Author: Nick Bradbury

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

Gnomedex 5.0 Looks Great

Published on by Nick Bradbury4 Comments

Wow – has anyone else been watching the list of attendees at this year’s Gnomedex? It’s like a “who’s who” of the blogging world. Here are just a few of the people who are planning to be there:

Gnomedex is at the top of my list of favorite conferences, not just because of the people attending, but because I always learn something new there. For example, last year’s Gnomedex is where I learned about podcasting, which resulted in me adding podcast downloading and synching to FeedDemon.

And it looks like there will be a lot of RSS aggregator developers there, too – including Brent Simmons (NetNewsWire), Greg Reinacker (NewsGator), Mark Fletcher (Bloglines), Tim Catlin (Rojo), J.J. Allaire (Onfolio) and (of course) myself (FeedDemon).

If you’re thinking of attending, you might want to register now – I wouldn’t be surprised if this fills up soon.

RSS, Spam and Spyware

Published on by Nick Bradbury21 Comments

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m a firm believer in using blogs and RSS for distributed conversation. So, I’d like to start a conversation about the threat that spam and spyware pose to our little syndicated world. I brought this topic up with several companies who were at the Syndicate Conference, and I was disturbed to discover how few of them are even thinking about this pending problem.

Most of them replied, “Spam problem? But there isn’t one – if someone’s feed contains spam, everyone will just unsubscribe!” Well, yeah – but only if we subscribe to individual feeds, which I believe will take a backseat to aggregated feeds. I’ll use my own experience with the NewsGator acquisition as an example: hundreds of blogs contained news of the acquisition, but I was subscribed to very few of their feeds. Instead, I subscribed to dynamic search feeds – that is, keyword-based feeds powered by RSS search engines – which enabled me to listen in on the conversation. Very powerful indeed – but unfortunately, very spammable.

There are already fake spam blogs, many of which have RSS feeds. Most of the ones I’ve seen were created to influence search engine rankings, but it’s only a matter of time before they use their feeds for delivering spam (I’ll wager that some of them already do). These fake blogs are easy to set up, so as soon as one is taken down, it will re-appear somewhere else (much like their spyware-filled brethren, the warez sites), making it tricky to simply filter them out by their subdomain name. My guess is that the main reason we don’t see more RSS spam is simply because spammers are waiting for it to be profitable. Now that conferences such as Syndicate are attended not just by geeks and developers but also by investors, they’ve got to be thinking that the time is almost here. Create a bunch of fake blogs littered with popular keywords, and let their feeds be picked up by the RSS search engines (to their credit, some of the RSS search engine companies I talked with are already tackling this problem).

Even if I’m way off base about how spam will come to RSS, we all know that spammers will find a way to jump on the RSS bandwagon. Given past history, every new social technology needs to think about spam right from the start, or else risk being crippled by it (side note: many implementations of tagging also strike me as being spammable).

Related to this is the fact that RSS enclosures (a.k.a. “podcasts”) must look attractive to spyware creators. Before I added podcast features to FeedDemon, I took a look at how a few of the existing tools were handling them. To my surprise, security didn’t seem to be a big concern – they’d even download EXE enclosures, perhaps assuming that the user’s anti-virus software would stop them from being executed if they were malware. Couple automatic enclosure downloading with dynamic search feeds which contain enclosures, and you’ve got a great spyware delivery system. This is why I made sure that FeedDemon used a safe list for downloading enclosures.

If you make a living from RSS, I hope you’ll join in this conversation – either here or in your own blog – and let everyone know whether you’re thinking about this problem (or, just let me know I’m full of it if you disagree that it’s a threat).

Thanks

Published on by Nick Bradbury3 Comments

Watching news of my acquisition by NewsGator travel around the blogosphere was an amazing experience for me. I’ve seen other stories spread like wildfire before, but this was the first time I’ve seen it happen with news that involved me directly. I tried to add a “thank you” comment to every blog that posted about the acquisition, but after a few hours it had spread to hundreds of sites, and I just wasn’t able to add the personal touch to so many places. So, for all of you who blogged the news and had such nice things to say about me and my software, thank you. It’s incredibly rewarding to see such goodwill directed my way, and it’s especially gratifying to see that I’ve earned the trust of so many people (on the internet, you’re nothing without trust).

