Tom Markiewicz

There’s big news today in the world of RSS feeds. NewsGator has just announced that their entire suite of RSS feed reader clients (NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, NewsGator Inbox, and NewsGator Go!) are now free.

On the heels on announcing a $12 million financing round last month, Greg Reinacker (NewsGator’s founder and CTO) writes about what led the company to make all the NewsGator clients free:

What we’re working to do is to saturate the market with our clients. Anyone who wants a rich experience for consuming content, or anyone who uses multiple computers or devices and wants a best-of-breed experience on each can now use our clients. Using a Mac at home, along with an iPhone? NetNewsWire and our iPhone reader will sync up. Have a PC at the office? FeedDemon will sync with your other two applications. And they’ll all sync with NewsGator Online. It all just works.

…we’ve found that when we go into an enterprise to sell NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) and Social Sites, there are already a ton of people using one of our desktop apps already. The more folks are already using them, the easier it is to sell our server products - especially since these client apps can sync with NGES directly. So, the more the merrier - we’re going to make sure that everyone who wants to use our apps can do so, without having to climb over the hump of having to dig out their credit card.

I’ve written about NewsGator’s products in the past and NetNewsWire is one application on my Mac I couldn’t live without. And before my Mac, I said the same about FeedDemon.

What I love about the NewsGator platform is the ability to move from desktop to mobile and have all my feed reading synchronize. If you haven’t tried their products, there’s nothing holding you back now.

It’s great to see a company make a smart business move that positively benefits customers.

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I wrote a Twitter about this earlier today, but I wanted to share this great deal if you use a Mac. MacUpdate Promo currently has a deal where for $49.99 you receive a bundle of software at 91% off the retail value.

As certain sales milestones are reached, additional apps are added to the bundle. This morning, XMIND Pro was unlocked after 1000 of the bundles were sold. The deal expires in 4 days, but it looks like the milestone for iStabilize should be reached.

Two of the programs I was planning on purchasing anyway (Xslimmer and Yep) and it made the deal all the better.

Here is the full list of apps in the bundle so far: ForkLift, RapidWeaver, Swift Publisher, Marine Aquarium, Xslimmer, MemoryMiner, Yep, XMIND

Disclaimer: Obviously, I hope more people purchase this deal so I can get my hands on the additional software!

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I started doing some preparations today for the strategic marketing class I teach at Virginia Tech. The fall semester is almost here, so I figured it’s about time to make sure the online access and listserv were ready.

Sadly, I dread this small task because I have to interface with Blackboard. Despite (or maybe because of) Blackboard’s dominance in many universities, the software is completely unusable. Blackboard is quite possibly the worst web application I have used recently.

Why such strong pronouncements? Two main reasons. First, the design and layout look like they haven’t changed in ten years. Crappy icons (hey, ever hear of FamFamFam? how about hiring IconBuffet?) and cryptic menus rule the day with Blackboard.

A good test for usability is a web application should not require lengthly manuals or tutorials in order for a web savvy user to accomplish even the most basic tasks.

An example of this occurred this morning. When a new semester starts, a course is created by Blackboard. In order to actually have students use this new course, it needs to be made “available”. The courses are listed with a status after the title:

Why aren’t these status messages simply a link to activate? That would be simple, easy to implement, and quite intuitive. Instead I started hunting through various menus, before giving up and searching for help.

After searching for entirely too long, I found it takes 10 steps to activate a course. My solution could be implemented with one step - click on a link beside the course. This is quite unbelievable:

Remember that I HAVE to get this set up. Imagine if this scenario was occurring on a web application that did not have captive users. Let’s say I was testing out a new site with a free demo or trial. I guarantee you this experience would have made me leave and never come back.

I know you’ve heard it before, but the usability of your web application is critical. I can’t belabor this point enough especially if you’re trying to build a base of users for your product.

