I will work on it a review it in a later post.

One thing to note is that none of the posts will be marked as read or deleted unless you use one of these tools.

There are also a couple of more subtle tools imbedded in the NewsPage Most Recent Posts. The first is by clicking on the headline, you will automatically launch a new window that will look like an email. It will list who it is from, which is basically the author of the post. It will have posted to: which sill be the feed that it came from and the headline will be the subject. In the body of the message there will be the full feed plus a link to go to the source (such as Engadget). At the end of the headline there is this funny looking square with an arrow shooting out of the top right corner. This utilizes Outlook's ability to integrate internet explorer and launches into the source page from within Outlook. I noticed a few times that the page wouldn’t load or it only partially loaded. I believe it to be a Microsoft issue rather then a NewsGator issue but it is worth mentioning. The last tool is located below the headline and identifies what the source of the feed is, like BBC. This is a link and when you click it, you will be taken to the feed within your folder tree. So if I click on BBC, NewsGator Inbox takes me to my International folder and opens the feed BBC. I did not really find this last tool very useful, but I am sure there is a reason that it was included.

Next time I will review one of the tools that seems to be unique to the Inbox when compared to the other NewsGator platforms.

NewsGator Inbox - NewsPage

Hey if you like what you see, let me know!
If you don't like what you see.....let me know that too!
I would love your feed back, good or bad!

Now that we are familiar with the folder structure there is some additional functionality that we can explore. When the folders are setup, or automatically downloaded from NewsGator Online, something that NewsGator calls the NewsPage is built into the folders that are created. I have found that this usually is only for the top level folders like “My Clippings” or “My News”. However it will also be a tool present in the Category folders, if you have set them up (Such as, News or International).

The NewsPage is basically a customizable newspaper style view that fills your Outlook reading pane. It is not fully customizable but you will find several options that you can change to meet your needs. Before I get into what you can customize I should probably explain what the NewsPage will is and what it gives you. It cannot be manipulated like Outlook views for email where there is a list of feeds and a viewing window. It will essentially fill the entire reading pane in Outlook. It will also have 3 main parts as a default; these are Most Recent Posts, Options, and Overview. Two of these are dependent upon the folder that you have highlighted in the folder tree. The Options section will remain the same for all folders and will provide you with buttons for “Refresh” and “Search for Feeds”. The Most Recent Posts provides a list of the headlines and in default mode, it provides the full post from the feed. You can scroll down to view each new unread posting and you can select each one to read further. I will get into some of the other functionality for this section in later posts.

The Overview gives a listing of the number of unread posts that are in each feed folder that is under the folder you have highlighted. So for example if you have the International folder highlighted and in my example all you have in that folder is the feed from the BBC, then the Overview provides the total unread posts for this one feed. However if you highlight the News folder, which in my case houses MSNBC, NY Times and Wired it provides a listing for the number of unread posts for each feed in that folder. This feature also rolls up to the top level “My News” folder as well. It will have a listing for all of the unread posts for each feed that is held in the lower level folders.

Now you are probably wondering, “How do I customize this view?” Well, if you click on “+ Customize NewsPage” button on the top right of the NewsPage window you will launch two new windows simultaneously. The first is the NewsGator Inbox Options window and the second will be the NewsPage Options window. The first window is what will customize the NewsPage views. The first thing to notice is that you can turn off the sidebar which effectively eliminates both the Options and Overview sections from the view. So now in your view pane all you have is the Most Recent Posts. From this window you can also select Headlines only, Headlines with summaries or Full posts. I chose the full posts mainly because a lot of the feeds that I view have photos with them and you will not receive the photos in either of the other views. Another nice feature is that you can change the number of posts that the Most Recent Posts window shows in one page. You can select any number up to 100 posts. By changing this number you are affecting the number of posts that the Most Recent Posts view will bring to the viewing pane in the Headlines list.

Next time I will get into the Most Recent Posts view a little more and some of the tools that it has with it.

NewsGator Inbox – Getting Started

So now that you have your system updated and you have downloaded and installed NewsGator Inbox, let’s see what it is all about!

