Newsgator

Some years ago, I got the RSS bug.  I've been an avid collector of info for a long time, starting with the old Compuserve forums, moving on to Usenet and now collecting RSS feeds as though they are going out of fashion.  It's amazing what a store of knowledge and ideas there is out there, and I find it inspiring to see multiple points of view on single topics.

My tool of choice for blogs and other feeds was FeedDemon - and it was with some misgivings that I heard that Nick Bradbury, the author of this excellent application, had sold it on to Newsgator.  I fully understand Nick's reasoning, explained at the time, that it gave him the opportunity to do more with than he had as a one-man band, but there's something about Newsgator's approach to integration and management of feeds that I just don't get.  On more than one occasion, I've come close to wiping out my entire set of URL's, which would be a disaster.

It makes sense to keep a central record of the set of feeds, tracking just which posts had been read on different systems, and allowing for overlap of selections between machines.  Obviously, I want to read different feeds at work from home (although there are some common elements - who'd want to risk missing the latest Slashdot assault on good taste and sense?), but every time I try to tune this selection, I lose feeds, in some cases almost everything on a given install of FeedDemon.

Now it's got worse - Newsgator do a mobile reader, for PDA's, so I just had to have it on the phone.  And something's gone very wrong - at the moment, I have no feeds at all on the phone, despite a properly completed configuration on the Newsgator central web site.  At least the local PC set seems ok, but I'm not risking anything - time to generate a new OPML list.

One other slightly worrying thing - when FeedDemon was incorporated into Newsgator's stable, part of the deal was that paid up users got a free Newsgator subscription.  Use of this system doesn't seem to be optional - and my subscription runs out in May.  I hope I'm not going to lose the use of the package across all platforms - I'd gladly go back to manual management of the feeds, but it doesn't seem possible to set things up without a login account.  Watch this space.