While this is one example of Blackboard’s poor user interface and overall usability, I’m constantly banging my head on my desk while I’m using this application. Any possible reasons why Blackboard may be this unusable? The most obvious is that they don’t have to - at least not now anyway.

A number of companies are working on doing this better, but I don’t think they have much of a chance in the short term. Blackboard does a good job of selling an integrated system to schools. By integrated I mean that Blackboard courses are automatically populated with the names and relevant data for all students in each class. Even for my class of 50+ students, I would not want to enter this data by hand. Imagine a full time professor with multiple freshman classes of 500 students each. See my point?

So the only way to really have a software solution that works in this environment is to sell to the universities, not the individual instructors (or even departments for that matter). A new entrant will need to be decently funded and patient. Unfortunately, Blackboard has a captive audience with no incentive to make significant improvements to their software. Hopefully, some company will see this long term opportunity.

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I watched Paul Kedrosky on CNBC yesterday shrug off Apple’s release of Safari for Windows and was quite surprised by his reaction. This is a really big deal for a couple reasons. Yes, as Kedrosky says, the browser war is an old topic and not as sexy as the iPhone story or new Leopard features. But Apple is incredibly shrewd in this move to introduce its Safari web browser to the rest of the computing public.

While most developers were hoping Apple would open up the iPhone to third-party apps, it appears that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Instead, Apple has focused on using the Safari web browser as the development platform of choice.

This makes sense for a few reasons. First, it’s safer for Apple in the short term to not have to worry about dealing with any potential issues third-party application may introduce. This type of restriction is not new. In a way, T-Mobile and Danger have been doing this for years with their Sidekick. Developers wishing to distribute their apps to the Sidekick have to get them approved by Danger and added to the master catalog that can only be accessed inside the device. The rationale is likely the same as Apple’s - we think we have a slick user experience, so let’s make sure others don’t mess it up.

It’s actually a valid, though controversial, argument; but one that Apple mitigates by having a standard browser platform on the iPhone for web developers to build upon. To date, the biggest issues with mobile web browsing has been the very poor built-in browsers on the mobile devices. JavaScript? Flash? Forget about it. With Safari on the iPhone, a much richer set of applications can be developed. Think AJAX. This is a boon for web developers, but still disappointing for Apple’s community of developers hoping for a software development kit.

Safari ported to Windows is a brilliant move to expand the base of potential developers to web applications that will work on the iPhone. As of yesterday all web developers, regardless of platform, have the ability to build applications that can work on the iPhone. This removes one additional barrier for the development of a nice ecosystem of apps available for Apple’s phone.

Finally, if web-based applications are the future as many predict, what better way for Apple to play this shift than to make a bigger claim to the browser market? Even without the iPhone aspect of this announcement, I still think the company’s move to increase Safari’s market share beyond 5% makes perfect sense.

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37signals has launched (quietly) their latest application called Highrise, an online contact manager. Interestingly enough, I found this news via a Twitter from Mashable which linked to a post detailing the release. I just signed up for a free Highrise plan to try the service out. I’ll post my first impressions after I give it a test drive. So far it looks similar to the other 37signals applications as far as user interface and intuitiveness. They bill Highrise as somewhere between your address book and a traditional CRM. Pricing ranges from free to $149 per month with the very reasonable 37signals upgrade/downgrade policies still in place.

Technorati Tags: 37signals, highrise, software

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I’ve written before about the popular productivity concept, Getting Things Done (GTD). I’ve come across a few new tools that attempt to make GTD a bit easier. While productivity tools integrate with all types of web and desktop applications, I decided to take a look at a few new desktop applications dedicated specifically to the GTD methodology - Ghost Action and Actiontastic.