There were, of course, a number of flames about the acquisition, some of them very personal, but that’s to be expected. More importantly, there have been a number of comments from those concerned about the deal, and I’ll do my best to address these here over the next few weeks. But please bear with me if I don’t address your concerns right away – we’re still working out many of the details, and I don’t think it’s wise for me to talk about things that haven’t been settled yet.

In the meantime, I hope those of you with an opinion about the acquisition will keep blogging about it. I’m listening to the conversation, and so are my co-workers at NewsGator. We want to make sure we build what you want, and to do that, we need to hear about it! This to me is the coolest thing about syndication: the fact that everyone (even your competitors) can learn by listening to – and joining in – the conversation.

Unfortunately, that also makes RSS an attractive target for spammers, and based on discussions I had at Syndicate, it seems that very few people are even thinking about the threat of spammers yet, let alone doing anything about it. But that will be the subject of my next post…

NewsGator Acquires FeedDemon, TopStyle…and Me!

Published on by Nick Bradbury139 Comments

Yes, it’s true: NewsGator has acquired FeedDemon and TopStyle, and brought me on board in the process.

Wow! How did this happen?

As regular visitors to my support forums know, the biggest request – by far – that FeedDemon customers have had is the ability to synchronize their subscriptions between multiple computers. They use FeedDemon on one PC at home, on another at the office, on a laptop while traveling, etc., and they want their feeds to be synched between them.

If someone reads an item on one computer, it shouldn’t show up as unread on another computer. And when they subscribe to a feed, it should automatically appear on any computer they use. Basically, provide the convenience of a web-based aggregator with the power and speed of a Windows desktop application.

I toyed with various hack-ish ways to do this, and even considered creating my own web-based sync service, but in the end came to the conclusion that to really do this right, I needed to join forces with someone who already had the server-side piece in place.

Why NewsGator? I thought they were just an Outlook plug-in?

I used to think that, too. But shortly after I decided I needed to join forces with someone, I read this post in NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker’s blog, in which he laid out NewsGator’s plans. This post really opened my eyes to where they were headed – let’s just say, I was impressed.

Funny enough, soon afterwards I got an email from Greg asking whether I’d consider joining forces with NewsGator. Truth is, if I hadn’t already read Greg’s blog post and been so impressed with the direction NewsGator was headed, chances are I would’ve turned him down – but because I read that post, I flew out to meet with the folks at NewsGator (score one for transparency through blogging!).

Long story short: we agreed that I should come on board and bring FeedDemon and TopStyle with me.

So what does this mean for FeedDemon customers?

I think you’re going to like this :)

NewsGator uses a subscription model, and FeedDemon will become part of their subscription plans. All existing FeedDemon customers will get a two-year business standard subscription for free – and this includes upgrades to FeedDemon. In other words, if you’ve already bought FeedDemon, you’ll get brand new versions of FeedDemon and a subscription to NewsGator Online free for the next two years.

Are there going to be changes in FeedDemon as a result of this?

Certainly. The most obvious will be that FeedDemon will integrate very closely with NewsGator’s online synchronization platform, enabling using FeedDemon on multiple computers while maintaining state between all of them. You could even use FeedDemon on your home computer, NewsGator Outlook Edition while at work, and NewsGator Mobile Edition while traveling, and still have everything synched between devices.

Beyond that, having a server-side piece offers a lot of interesting possibilities. Coupling a rich desktop client with a first-rate server-side aggregator provides the best of both worlds: you get the power of a Windows application and all the flexibility of a web-based approach. There have been a number of features I’ve been wanting to add to FeedDemon that required a server-side piece which I can now provide.

While these changes won’t happen overnight, we’ve already been working hard on a new release of FeedDemon – version 1.51 – which will include much better integration than currently exists. You should expect to see the first beta of FeedDemon 1.51 a couple of weeks from now.

And what about TopStyle customers?

