FeedDemon – Tabbed Browsing

Today I dove a little deeper into the tabbed browsing feature that allows you to launch the actual web page for the post when you select the link. This is a pretty nice feature and it worked well.

As I said, basically what FeedDemon will do when you click on a link is open the web page for the the post so you can read it exactly as it appears online. It will do this within the FeedDemon window and will utilize the same settings as your internet explorer. FeedDemon will also allow you to utilize the links within the web page that comes up. For instance if you are reading an article from the NY Times and you decide to see what is on the World page, when you select the World link you will be redirected to the World page of the NY Times. This will all happen within the FeedDemon window.

It will also all happen within the tab that you are on within the window. You see FeedDemon has the ability, like most internet browsers these days, to support tabbed browsing. This will allow you to have multiple tabs open with stories or even multiple versions of your newspaper view from your folders. What I mean by this is, if you are looking at a story and you want to keep it open but you also want to see the newspaper view from MSNBC, all you have to do is open a new tab. You can maintain the article that you want to read and then switch to the new tab to see the newspaper view of the headlines from MSNBC. Also the default for FeedDemon is to maintain each tab that you have open if you decide to close FeedDemon, so next time that you open the program you will have the same articles available.

So to get started with the tabbed browsing you can either type ctrl+t to launch a new tab or you can select the white folder icon next to the star in the toolbar. I played around with it quite a bit and I was not able to find a limit to how many tabs I could open. I also found that there are arrows in the top right of the tabs. Essentially these allow you to move the tabs from left to right and vice versa if you get several tabs open and you exceed the size of the space allotted for the tabs. There is also an arrow that points downward and allows you to see a list of all the open tabs. You can select the tab that you want to look at from this drop down list and FeedDemon will make it the active tab. This feature really comes in handy when you have a lot of tabs open. You can quickly identify which tab you are looking for and go directly to it.

So next time I will get into the navigation of the Reading Pane.

FeedDemon – First Impressions

As I noted briefly in the last post since I have a NewsGator Online account FeedDemon automatically pulled all of my subscriptions and setup my category folders. The first thing that I noticed is that the feeds are located in a folder tree on the left sidebar, very similar to NewsGator Inbox (in Outlook) and NewsGator Online. One main difference is the My News folders are listed above the My Clippings folders. Interestingly what was My News in the other applications is simply “Subscriptions” in FeedDemon. Another thing that is different here is there is not a NewsPage per se. So if you select either Subscriptions folder from the folder tree you will not see a mix of all the posts that are in the category folders, but rather the reading pane will populate with a list of all of you subscriptions that have unread items. If you select Clippings you will see a list of clippings category folders that have unread items (this will not be by post, it will be by folder).

Overall the folder tree pretty much works the same as the online version and the plug-in. When you select a category folder you will see a list of headlines in the reading pane. From the reading pane you can tell FeedDemon if you would like to see just the headlines, headlines and a summary or the full post. This is done through the icons listed in the top right side of the header bar on that appears in the reading pane when you select a folder. You can easily switch between all 3 settings without any additional steps. Simply click on the full post icon to see the full posts, click the headlines icon to reduce all the posts to just the headlines.

You will also notice that next to these icons are the words Feed, Date and Title. These basically give you the ability to change the filter or the sorting of the headlines. If you have selected a category folder with more then one feed then you can select Feed and FeedDemon will automatically sort all the feeds to be in order based on the alphabetical order of the feed names in the category folder. If you select date (which is the default when you open FeedDemon) it will provide all of the posts in chronological order regardless of the feed that they originated from. If you select title FeedDemon will group all of the headlines with the same title. This is helpful because you will notice that many times news agencies will use the same news, for instance MSNBC and the NY Times might carry an Associated Press story so you can easily skip over the duplicates. You may also find that the same headline written by different authors or written as an update to an earlier post.

One thing that I really like is when you select one of the headlines it automatically launches a new tab within FeedDemon that takes you to the post sources and shows you the actual webpage. This is especially nice with posts that include pictures or a picture gallery. It appears that it uses the same settings as internet explorer so if you use Firefox as your primary browser do not be surprised if some of the settings are a little different.

Next time I will drill a little deeper into web page views and start looking at the tab functionality a little more.

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.

