This is awesome news. By releasing their best of breed applications (okay, maybe I’m a little biased, but probably not) into the free-as-in-beer wild, RSS uptake should increase because the cost of entry has just dropped to near-zero (still have to pay for that net connection, though).

No morel lame built-into-the-browser-or-mail-client RSS for you. Do yourself a favor and grab a great RSS reader right now.

My condolences to the NewsGator tech support team. :)

December 6, 2006 is my last day at NewsGator.

I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Nick Bradbury better as well as work closely with the rest of the team at NewsGator. And it’s been very cool participating in the (lea/blee)ding edge of the RSS space. But after a year-and-a-half, I’ve decided that working from home just isn’t for me. As I like to joke (and my geek physique confirms), I miss birthday cake.

Now that I’m back in Olympia (after that bit of adventure of moving to Las Vegas which was the motivation for getting the job with NewsGator in the first place), an opportunity came up to go back to work in the IT department at the same school district that I left. I really enjoyed that environment and doing my small part for education, so I jumped at the chance. (Remember to vote “YES” on any school district bonds or levies that finance technology. The job you save may be mine. ;))

Special thanks to Ronnie Gilbertson (get a blog, dude) and Jonathon McDougall for being such a great team to work with. Those guys really care about NewsGator’s customers and I feel good knowing that they’re still there as our advocates.

I’m still a TopStyle and FeedDemon fanboy, so I’ll be hanging out in the forums; I’ll just be doing support for free again. (I still expect to have access to pre-releases, Mr. Bradbury.)

I really am much obliged, NewsGator. Thanks for the pleasant stay.

So today was the first day I really got a look at the much praised new feature that allows you to choose a default RSS application for handling feed links. This is a real boon to folks who use dedicated readers such as FeedDemon. I’ve been using Koz’ Feed Your Reader extension for Firefox 1.x so I’ve never actually missed this functionality.

But it looks like they fell short in supporting web-based aggregators. Bloglines, My Yahoo! and Google Reader are included by default, but no mention of my mothership – NewsGator. I’m sure it’s just an oversight.

No matter, one of our intrepid tech support folks – Jonathon McDougall – has whipped up a KB article that includes a JavaScript you can click on to assign NewsGator Online as your default RSS reader. If you’re not hip to letting JavaScript do these kinds of things on your behalf, I found this blog post from Amit Agarwal that shows how to manually edit your Firefox config to point to other non-default readers.

Default Technorati tags:
firefox newsgator rss reader feeddemon koziarski

As Nick reports, NewsGator is looking for an experienced Delphi programmer to pick up the reins on TopStyle development, and probably kick in some assistance on FeedDemon.

This is a great opportunity to work with me as uber-TopStyle-user extraordinare (and, yeah, Nick too). And if you get on board soon enough, we’ll throw in a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. It might even look good on your resume.

Check it out, and tell them I sent you.

Technorati goodies:
topstyle, feeddemon, nick bradbury, newsgator, denver jobs, delphi programming, red hot chili peppers

With all the parenting you do at the office, I’m sure you’re more than ready for NGBaby2. :)

This is the first version of the popular Mac newsreader released under the NewsGator banner and includes synchronization with NewsGator’s services.

I figured since I’ve got to support the program, it would probably be a good idea to use it exclusively for awhile. I’m still a dyed-in-the-wool FeedDemon user (whether or not it pays my bills) but NNW is a really sweet app that does some things that I’m looking forward to seeing in future versions of FeedDemon (especially Smart Lists), at least until I go Mac-only. (Although I don’t see that happening any time soon since the new baby will likely cut into my geek-toy budget pretty heavily. :) )

Last week, Nick Bradbury opened the doors to a handful of long-time users to get their feedback prior to releasing a full public beta of FeedDemon 2.0 . He also gave them permission to blog about it.

Since I’m so biased, I try to avoid talking publicly about what changes I think need to be in FeedDemon. I prefer to let the customers do the talking. (That doesn’t mean I don’t give Nick my .02, though. ;))

Judi Sohn – A sneak peek at FeedDemon 2.0

Spyder – (one-half of the FeedDemon support farm team) posts twice:

• FeedDemon 2.0
• Signs of good design

Stefano Rausch – Testing FeedDemon 2.0

They’re giving away some cool stuff, so if you’ve got the code, you can get the goods.

Of course, if you’d like to submit the app under my name, I’d be happy to link back to you from the first blog post I make from my new Powerbook. :)

Any NewsGator Online subscription (free or paid) or FeedDemon customer can use FeedStation.