Just a quick follow up to the last post. As I said, when you restart your Outlook after downloading the NewsGator Inbox, it will automatically run the setup. This will only happen the first time that you open Outlook after the installation.

The first thing you will probably notice is there is a new folder in your Outlook folder tree called NewsGator Inbox. If you have setup an account and used NewsGator Online then all of your online folders and feeds will be present under the NewsGator Inbox folder tree. Also if you pulled in additional feeds from Bloglines or an OPML document then they will be listed as well. Please note that these new feeds will automatically update to NewsGator Online.

Maneuvering in the NewsGator Inbox works much the same as any other operation within Outlook. That being said the actual NewsGator Inbox is not like an email inbox though. It does not receive all of the incoming posts and then you distribute them to other folders for storage or setup rules to move the posts around. Basically I found that the folders, which automatically created from my NewsGator Online account and were setup identically to the online version. The posts for each category were present in the category folder and ready to read. The main difference that I noticed was that the cumulative number of posts does not roll up to the category folder or to the “My News” folder. I am not sure if I like this or if I prefer to see the number of unread posts for each category. In order to see how many unread posts exist you have to expand the category folder. This allows you to see the feed source, for example if I open or expand my “News” folder, then I see the folder for MSNBC, NY Times, and Wired. I also see how many posts are unread in each of these feed folders. However it appears that if I were to remove all of the category folders and just have the feed folders then I would see the number of unread posts for each feed.

So basically it is up to you as to how you want the folders to appear. If you like to see how many posts are unread then you have to strip out the categories to see the number of unready posts (which, just a reminder, will affect the other NewsGator tools when it automatically syncs). If it doesn’t matter to you how many posts are unread then you can leave it as is.

Next time I will get more into the functionality of the folders and some of the tools that NewsGator has built into the Inbox to enhance your post reading experience.

NewsGator Inbox – Download

Today I am starting my review of NewsGator Inbox which is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. Starting from the beginning, there are a couple of requirements that you have to have in order to use the Inbox. First you will need Windows 2000 or later with Outlook 2000 or later. You will also need Microsoft .Net 2.0 or later. You can download .Net 2.0 for free from Microsoft here. I didn’t have this on my Gateway so I downloaded the free version from Microsoft. This took just under 3 minutes to download with my connection and hardware. Then I ran the program which took about 10 minutes. I don’t know why but then I decided to run Microsoft Update…well that recommended that I download and install the .Net Framework 3.5 so I did. That took about a half hour just to download. Just so we are clear, that last part I did not have to do. As long as you have .Net 2.0 you should be fine.

Anyway, once your system meets with the basic requirements, the NewsGator Inbox can be found under the products section of www.newsgator.com. Simply select “Products” from the home page and scroll to the bottom of the products page where you will find NewsGator Inbox. Once there you can begin downloading the plug-in or you can go to the “More Information” page. I navigated to the more information page and clicked on “Free Download”. This launched a quick download (I used Firefox so it saved to file) that took a matter of about a minute but less two. Then I ran the program. Make sure that you close Outlook. If you have it open it will ask you to close the program. You have to accept the NewsGator Inbox License Agreement. Then in less then a minute it was installed and after restarting Outlook, I was on my way. This worked equally well on my Dell and my Gateway.

After Outlook restarted, the NewsGator Setup started automatically. Since I have the NewsGator Online account I selected “I have a NewsGator Account” and clicked next. It does give you the opportunity to create an account from this screen as well. It also suggests that you do so that you can enjoy the benefits of synchronization. The next screen confirmed my email in case I forget my password. It also asks if you want to add subscriptions from another service or from a file called OPML that houses your feeds that you may have downloaded from another service or reader. When you click next….you are basically finished. Another window will open that will have some tips on how to use the Inbox.

NewsGator Online – Final Notes

Just to tie up a loose end, I felt that NewsGator Online was a pretty good tool. The service lives up to what it promises and it is very good at bringing the information that you request to your finger tips. I did notice that it is mainly geared towards Microsoft products like Internet Explorer, but don’t hold that against it. If you use Firefox or Safari, just be ready for the folders not to react as you expect once in a while.