NewsGator Inbox – Wrap up

So this will basically wrap up the NewsGator Inbox series. There are a couple of things to note. While this is an abundantly useful tool and provides many options in order to customize your experience the plug-in does have an affect on Outlook. As I have stated in many of the options reviews, when you run one of the options it will lock Outlook so you will not be able to use it. The timing for each of these varies depending on how much data is being transferred. For instance I noticed that when all of my subscriptions updated it would take considerably longer then if just a couple updated. I also noticed in my task manager that when NewsGator Inbox looked for updates the memory usage would jump up about 20,000-50,000K, which would also affect the speed of not only Outlook but other programs running on the computer at the same time. I have experienced some slowdowns that were significant across my system on both the Dell and the Gateway. In addition the startup time is increased because NewsGator Inbox is just another thing that Outlook has to open before you get at what you want….emails or posts.

I also found that the new Outlook tools that were being rolled out, like Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, tended to create some extra problems for NewsGator Inbox, not to mention for Outlook itself. This is one of the inherent risks of utilizing this type of plug-in; it is dependent on the creator (in this case Microsoft) of the program that it plugs into and will require updates on the same schedule. In this case when I receive the MS Office Outlook Connector in one of my MS updates I ended up having to remove it and the NewsGator Inbox. Then I went back to NewsGator and downloaded the NewsGator Inbox again. It appeared to work fine after that.

Another interesting note is that on the Gateway the way that I have my anti-virus configured the system tends to flip out when the NewsGator Inbox looks for updates. The system tray jumps all over the place and there are several alerts that are created. It seems that if you have the sensitivity set high for your mail client scans that it will pick up the URLs that are embedded in the posts and treat them as a threat. Since this would generate the same number of alerts as the number of new posts downloaded I decided to reconfigure my Antivirus software to a less sensitive setting.

I still would recommend this tool though. It is ideal for those who cannot, or do not want to go online to get the news feeds. It is also useful if you do not want to add another application to your PC. So it can really be handy in a work setting because it looks and feels just like Outlook, you do not have to open any other applications and you do not have to open a browser. I am sure it can be tracked by your company’s security team but it is probably a lot lower on the radar then internet usage and traffic.

Now that I have completed the review of NewsGator Inbox, I will move on to FeedDemon. I would like to get a few more reviews under my belt and then I will develop a rating system. Please feel free to provide feedback on what I have posted so far and anything else you would like to see.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (Misc)

So I am wrapping up my review of the NewsGator Inbox drop down Options list today. The first of the remaining few topics is the “Alerts” function. As with all the options when Alerts is selected from the options list a new window will open. If you have any alerts they will be listed here. From the buttons on the right side of the menu, you will be able to delete each of the alerts, mark them all as read or clear all of them. On the lower right side you will also see a button for Alert Option. When this is selected a new window with a list of option will open. From here you can choose the type of alerts that you would like to see. All are selected by default so you will have to remove the checkmarks next to the alerts that you do not want to see. The last button simply closes the window.

The next item in the options list is the NewsGator Help. This will launch a Microsoft style help window and will populate the NewsGator Inbox Overview. This is very high level and provides basic descriptions about what the Inbox is, does and will do to your Outlook. Lower in the window you will find the Getting Started section. This section only provides a brief description of the Welcome window that opens when you first download the application. That is really the extent of the help that is offered. However there is another source for help which is probably better anyway. The next option in the list is for the NewsGator Forums. This will launch your default web browser and will automatically navigate to the forums page at newsgator.com. You can either browse the posts that are listed or you can go to the bottom of the forum section and put in keyword search to find what you are looking for. In the forum users are encouraged to post questions and they will receive replies either from other users or from the NewsGator staff. I found this very helpful, and just a quick update to the Post to Blog series, NewsGator is aware of the issues with posting to Blogger.com. It looks like Google has killed that function by purchasing Blogger and the post to blog function is no longer supported. So I stick with my original review to only use the Post to Blog with Wordpress.com or LiveJournal.

Anyway back to our topics for today. The next item in the options list allows you to manually check to see if the NewsGator team has released a new version. The next option from the list allows you to provide feedback to the NewsGator team about the Inbox. This will launch your default web browser and automatically navigate to their feedback form. You simply populate the fields and fill the comment boxes with all of your feedback and submit the form by clicking “Tell NewsGator” at the bottom. Lastly if you need to know what version of NewsGator Inbox you have simply select the last option from the dropdown list “About NewsGator Inbox” and a small window will appear with the version of NewsGator Inbox you are running.

