Amit Agarwal highlights 10 features in FeedDemon that set it apart from the competition. Thanks, Amit!
PS: I know my blog has been quiet for a while – it’s because there’s a new version of FeedDemon coming this week :)
Author: Nick Bradbury
Creator of HomeSite, TopStyle & FeedDemon for Windows, and Glassboard for Android. I'm a mobile developer at Automattic.
Brent Simmons is a Mac Virus
Just over two years ago, Brent Simmons – creator of NetNewsWire for the Mac – joined NewsGator, and since then I’ve noticed shiny new Apple computers slowly but surely infiltrating our office.
Like a virus, Brent has secretly spread his Apple cult within our formerly Windows-only company. And to top it off, our founder now shows all the signs of becoming a Mac zealot.
Oh, and I’ve been infected, too: I’m seriously thinking about buying a Mac Pro after FeedDemon 2.6 is released. Whether I’ll develop anything for the Mac remains to be seen, but I have to admit I’d like to escape the DLL and device driver hell of Windows for a while.
ANN: FeedDemon 2.6 RC4
The fourth release candidate of FeedDemon 2.6 is now available – for download details and release notes, stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site.
Enterprise Software *Should* be Sexy
The recent ScobleMeme™ about why enterprise software isn’t sexy spawned an interesting conversation, but much of that conversation focused on the differences between consumer and enterprise software and failed to address the question, “should enterprise software be sexy?”
The answer, of course, is yes. While it’s true that many enterprise applications are decided upon and purchased by people who will never use them, the fact remains that countless poor schlubs will be forced to use them. And if you develop enterprise software, you have an obligation to these poor schlubs.
Years ago, before I entered the commercial software world, I worked in the bowels of corporate America, where the software I used was mandated by the powers-that-be. One of these mandated applications was a god-awful, designed-to-be-painful data entry program that treated its users the same way that a wolf treats a piece of meat. The sadists who designed this software clearly didn’t care about the end users. Sure, the application had all the features required by the people holding the purse strings, but it had the usability of a dead slug.
This horrible, punishing piece of software made my job suck. Seriously, I’d come home from work and need an hour-long bitch session about this application just to wind down.
There are plenty of arguments in favor of creating user-friendly enterprise software, but the one that seems to be neglected is the simple fact that you improve peoples’ lives by making software that’s a joy to use. If you’re an enterprise developer and you’ve forgotten that simple fact, then you’re adding to the world of frustration that too many non-techies are forced to live in.
And one day, one of those frustrated users may become a developer himself, and then use his blog to attack you and your shoddy, thoughtless work.
PS: Calling software "sexy" sounds weird to me. People can be sexy, but software can merely be attractive.
Three Things You Should Know About NewsGator
Leland Rucker on 3 Things You Should Know About NewsGator:
"Our datacenter processes over 1.8 million feeds daily, resulting in over 7 million new content items. We archive content and have 3 terabytes of content that we make available to our partners. The archive content is increasingly being used to power features for discovery and relevancy of content."
How Does FeedDemon Calculate Attention?
In a recent blog comment, Paul M. Watson asked:
"I’d be interested in more detail on how you compute the scores [which determine a feed’s attention]. Nothing that gives away your competitive edge of course but just some generalizations of what you are tracking that amounts to attention."
FeedDemon’s algorithm for determining a feed’s attention rank has changed since I first wrote about it, but it’s still very simple. I certainly don’t think I’ll be giving away any competitive edge by posting details, so here it is:
Feed Attention Rank = (NumFeedVisitsExplicit div 2) + (NumFeedVisits div 4) + (NumPostVisits div 5) + (NumFollowedLinks div 3) + (NumEnclosureVisits div 2) + (NumPostsEverFlagged * 2) + (NumPostsEmailed * 2) + (NumPostsAddedToNewsBins * 2) + (NumPostsAddedToSharedNewsBins * 3) + (NumPostsAddedToWatches)
Where:
NumFeedVisitsExplicit = #times user visited a feed by explicitly clicking it
NumFeedVisits = #times user visited a feed through automatic navigation (ex: clicking "Next")
NumPostVisits = #times a post in that feed was visited
NumFollowedLinks = #times an external hyperlink inside a post was clicked
NumEnclosureVisits = #enclosures (podcasts) downloaded from the feed
NumPostsEverFlagged = #posts user ever flagged
NumPostEmailed = #posts forwarded via email
NumPostsAddedToNewsBin = #posts added to a clippings folder ("news bin" in v2.5)
NumPostsAddedToSharedNewsBin = #posts added to a clippings folder that has a shared RSS feed
NumPostsAddedToWatches = #posts picked up by a FeedDemon watch
One of Paul’s concerns was that high output blogs which he skims through without reading would get ranked too highly. I attempt to counteract this in several ways, with admittedly mixed success. The most obvious way is by giving post visits the lowest weight in the algorithm (NumPostVisits div 5). And I give the highest weight to actions such as flagging, clipping or emailing a post, since those actions are proof that you find the post valuable.