While the acquisition obviously came to pass because of FeedDemon, NewsGator has made it clear that they’re committed to TopStyle as well. This was an important part of the deal for me. I use TopStyle every single day, and I personally couldn’t work without it. I’m already developing TopStyle 3.12, a free upgrade for existing TopStyle customers which will be released as a NewsGator product.

Oh, and you’ll get the same deal as FeedDemon customers: a free two-year subscription. For the record, TopStyle has a lot of users – even more than FeedDemon – so this is a very generous offer from the folks at NewsGator, and it illustrates their commitment to the product.

So, what about you, Nick? Are you moving? And will you still be doing support?

Although I’ll be working for NewsGator (my official title is “Architect of Client Products”), I’ll be staying here in Tennessee, with frequent trips to NewsGator’s offices in Denver.

I’ll continue to be active in the support forums – I need to, in order to understand what my customers need – but I’ll be handing over the support reigns to the folks at NewsGator. In fact, NewsGator has already taken over some of the support for FeedDemon – they’re the “reinforcements” I mentioned in this post last month. The mysterious “Ron” I talked about is actually NewsGator’s Ronnie Gilbertson, who will no doubt be relieved that he’s no longer a secret!

And to illustrate their commitment to FeedDemon and TopStyle, NewsGator has already hired Jack Brewster to help support both products. Jack starts next month, and he’s been a very frequent contributor to my support forums over the years (sometimes I think he knows TopStyle and FeedDemon better than I do). Welcome aboard, Jack – glad you could join us!

Patience is a virtue :)

So, there are obviously some major changes underway here, and we’ve got a lot to do to integrate my site, support system, etc., with NewsGator’s.

As long as this post is, I know it leaves a ton of questions unanswered, and I’ll try to address them here over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I do ask for your patience while we get everything sorted out. The entire process will likely take several weeks, and it’s possible there will be a few hiccups along the way.

The end result, though, will be something special. I’m excited to have this opportunity to take my software to a whole new level, and I look forward to entering this new chapter in my life.

FeedDemon: What’s in a Name?

Published on by Nick Bradbury86 Comments

Every now and then I’ll receive an email from someone stating that they really like FeedDemon, but they won’t buy it because of the word “demon” in its name. The majority of these comments come from reasonable, sincere people whose beliefs cause them to be turned off by the demon imagery, and while my personal beliefs don’t include angels or demons, I do take these comments seriously and I certainly don’t want my choice of name to be a stumbling block.

For the record, the name “FeedDemon” originated as a play on the phrase “speed demon,” simply because I worked so hard to make sure FeedDemon was faster than the competition. Of course, the FeedDemon logo does include a demonic-looking hand catching a fireball, but I never even considered that it would offend people, any more than I would think the logo for Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners would cause controversy.

I hesitated to make this post because any mention of religion usually brings out the wackos on both sides (believers and non-believers alike), but I am curious whether many people feel this way. If you’re among those who can’t comment about religion without being intolerant to those who believe differently, this isn’t the place for you to vent. But if you have a respectful comment, I’d love to hear it regardless of whether I agree.

BlogNashville

Published on by Nick Bradbury18 Comments

I live just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, and it’s not often that a conference I want to attend is hosted here, so I was excited when I heard about BlogNashville. Unfortunately, the blogging panels coincided with the anniversary of my father-in-law’s death, so I paid my respects rather than attend the conference.

I did, however, make it to Saturday night’s “Food-for-Thought” dinner, hosted by Dave Winer. I had an enjoyable evening sitting around talking with Dave, Rex Hammock and a number of area bloggers. I’ve obviously been living in a cocoon, because I hadn’t realized how many Nashville bloggers there are – I definitely need to join these folks more often.

Oh, and I was flattered to read that Dave considers me “a soft-spoken, gentle, thoughtful man.” My friends may not agree (at least, not the “soft-spoken” part), but good first impressions are always nice :) Dave also wondered about my politics, and given that I used to be an editorial cartoonist, I guess it is surprising how infrequently I blog about political topics. So, for those who are curious, my politics can be summed up by stating that I love our constitution more than I love our flag.