Author: Nick Bradbury

Creator of HomeSite, TopStyle & FeedDemon for Windows, and Glassboard for Android. I'm a mobile developer at Automattic.

The Bradbury Family’s Rocking Weekend

Published on by Nick Bradbury5 Comments

This was a rock-and-roll weekend for the Bradbury household.  It started when my coworker Darrin Long let me know that Rush was playing at Red Rocks this summer.  I mentioned this to my wife, who suggested we both go, and bring our two kids with us.  I was able to get four pre-sale tickets, so fellow NewsGator-ites be forewarned: there will be a Bradbury invasion in June!

The musical mood continued the next day, when I broke down and bought a copy of Rock Band for the Xbox 360.  This turned out to be the perfect game for our family: I was on lead guitar, my son played bass, my daughter banged the drums, and my wife courageously handled the vocals.  It was a blast, although I have to admit, it was weird hearing my lovely wife singing Radiohead’s "Creep."

That night I took a break from Rock Band to attend a Foo Fighters concert here in Nashville.  I like the Foo Fighters, but I’m not a huge fan, and I wasn’t expecting too much from the show.  It turned out to be a great concert, though, especially the acoustic section.  And I believe it was the first time I’ve seen a triangle solo :)

The following morning the Rock Band fun continued after I bought a bunch of new songs on Xbox Live.  My son and I blistered our fingers playing Metallica’s "And Justice for All" and "Blackened" on hard several times in a row.  We’re both itching to play again, but we’ll have to wait until next weekend, because we have a "no video games during the school week" rule here (a rule I’m cursing as much as my son is right now).

My Favorite Macworld Photo…

Published on by Nick Bradbury4 Comments

…is this one, which I took inside an elevator at the Marriott hotel near the conference center.  The elevator was fitted with a display screen which usually showed advertisements and news headlines, but for several hours it showed a Windows application error dialog instead.

Needless to say, Macworld attendees got a big kick out of this.

A Windows Developer Returns from Macworld

Published on by Nick Bradbury6 Comments

Last week I attended my first Macworld, but it won’t be my last.  I had a great time, in large part due to the hospitality of Brent F. Simmons and a host of his fellow Mac developers (see you at Denny’s next year, folks!).

The announcements from Macworld this year paled in comparison to last year’s iPhone announcement, but the buzz among attendees was still very high.  It was especially high among developers, which I found somewhat surprising since my impression is that Apple doesn’t do nearly as much for third-party developers as Microsoft does.  In fact, more than one Mac developer I spoke with stated that they develop for the Mac not because of Apple but in spite of it.

Of course, it’s hard not to be excited when you see your potential customer base growing over the next few years.  Several developers I met believe – as I do – that the number of Mac users will increase substantially, thanks in large part to the fact that more and more people are being exposed to the Apple UI via the iPod and the iPhone.

Last week I also had a brief tour of the Mac development tools, and I have to say, I found them underpowered compared to Windows development tools.  What I saw of the development process reminded me of the early days of Visual C++ Windows development.  However, it could be argued that this is offset by the powerful APIs that the Mac exposes to its developers.  And I have to admit, I could be convinced to downgrade my development tools to get access to thing like Core Animation.

Speaking of Core Animation, my favorite product demo at Macworld was Plasq’s upcoming Comic Life Magic, which really shows off how to effectively use Core Animation to improve a product’s UI.  I’d never get any work done if I had that application.

Of course, the downside of Macworld for me was that – as with pretty much every tech conference I attend – connectively was dismal.  So, my apologies if you’re waiting for me to reply to your email, blog comment, forum post, etc.  I’m getting to it, I promise :)

A Windows Developer Goes to Macworld

Published on by Nick Bradbury7 Comments

That’s right, despite being a Windows developer since the early 1990’s, I’m headed to Macworld.  No, I’m not dropping Windows (at least not yet), but I do want to shake myself up a bit by hanging out with "the other side" for a while. 

If you’re also at Macworld, you should be able to spot me without much trouble – I’ll be one of few people there huddled over a Dell laptop.

PS: I’m going to throw a hissy fit if I don’t come home with an iPhone SDK.

Positive Reviews of the New, Free FeedDemon

Published on by Nick Bradbury11 Comments

Wow – the response to the new, free FeedDemon 2.6 has been tremendous!  I hope you’ll forgive me a little self-promotion, but I wanted to share a sampling of the reaction to the new release…

Development on a Shoestring:

"You need to download FeedDemon now!  I don’t care what other RSS reader you use, this one is better. The only reason I could conceive before now not to use it was the cost, but seeing as that’s now no longer an issue, everyone needs to use FeedDemon."