Being that this is the first service that I have reviewed, I haven’t worked out a rating system yet, but I have been considering a couple of different ways to show a rating and I will circle back to provide a rating once I have reviewed a couple of additional services. Let me know if there is any feedback so far. I would like to hear what you would like to see.

Next I am working on NewsGator Inbox which is the Outlook Plug-in.

NewsGator Online – Smart Feeds (cont’d)

I felt compelled to look into the other Smart Feeds so today I looked into the url option. This is interesting because it will specifically search for any and all pages that are linked to the url that you enter. So for me I can enter the url for this blog (www.twonsolo.com) to find out all of the other places on the internet that are linked to my page.


This worked better then I expected. When I put in my own url it pulled all of the postings from the two places that I have entered, or linked to twonsolo.com. Typically I use twitter to distribute an update about new posting that I have entered. This pulled each of the tweets that I have entered for my postings. I was also testing the feeds from twonsolo.com and I linked another blog to this one. Each of those postings also pulled into the search. I don’t know if this is something that everyone would use, but it is defiantly interesting if you have a business website or a blog, you can find out who and/or which other sites are linking to your content.


I also tried out the last Smart Feed that NewsGator has built into their functionality which is something that I was really amazed to see. It is called Email feeds and what this does is provide you with your own email address at newsgator.com so that you can enter it into sites that send out email notifications or newsletters. Then these emails are captured within NewsGator and stay out of your email inbox. By signing up with the newsgator.com email rather then your other email, your email inbox stays clean and all of your news populates to the same place, your NewsGator My Feeds Folders. It allows you to setup up to 5 separate email addresses so you can basically have a new one for each topic that you want to follow.


The NewsGator team takes it one step further though by allowing you to distribute your own newsletter. It seems pretty easy as well. You just enter the newsgator.com email address in your To line and then make that email feed public. Then other people can receive your newsletter through RSS.


I setup my own email and I signed it up to receive a couple of different newsletters. I found that it worked really well for receiving them and I could easily read them just like if they arrived in my email inbox. The main difference to note and something I should probably caution you on is that this function operates just like any other folder within your “My Feeds” folder tree. What this means is if you have the mark read on view function enabled, the email will disappear from the reading pane if you navigate to a new folder. So you just have to remember to use the other NewsGator Online functionality and either “Add to clippings” or “Tag this post” in order to save them for viewing later.


Another thing to note is that if you sign up for an email newsletter that requires you to confirm your email address before it will add your subscription to the active list, the link that it provide will not be a hyperlink. Simply copy the link and paste it into a new browser window (or tab depending on your settings) this will activate your subscription and you will begin to receive the emails.


For me this is a great tool. It allowed me to move all of the emails that I receive from stores, groups and organizations to NewsGator. It freed up my email to just contain actual emails rather then ads or something else. I also knew what to expect every time I opened the folder in NewsGator. Just remember that it follows the NewsGator Online rules so you don’t loose anything important!


At this point I have covered the basic functionality for NewsGator Online. The next few posts will focus on NewsGator Inbox for Outlook.

NewsGator Online – Smart Feeds

As I was looking through the tools within NewsGator Online, and I stumbled across something called a Smart Feeds within the Browse Feeds menu. These are keyword or url searches or they can be email feeds.


The keyword search is simple to use, and once entered, it basically scours the internet (so you don’t have to) in order to find the word or phrase that you enter. Then it robotically brings all the feeds that it finds back to your NewsGator Online inbox. All you have to do to set this feature up is go to “Browse Feeds” then click on the “Smart Feeds” tab. Make sure that Keyword Search is highlighted and enter the keyword or phrase that you want to search into the box and click “Add”. The keyword search then drops into the current list (below) and a new folder is automatically generated in the folder tree. The new folder will be named Newsgator: Keyword Search for **the keyword you entered**. You can have up to 20 of these Keyword Searches created to track all of your favorite hobbies, subjects, sports team, whatever you want!