Both applications attempt to solve the same goal of using the GTD approach to enhance productivity. Each are exclusively for the Mac and sport very similar features and user interfaces. For Ghost Action, the three main components are projects, actions, and contexts (how you do your work, i.e. @computer or @errands). Actiontastic tweaks this slightly by removing the listing of all available actions and replaces it with the inbox. This is a bit more GTD, but Ghost Action provides similar functionality if you create an inbox project. If you’re not familar with GTD concepts, the last few sentences probably don’t make much sense, so on to other features. Both applications sync with iCal which provides a lot of flexibility especially if you then sync your iCal to a mobile device. Actiontastic’s main difference lies in the enhanced visual details provided for each action. For example, the user has the choice between viewing all, todo, or done actions.

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When I first saw mention of Twitter, I really didn’t pay much attention to the service. My initial thought was here comes another time waster. Recently, I saw more mentions of Twitter and decided to check it out. After a brief period of use, I’m intrigued by the possibilities.

Twitter is a cross between IM, blogging, and SMS if that makes any sense. In what would seemingly appear useless spraying of what a person is doing at any moment in time, Twitter enables groups of people to keep up with that everyone is doing (or thinking as the case may be).

Filling a role not quite satisfied by blogs and chat, Twitter can act as a true lifeblog as Steve Rubel mentioned recently. Each post on Twitter is limited to 140 characters, just enough for a few brief thoughts. These are the kind of topics that you wouldn’t actually write to a blog. These simple missives would take way too much time to blog and are more personal in nature than most people write on a blog anyway. The service functions in much the same way as adding a status away message in your IM client. Just a brief note letting your friends know what you’re up to.
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After spending most of my computing life exclusively on Windows, I’ve made the switch to a Mac. Why now? Over the years, I’ve become quite adept and comfortable in Windows. I’ve focused much of my career around Windows technologies. So why the switch now, especially with Microsoft’s Vista launching?

Let me try to explain. But first, I know what you’re thinking. Why must every new switcher to a Mac, write about it in their blog? Why do they all start sounding like Apple fanboys from the moment they switch? I’ll tell you why new switchers to Macs get excited - everything just works. After a few days of working through the newness of everything, I’m easily more productive than I was on Windows XP. And that wasn’t a horrible operating system all things considered. But Mac OS X is just smooth, especially if you like the efficiency of using keyboard commands instead of endlessly hunting for applications and menu items. My current Windows laptop had slowed to a crawl (as usual) after less than two years. When I did some research and realized that I would be unable to run Vista well with my existing laptop, I finally decided to look at all the alternatives.

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You never really realize how dependent you are on the Internet until it goes down for an extended period of time. In my case, I’m referring to the 4 hours I was without access yesterday. Of course, there were many items on my to-do list that could be accomplished without the Internet, but I instantly began to focus on the tasks that needed it. Luckily, I still rely on many off-line applications for my email, documents, and the like; so I wasn’t completely at a standstill. I continued my work knowing that my Internet based actions would get done as soon as my connection was back.

What pauses me to think is the growing trend towards web-based office applications. The benefits are great, but I just don’t think the mass market is ready for this dependence on the web. Today was a perfect example. For many of us, Internet access often appears ubiquitous. We never think about it until we don’t have access or when our wifi connection is on the fritz. If I wasn’t using a desktop based email and office suite of applications, I would have been completely grounded.

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My sister called me last night asking for help locating some possibly deleted files on her laptop. As we went through the process of locating these possibly permanently lost files, we had a brief discussion about backup options and how to prevent this in the future. I mentioned a service I use called Mozy that has been working well for me for about a year now. I’ve never blogged about data backup solutions before, so I thought I would take a moment to give a brief review of this service. In this day and age of questionable pay per post services, the only disclosure I have to make in this review is that the link to Mozy is a referral that gives me extra storage space for everyone who signs up. Basically, I’m not getting rich off them, but I’ll take the extra space just the same.

As a free service operated by Berkeley Data Systems, Mozy is hands down the best automated backup system I’ve used for a Windows based computer. I say that for two reasons - ease of use and automation.

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Sponsored Link: Offsite Backup - Benefits and Threats Unveiled

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