Family Man Librarian:

"Updates to feeds are incredibly fast, much faster than I have ever experienced in any other reader.  This is a huge deal for me and is the main reason I have often become infuriated with Bloglines in particular…Did I also mention that FeedDemon has built-in integration with my favorite desktop-based blogging tool, Windows Live Writer?"

publicvoid.dk:

"FeedDemon has made me use RSS more than I did in the past because I don’t have to worry about reading my feed in multiple locations…while Google has done everything possible to make this happen in their web interface it’s simply no match for a well designed desktop application."

CyberNet:

"We have been using FeedDemon for quite awhile (we’re actually paid customers), and it is by far the best feed reader for Windows. It can handle hundreds of feeds without stuttering, and the fact that it’s now free makes it irresistible!"

Not So Relevant:

"I have seen blog posts appearing almost two hours earlier in FeedDemon than in Google Reader….FeedDemon is a very good feed reader."

WinExtra:

"I’m definitely a winner when it comes to my favorite RSS client…Thanks to Nick and the whole NewsGator team for this ongoing gift."

The Global Geek Podcast:

"What the heck are you doing reading this still? Go see why I think FeedDemon is the best feed reader that you can get for FREE!"

Digital Inspiration:

"The new upgrades from web based RSS readers like Google Reader or Bloglines are tempting but none of them still match the desktop based FeedDemon."

Wolfstar:

"I’ve long been a fan of FeedDemon as in my opinion it is by far and away the best RSS reader on the market. So good that it was worth paying for, even though most of its competitors were free.  Well FeedDemon is even better as NewsGator (the company that acquired the product) has made it free."

Explananda:

"I’ve used FeedDemon…as my RSS aggregator for several years now. I see that it’s now being offered for free, which is a very good deal indeed, since it is one of the only pieces of software on my computer that I was happy to pay for."

Stealthpuppy:

"Great news – the gold standard of RSS/Atom/Feed readers on Windows is now free. I’ve been using FeedDemon for two years now and I can’t praise it enough. The free love continues too, because NewsGator Go! and NetNewsWire are also free."

Peter Holloway:

"Way Hay! My favourite RSS reader is now available for free…This is a great piece of software, and to have it as a free download is even better."

PreMagination:

"FeedDemon is one seriously polished, top notch app, that gets even better because the NewsGator backend keeps everything synchronized across multiple platforms."

Many thanks to everyone who took the time to blog about FeedDemon, especially long-time customers who continue to use and recommend it!

One Problem With Making Your Software Free…

Published on by Nick Bradbury13 Comments

…is that it’s easy to dismiss what people want, because they’re not giving you money for it.

Sure, I enjoy making money as much as the next guy or gal, but I’m really doing this because it’s fun.  I like writing software, and I’m going to keep writing it until my fingers break off. 

There’s no point in creating software in a vacuum – you’ve got to make it useful, make it scratch an itch, for it to be truly rewarding.  And to do that, you’ve got to listen.  You’ve got to pay attention to what people are asking for and what they’re complaining about.

So, regardless of whether you’ve paid for FeedDemon in the past or you’re a new user now that it’s free, I’m not going to stop listening.  It wouldn’t be fun otherwise.

Why Use a Desktop RSS Reader?

Published on by Nick Bradbury28 Comments

Over the past few years, I've noticed a number of people asking why anyone would use a desktop RSS reader.  These comments generally focused on two points:

  1. Web-based readers are also free, and unlike desktop apps, you can access them from anywhere
  2. Desktop readers have to constantly retrieve feeds, causing unnecessary bandwidth burden on the local client as well as the sites they're downloading from

Both points are easily dismissed by the fact that FeedDemon offers synchronization.  You can read your feeds on multiple computers and have your subscriptions and read items automatically synchronized between them.

And synchronization means that our desktop readers don't retrieve feeds from their source sites.  Instead, they're downloaded through the web-based synchronization engine, which makes feed retrieval exceptionally fast.  Unlike non-synched desktop aggregators, synched readers don't have to download every single feed to see if something's new.  Instead, every few minutes they query the synchronization service to find out whether any of the user's feeds have new content, and if so, they then request the new content (and only the new content) from just those feeds.