Since I am a fan of the band Soundgarden, I thought I would try this Keyword Search out to see how it works. Even though Soundgarden is no more, they are in the news because of the new Chris Cornell album. Anyway this tool worked pretty well. It pulled several feeds from places that I probably would not have thought to look. The one thing that I noticed that was interesting but a little annoying was that it does not have a language setting. Consequently it pulled any post, in any language that had the keyword Soundgarden. That meant that I got some Russian and Swedish postings that were not about the band but were about some sort of art works, but since I cannot read those languages I am not sure what they said.

I have to say that I do recommend this tool if there is a topic that you want to keep updated on from all angles. It looks like it has the potential to become overwhelming if the keywords have a large number of posts that it returns. It would be really good for an obscure topic that maybe doesn’t have a high volume of postings regarding it.

NewsGator Online - Extras

Today I was checking out the Extras area of the menu and I ran across a very powerful toolbar button that is simple to use. It is simply called the Subscription Bookmarlet and it generates a button called “Subscribe in NewsGator Online”.


To find it you just go to the "Extra's" button located in the top bar menu, where the settings and account buttons are. If it did not auto select go to the “Subscription Tools” tab and navigate to the bottom of the page. At the bottom you will find what looks to be a link that says “Subscribe in NewsGator Online”. For Firefox or Safari, simply place your pointer on it and left click. Hold the left click and move your pointer to the “Links” part of your browser toolbar and drop the link (release the mouse button). If you are using Internet Explore just right click on the link and select “Add to Favorites”. These actions will place a new link into your browser links and will allow you to select it just like any other link that you might have in that area.


Now comes the powerful part. When you are out surfing the web and you come across a web page that you really like and it has RSS feeds you simply click your new “Subscribe in NewsGator Online” button and it automatically captures the feed information. Then it takes you back to a NewsGator page where you select where you want the new feed to be positioned within your feeds folders. After you select the folder just click “Add Subscription” and you are now a subscriber to that page’s feeds.


The only drawbacks that I noticed is how much space it takes up in the links bar and the fact that you have to be logged into NewsGator Online for it to work though. The first issue was easily resolved in Firefox through the Organize Bookmarks function and in Internet Explore I simply changed the name when saving the link. In both cases I renamed the link to something smaller but easy to remember what it meant. The second I do not really think there is a way around logging into NewsGator before trying to add links because otherwise it would not know who you are or what files to add the new feed too.


Needless to say this tool worked as promised and I really did not have any problems trying to use it.

NewsGator Online – Tags

After review and use of the Tags tool within NewsGator Online I am a little confused. It seems like the Tags are just another version of the “My Clippings” (reference the February 23, 2009 post “NewsGator Online - My Clippings"). There are some differences but Tags appear to save the posts that you want to read later or that you want to categorize for search later.

How Tags Work - Basically to select the tag function you would simply select “Tag This post” at the bottom of the specific post in much the same way that you would add a post to My Clippings (by selecting Add to clippings). The difference is, rather then selecting the folder that you want the post to be filed in, you will type the name of the tag that you want the post associated with. This is a little bit tricky because you have to remember all the Tags you have already used and type them in the same way every time. While the names do not appear to be case sensitive, similar tags are not grouped together. What I mean by that is if you create a Tag called tech, NewsGator will group together all of the posts with a tag of the same spelling, such as teCH, Tech, or TecH. However it will take the way that you last entered it as the current tag name. So if you originally enter it as Tech and then the next time you enter it as tech, then it will be tech unless you change it again. The system will not group Technology or any other form of the word in with Tech though. I also found it a little annoying that I had to keep typing in each Tag rather than being able to select from a list after I typed a tag in for the first time.

I like the concept of the Tags and it easily coincides with other services and news agencies on the web today. By tagging a post you are saving it for later under the head of the Tag. When you select the “My Tags” link at the top of your folder list the reading pane empties and there is a Tag Cloud on the top right side of the pane. It is called “My Tags” and under it is a listing of all the Tags that you have created. This is a little more aesthetically pleasing then the traditional folder tree system as well and with all the other folders that we have to look at all day (like email, my documents, etc) it is nice to have a different view. Although the folder list is always present and you can have the exploded folder list open or closed it is nice to have the Tag list in the top right with all of the tags available and at the risk of sounding weird since the same thing can be accomplished in my clippings by changing folders, I found that I enjoyed switching between topics by simply selecting a new tag.