One potentially important thing that’s missing here is that I don’t "decay" attention over time, but in reality this happens automatically. For example, if you stop paying attention to a feed that has a high attention rank, its rank will stop increasing, whereas the rank of feeds you do still pay attention to will continue to increase.
This is illustrated by the screenshot from my recent post about the attention report in FeedDemon 2.6, which shows that I was paying the most attention to the feed for the TopStyle Support Forum (since TopStyle 3.5 was in beta at the time). Now that TopStyle 3.5 has been released and I’m working on FeedDemon 2.6, the TopStyle feed has fallen to second place behind my feed for the FeedDemon Support Forum:
I’m curious as to how accurate FeedDemon customers find the new attention report. Does it for the most part reflect the attention you’re paying to your feeds, or do you find it wildly out of sync with the feeds you’re really paying attention to?
Flushed with Inspiration
Where do you get your ideas?
In my case, ideas for new features often come to me when I’m away from the keyboard. For example, the idea for FeedDemon’s new "panic button" – which appears to be a popular feature – popped into my head in the unlikeliest of places.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the "panic button" idea came to me late at night, just before I went to bed. As I was…uhhm…sitting on the can.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t thinking about FeedDemon at the time. Yet without any warning, I suddenly had a fully-formed feature in my head. I guess you could call it pot luck.
How about you – do you ever get ideas in unexpected places?
ANN: FeedDemon 2.6 RC2a Pre-Release
The second release candidate of FeedDemon 2.6 is now available. Changes since RC1 include:
- New Panic Button optionally warns when you have a ton of unread items and offers to mark them (or a subset of them) as read
- "Export Subscriptions" now enables exporting as APML (experimental)
- Faster updating of feeds (much faster, in some cases)
- Feed reports (Attention report, Dinosaurs report, etc.) can now be grouped by folder
…and the usual embarrassing assortment of bug fixes.
For download details and complete change notes, please see the FeedDemon Beta Site.
NewsGator’s Free iPhone RSS Reader Updated
For the past few weeks I’ve been using – and loving – a beta version of our iPhone RSS reader, and according to our mobile guru Kevin Cawley, the new version went live last night. The updated version is even faster than before, and has some really nice additions.
My favorite improvement is how it’s smart enough to return to your list of feeds after you mark the last item in a feed or folder as read (I’m a fan of anything that saves a click, especially on a mobile device). And I love how articles I clip on the iPhone reader automatically show up in FeedDemon’s synched clippings.
If you’re looking for a great RSS reader for your iPhone (or any mobile device, for that matter), give it a try at http://m.newsgator.com/
Feed Overload? Hit the Panic Button!
If you’ve been reading feeds for a while, chances are you’ve experienced feed overload. It happens to the best of us. Perhaps we take a break for a day or two, and when we come back to our aggregator we find hundreds of unread items waiting for us.
Even though we don’t have to read them all, we’re so used to email that it’s still stressful seeing so many unread items. That’s when it’s time to hit the panic button.
The "panic button" in this case is a feature I’ve added to the latest version of FeedDemon. FeedDemon will automatically detect when you’ve got a ton of unread items, and then offer to mark them (or a subset of them) as read. Here’s how it looks:
You can, of course, turn off the automatic detection and simply display the "panic button" whenever you like – but in my case, I like having it pop up and offer to mark stuff as read. And I don’t have to be concerned about missing some important thread just because I let the panic button mark items read, since I can still use FeedDemon’s "popular topics" to uncover the things people are talking about.