Those points aside, there are a number of reasons why many people prefer desktop RSS readers (so much so that they were willing to pay for a desktop reader like FeedDemon despite free web-based alternatives). Long-time FeedDemon user Amit Agarwal did a nice job highlighting some of these reasons in his blog earlier this week, but here are few more:

  1. Most web-based readers can't subscribe to secure feeds.  I don't know about you, but that's a show-stopper for me – I have a number of password-protected feeds that I absolutely have to keep track of.
  2. Web-based readers can't access "behind-the-firewall" feeds.  For example, we have an internal server which runs FogBugz, and I'm subscribed to several FogBugz feeds which alert me to problem reports and inquiries regarding my software.  I can't add these critically important feeds to a web-based reader.
  3. Most web-based readers offer no offline support, and even when they do, offline reading is still far better in FeedDemon (this screencast shows why).  FeedDemon doesn't just download your articles so you can read them offline – it can also prefetch the images they contain and the pages they link to, enabling you to browse the web without an Internet connection.  Your web-based reader can't do that. This is one of those features that you don't think you'll need – until you do.
  4. Many desktop readers are full-fledged web browsers, complete with access to your favorites, tabbed browsing, etc.  In fact, FeedDemon is my web browser – I rarely use an external browser anymore.  If you haven't used a browser that's also a powerful RSS reader, you're missing out.
  5. Desktop readers have access to local resources, enabling a slew of features that aren't available in web-based readers.  For example, desktop readers can integrate with your favorite blogging client, or download podcasts and copy them to your iPod or WMP device.  NetNewsWire even integrates with iPhoto, Twitterrific, Mail, and iCal.
  6. Desktop readers give you a choice about which feeds to keep completely private.  Want your reading habits regarding a subset of your FeedDemon subscriptions kept completely on your local computer?  Just put them in a folder that's not synchronized.
  7. And of course, speed is often another benefit.  Web app performance has become a lot better over the past few years, but we're not at the point where JavaScript in the browser can compete with native performance :)

Now, I'm not knocking web-based readers – after all, we offer one of our own – but people who choose to use a desktop reader have good reasons for doing so.

PS: As I've written before, I think the so-called battle between web and desktop apps is overblown.  It's a hybrid world, not an either-or situation.

FREE Demon? Yes, FeedDemon is Now Free!

Published on by Nick Bradbury49 Comments

That’s right, FeedDemon is now free.  As in, you don’t have to pay for it anymore.  Just download it and use it free of charge.

And we’re also making NetNewsWire, NewsGator Inbox and NewsGator Go free.  In other words, all of NewsGator’s consumer RSS readers are free.

If you don’t care about the details, you can stop reading now and simply download the new FeedDemon 2.6 (for free, of course). If you’re using a previous version of FeedDemon, you should install v2.6 directly on top of it.

…

OK, if you’re still reading this, chances are you have a bunch of questions.  We have a FAQ on our site which should answer most of them, but there’s one question I’d like to address here:

"Is this some sneaky ploy to stop development of FeedDemon and your other consumer products?"

Good lord, no.  I realize that some companies have made their software free as a first step towards dumping it entirely, but that’s not the case here.  If it was, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post – I’d be bitching at the top of my lungs in some bar somewhere.

This is a major investment on our part.  If anything, the pace of development will only get faster.  NewsGator CTO Greg Reinacker goes into this further, but basically, there are two reasons we’re doing this crazy thing.

1. It’s the Enterprise, Stupid

I joined NewsGator back in 2005 because I believed in their strategy.  It was clear to me that NewsGator wasn’t just another startup hoping to be acquired before they burned through their angel money.  And a big part of that strategy involved going after the enterprise market.

That strategy has paid off – our products for businesses are making great strides into the enterprise, and we’re increasingly selling our services to large companies.  Getting our name known in the enterprise is among our primary goals, and making our consumer products free is a great way to accomplish that goal.

2. Your Attention is Valuable

When I first blogged about "attention" back in 2004, the idea that your attention data – that is, information about what you’re paying attention to – is valuable seemed strange to a lot of folks.

It doesn’t seem like such a strange idea these days, though.  Since then we’ve seen a number of companies – including Google – place great value in what people are paying attention to.  In return for your attention data, they give you free stuff.  As long as you don’t have to give up your privacy, it’s a pretty good deal for both sides. 

In some ways that’s what we’re doing.  We believe that information about what people are reading, emailing, clipping, etc., is valuable enough that we’re willing to trade our consumer RSS readers for it.  And the more users we have, the better able we are to calculate relevance and importance.

PS: Your Privacy is Valuable, Too

I want to emphasize that we’re not about to use the fact that our software is free as an excuse to violate anyone’s privacy.  I wish that could go without saying, but violations of privacy involving customer data have made headlines this year, so I know this is a sensitive topic.  It’s also a topic I care deeply about, as a quick search of this blog for previous posts about privacy or attention should illustrate.

Simply put, we believe we can greatly improve our products – both consumer and enterprise – by surfacing the content that people are paying attention to, and by making recommendations based on what you’ve read in the past.  Aggregate or anonymous data is the only data we’ll ever share in order to accomplish that.

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