That is pretty much it for the NewsGator Inbox. Next I will move on to the desktop application that NewsGator offers, FeedDemon.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (Post to Blog – Vol. 3)

So I have done some additional trials with the Post to Blog functionality, however I have not been very successful. Of the blogging services that are available I tried Blogger.com and spaces.msn.com. Unfortunately the only two that I have been able to get to work are the two that I discussed in the first post and Vol. 2 about the Post to Blog function; Wordpress.com and LiveJournal.

So I tried Blogger.com first. As I reported in the first posting no matter what I tried with changes to the settings in NewsGator Inbox and/or to my blogger settings, I always received the same error message. It was as though my user name and password was not recognized. I though maybe it was because I have my own URL for this blog that it would not work, but I have another blog through blogger and I received the same error when I tried to access that blog through the NewsGator Inbox.

When I tried the spaces.msn.com blog through NewsGator Inbox I received a different type of error message. It seemed that access was denied and the spaces server did not recognize my login ID or password. I tried several iterations just in case there was something that I entered incorrectly. It is weird though because when I log in directly the spaces server knew me.

So at this point, I would have to say that if you are planning to utilize the NewsGator Inbox in conjunction with a blog then I would suggest using Wordpress.com or LiveJournal as your blogging service. If you are using another blogging service then I hope you have more luck I did.

Next time I plan to finish out the NewsGator Inbox dropdown options.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (Post to Blog – Vol. 2)

So I am a little happier today with the Post to Blog tool. I was finally able to get another Blogging service besides Wordpress.com to work. The one that worked today is LiveJournal.com. If you want to see what a post looks like when it arrives, please feel free to see my LiveJournal blog. I still have not been able to get the link to Blogger.com to work yet. I will work on it and post an update at a later time.

So today I learned that there are two options that you can choose from in order to post to your blog. The first is simply a “New Post”. This is pretty much as it sounds. It is something that you type up and are posting to your blog as a new post. You will use the functionality within Outlook for creating a new message. There are some slight differences in how the window looks when are creating a post versus when you are sending a message. Basically the compose window is open just like with a message. The difference is that instead of send the word “Post” is listed.

After you complete your new blog post just select this post button. This will initiate the posting sequence. You will also notice that instead of a To: line, it will say “Post To: Posted Items”. This is because a new folder has been created in your folder tree in which these posts will be placed. This is sort of like the sent folder in your email. Once you select Post you will be asked which blog you want it to post to (this will happen even if you only have one Blog listed). If you have more then one you can post the same thing to all of them at once. If you only want to post to only one blog just select it from the list and click “Ok”.

On my test post I put a Category on it to see what would happen. I noticed that because the category I entered is not listed in my LiveJournal Blog I received an error message. The error asked if I wished to continue or cancel. I selected continue to see what it would do. Then it asked me if I wanted to continue with an uncategorized post, I pushed forward. I found that it simply removed the tags and then posted to my LiveJournal Blog anyway. Other then that the new Post was published exactly as I created it and it was placed into my LiveJournal Blog in the same format as the Blog.

So the other option is to “Quote Selected Item”. This allows you to create a new blog post using something that you found in the news delivered by one of your feeds. There are a couple of ways to initiate this. One way is to select post that you want to post to the blog, then go to the NewsGator Inbox drop down list and select “Post to my blog” and then select Quote Selected Item. The other option can be found on the NewsPage. As I described in the NewsPage review there is a small menu under each Headline listed. To post to your blog all you have to do is select the last icon that looks like a piece of paper with an arrow to the right. For both options a new message window opens with the post options. The window will also have the link to the story that you are quoting and the information sent as a part of the feed. You will also be able to put your own text in as well. When you select Post, NewsGator Inbox will follow the same post sequence that I described above for the New Post.

So next time hopefully I will be writing that I got the link to Blogger to work. Check back to find out.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (Post to Blog)

Today I tried the Posting Options within NewsGator and I have to say I was a little disappointed. Before I get into what I experiences, let me first explain a little bit about what you will encounter when you are configuring NewsGator to post to your blogs.