You can also retag posts if you find that a post should be in a different category. For instance if you tag a post quickly when you are reading the headlines, but save it for later to read, and it turns out to be about politics rather then technology then you can easily retag just by selecting “Tag This post” again and entering the name of the tag that you want to file it under. Another interesting thing about the Tags is that they change visually as you add posts under that tag. For instance I was tagging various posts and had created several Tags within the cloud. When I was done I found that the tag with the most posts was bold, larger font, and Green. The next highest was bold, medium font and orange. The next highest were simply bold. Each tag does not show the number of posts that are related to it, but the cumulative number of posts tagged is visible in the traditional folder tree next to the My Tags link.

The one benefit I see for “My Clippings” over “Tags” is when you utilize more then one NewsGator platform. For instance since I am testing out the online version, the desktop application and the Outlook plug-in all of My Clippings synchronize across the various tools. The Tags do not seem to flow to either NewsGator Online or FeedDemon. You also cannot Tag posts from either of the other applications. So unless you use NewsGator Online exclusively or you use the Tags in a different manner then the Clippings I recommend the use My Clippings.

NewsGator Online – Folder Review

So I have been working more with the folders and the built in functionality that goes along with them. I found that there are some features that can enhance your viewing experience.

The first is “Mark Items Read on View”, which as the title suggests marks posts as read when you scroll past them in the reading window. After scrolling down the list of headlines and clicking on the arrow to take you to the next page, all of the posts that you just viewed are removed from the folder. The number of unread posts also decreases on the folder tree for the folder that you are viewing.

As I discussed in the post on February 21st, NewsGator Online – Adding Feeds & Creating Folders can either be hidden or they can stay constant within the folder tree. Basically the “Hidden” feature removes the folder from the visible tree once you have read all of the posts for that folder or if there the folder does not contain any unread posts. If you do not hide the folders and there are no new posts, no unread post or if you have read all of the posts for that folder it will remain in the folder tree but will return to a regular font (un-bold). The number of posts will also disappear, indicating that there are no unread posts.

If you leave the folders as unhidden and click on that folder that does not indicate that it has any unread posts it will appear empty. What will appear in the reading pane is “There are no new posts to display for this selection. To display older items click here.” When I clicked “click here” it did not work like I expected it too. I was expecting to see some posts that were marked as read but what actually came up was a note about recent changes, the addition of the tags function (which I still have to review) and a listing of the Top Tags. So based on this it seems that once you mark a post as read it is removed from your folders. My suggestion is if there is anything that you see that you want to review again later that you should save it to “My Clippings” (See my post on February 23rd, NewsGator Online – Review (Cont’d)).


Another interesting phenomenon I have noticed is that NewsGator works fantastic with Internet Explorer, but there are some inconsistencies with Firefox and with Safari. When I was reviewing the folders in Firefox I found that sometimes, not always but occasionally, after reading all of the posts for a folder and then switching to a new folder, the original folder that I was reading did not hide. I double checked my settings and I had selected the hide function. Even after I refreshed the feeds the folder remained. And in some rare occasions I found that the unread count did not update either. This was more rare then the hiding of the folders.

I noticed these inconsistencies more frequently when using Safari on the MAC. In one instance for some unknown reason only one of the folders hid after I finished reading all the posts. In this same instance one of the folders that did not hide also did not clear the unread count even though when I clicked on the folder it was empty. On another occasion when I was on the last folder with unread feeds, the posts in that folder disappeared like I had read them all when in actuality I had not read any yet. Interestingly when I clicked on the click here, mentioned above, the list of posts came up and I was able to read them. Safari was the only program where that actual worked as I expected it.

In both Firefox and Safari, in these instances, in order to get the folder to hide like they are supposed to I had to go into Settings and remove the setting “Only show folders with unread items”. Then I saved my user settings and all of the folders came into view on the folder tree. Next I went back into Settings and reversed it, then I saved my user settings again. This was effective in hiding all of the folders without unread posts. These inconsistencies did not come up every time that I used these browsers but often enough that it was noticeable.