First as always you will select the NewsGator Inbox dropdown and select options. The Posting function is found at the bottom of the options menu. In my case when I select the Posting Options button an error appears (it happened on both the Dell and the Gateway and this could be what the problem is and is limiting my ability to post from NewsGator Inbox) that says NewsGator cannot find a part of the path for the plugin. When I select “OK” the Posting Options screen appears. Make sure that the plugin is selected in the drop down list. You will also find 3 additional check box options, one that will strip out the font face and size, one that ensures clean HTML and one that quotes the existing posts in line format. If you are like me you are asking yourself, what the heck does that mean? Well the first one takes out the information that says what font type and size the post should be when it arrives at your blog. If you select this, the blog settings will determine how the post will look. The next option, clean HTML, will basically remove the formatting and convert the information you are sending into Unicode so that there are no errors based on the format of the post when the blog updates. On the last one…I am really not sure what this does.

So the next step is to select the configure button that is located at the end of the dropdown menu. This will launch the setup wizard. After you click next you will be asked to select your blogging service. This was a rather limited list but it included most of the popular blogging services, like Blogger.com, LiveJournal, Wordpress.com, etc. Being addicted to blogging, I have various blogs for different purposes and in different formats, with that, I tried several of the options. The only one that I could get to work was my Wordpress.com blog. The others returned a remote server error stating (404) Not Found. If you are lucky enough to your blog to configure another window comes up. This new window will tell you that the login was successful and will have the specifics for your blog such as the name and url. You can also set how NewsGator publishes the post in your blog. By this I mean it can publish directly, post as a draft or you can set it to ask you if you want it to publish or create a draft each time. After you select how you want it to publish and you click next, a new window pops up and allows you to select the category that you want these posts to publish with. After that select next and the wizard will tell you that the configuration is complete and you can click finish.

Once you have completed the configuration, the Blog Manger screen will open. From here (if you can get it to configure more then one blogging service) you will see a list of all of your blogs. When you select a blog from the list the configuration info will populate on the right side. You can also make changes to your configuration for here. For instance, if you start out with the posts automatically publishing to your blog, then you can change it to publish to draft or to ask first. You will also be able to add or delete Blogs from your list by clicking on the + or – at the bottom of the Blogs list. If you click the + it will launch the setup wizard. You can get back to this screen by going to Options, Posting options and then click configure.

Although I was disappointed by this tool, I will try again to get this to work with more then just Wordpress.com. Next time I will spend a little more time reviewing this tool.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (Synchronization)

Today we will focus on the NewsGator Synchronization tool and the features included under the NewsGator Inbox options. As you will see, I found that some of these tools were lumped together, but at first glance seem out of place.

Once you select the Options from the NewsGator Inbox drop down list you will find the heading NewsGator Synchronization which is towards the bottom of the window. In similar fashion to the tools that I have recently reviewed, the NewsGator Synchronization tool will launch a new window when you select the “Synchronization” button. The first thing you will notice is the information in the fields is populated. Your username, the password (that you setup when you downloaded NewsGator Inbox or setup you online account), and lastly your location will all be present. Your location will usually be Inbox:”computername” where computername is whatever you (or your system administrator if using a work computer) have named your computer. You will also see a check box directly under “Location:” where you can tell NewsGator Inbox to sync when you close Outlook. Please note this will add additional time to your shutdown process when you close Outlook.

From here there are a number of additional options that you can use to customize the sync function. On the right side of the window you will see 3 buttons listed vertically. The first says “Update Account…”. When you select this button a new window will open and you will be able to enter you password (you will be asked to re-enter it) and then you can update your email address. Lastly you can tell the system if you want to receive NewsGator news via email. When you select “OK” it will update and sync with NewsGator Online. The next button down “Verify Account” basically pings the NewsGator server to verify that your user name and password are active. It will return a message in another window stating either that the username and password are verified or that it was unable to verify your information.

The third button “Change Location” launches another window with a listing of all the possible locations that you can select from. So for me I have multiple Inboxes, one on the Dell and one on the Gateway. I also have an inbox setup for FeedDemon since it will be the next RSS Service that I plan to review. Then there is a list of all the NewsGator options, like online, mobile, etc. You simply select one of the locations and click “OK”. You will be returned to the original Sync window. Select “OK” again and the Sync window will close, then you have to select “OK” again to close the options window. Once you have closed all the windows, it will appear that nothing has changed. To be honest, I am not sure what should have changed. If you are sync-ing with NewsGator Online then all of your feeds should be the same across all of the different locations (for me that would be on the Dell, the Gateway and Online). The only difference that I have based on location is the Linux feed from the NNTP Newsgroup is active on the Gateway, but it is setup not to sync with NewsGator Online as I pointed out in an earlier post. When I tried changing locations to the Gateway I expected to find the Linux feed. However it does not seem to work this way.

The next option is a button listed below the location and the checkbox, to Sync when Outlook closes, and says Reset Synchronization. This button basically does as expected and re-syncs your Inbox with the Online version. The last Synchronization Option is the “Advanced…” button. This button launches a new window called Attention Options which has a list of all of the different activities which you can track or record your attention. These include, clicking on a folder for a subscription, clipping posts, emailing posts, flagging posts, sending posts to a blog or unclipping posts. As I stated in the post about My Reading Attention I am not sure what this is for. I was unable to get the My Reading Attention to provide any reports other than the attention, so to track these items does not seem necessary. Maybe you will have better luck.

The next post will finish up the Options section and will hopefully be something interesting as I will attempt to utilize the Post to Blog function. So cross your fingers that there is something good in the news tomorrow.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (NewsPage)

In an attempt to be thorough and at the risk of being repetitive, I will look at the NewsPage tool from the NewsGator Inbox drop down list of options. Recently I reviewed the NewsPage features in great detail; in NewsGator Inbox - NewsPage and NewsGator Inbox - NewsPage (Cont’d). NewsGator has put a great deal of functionality in this tool.

As with the tools that I have already reviewed, when you select the options button from the NewsGator Inbox drop down list a new window will open. About halfway down you will find the Options window you will find the NewPage heading. Right below you will find the option to activate or disable the NewsPage function. You will also see the NewsPage Options button. When you select this button a new window will launch with a few additional options for you to choose from.

From the new window you can customize your news page. The general options that you can change include whether the Sidebar is included in the view or not. The sidebar is appears next to you headline view of posts when you select the folder. Another option that you can change is whether you want to refresh the list of posts when you select “Mark All Posts as Read” or if you delete them. Basically this refreshes the Headline list in the view pane with any additional unread posts. The last of the General Options tells the NewsPage to automatically mark posts as read if you move them to your clipped folders.

The next set of options are for the posts that are displayed on the NewsPage reading pane. There are really only 2 options. One allows you to set the number of unread posts that you want the NewsPage to display. This can be any number up to 100. The other option is defines how the posts are delivered. By this I mean whether the posts will be presented in the NewsPage view with Headlines only, Headlines and Summaries or with Full Posts.

For more detail check out the previous posts dedicated to the NewsPage. Next time I will review the Synchronization tool.

NewsGator Inbox – Options (Folders)

In an attempt to be thorough and at the risk of being repetitive, I will look at the Folders Options the NewsGator Inbox drop down list of options. This will expand on previous post which discussed the creation of folders by adding subscriptions and some of the tools inherent to Outlook and others that have been intergraded by the NewsGator Inbox Plugin.

So the Folders Options, found with in the main Options, will launch it’s own window when you click the Folder Options button. Within this window you can manipulate or change the Base News folder and the Base Clippings folder. So if you already have a news folder in your folder tree and you want the NewsGator inbox to reside under that folder you can press the Select button and move the Base folders to another high level folder within your folder tree. The Options window also lets you enable (or disable) whether it will ask if you want to delete the subscriptions of a folder when you delete the folder. In additions you can enable (or disable) whether the NewsPage feature is automatically enabled upon creation of new folders.

The bottom of the new window has and expanded view of the folder tree for the News Folders and if you click on the second tab you will see your clippings folders. So you can edit the options for both kinds of folders. If you select one of the folders from the list and then select the edit button, a new window will launch. This window allows you to change the folder name of the folder selected and enable the NewPage feature on that particular folder. When you click OK it will close and your updates will be represented in the folder list. If you select multiple folders you will not be able to change the names of any of the folders, but you will be able to setup the NewsPage feature as enabled or disabled.

The tab for the Clippings Folders operates in much the same way, the biggest difference is that when you select a folder and click edit instead of being able to enable the NewsPage feature, you can setup the clippings folder you select to share as an RSS feed. Once you have enabled the RSS feed feature the NewsGator Inbox will sync with NewsGator Online and you will be able to view the feed, copy the URL or email it to a friend. Basically this allows you to setup your own personal RSS feeds that you can share with your friends or anyone else you choose. Also like the News Folders, if you select multiple folders, you cannot change the name but you can set each of the folders up to be their own individual RSS feeds. Just to clarify, they will not be 1 RSS feed based on all of the folders that you selected. Rather each folder will become an RSS feed.

In the interest of time and so you don’t loose interest, I will stop here today and pickup with the NewsPage options in the next post.