NewsGator Products go Free

NewsGator, makers of NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, NewsGator Go and more, have announced that they are providing all of their products for free. You can read the announcement in their latest blog post.

This is great news. I've been using NetNewsWire on my Mac at home for a while now and I love it (I also use NewsFire, which I like a lot too). Via this announcement I learned about NewsGator Inbox, an Outlook plugin, which I'm installing right now at work to replace Attensa (which I generally don't like at all).

On a side, but related note, I recently reached out to Brad Feld, one of NewsGator's investors. It was about a topic I don't really want to get into here, but I did want to give him some link love and let everyone know, in general, that he's was a very nice and very helpful guy. Subscribe to his RSS feed in your new NewsGator software.

Of course, don't forget to subscribe to mine as well.

Getting Down to Business

My friend Patrick wrote up a funny little post about an IM conversation we had yesterday. Besides the fact that he is getting damn old (he's not really, mind you), I found the whole discovery process interesting:

First, some background, Patrick and I worked together at WPTV around 2001-2002. He had a brief stint in New York where we would hang from time to time, but since then, we largely keep in touch via the intertubes.

1. I IM him a link, followed by a quick conversation
2. I follow link, buy pants, twitter the link
3. This morning, check my twitter feeds, see that he's twittered about his blog post
4. I try to comment, but can't figure out how to log in to do so (we should discuss that offline, Patrick)
5. I try to trackback, but Blogger doesn't support that (boo!)
6. So, I write this blog post
7. Patrick will probably find out about it via this blog's RSS feed (but, I'm just guessing)

I have two thoughts about this. One, it's super cool that we're able to keep in touch in such dynamic and constantly evolving ways. Two, it's super annoying that there's no (perfected) central location to manage all of this.

I'm still figuring out how to deal with comments on this blog and am considering writing a post today replying to several questions asked in the comments of various posts. Of course, if I do that, and people comment, then I'll need to somehow reply to those... this could spiral out of control! I'm not convinced at all that posting a comment on the same, old post is the best way to reply to a specific comment. The person likely has no idea that I responded and readers are missing out on what could be interesting and useful dialog.

Ah, I suppose I need to look for something a little more robust than Blogger.

Marketing to Bloggers

Editor's Note: get comfortable, this is a long one.

You have a product and it's aimed at the average blogger. How do you market it to bloggers? Your widget, your embeddable video player, your content management system; they're all aimed at bloggers. So, how do you reach them? How do you let them know about your product?

It's not easy. I've noticed that we're a fickle bunch. This is a fairly young blog, only about 2 months old, but I've been creating personal websites for about 10 years (they weren't called blogs back then). I've noticed that we tend to gravitate towards a close bunch of friends. And, I suppose that's why this is worth my time and yours.

So, the questions is, how do you market to bloggers? I'm not entirely sure. I'm not a marketing genius, but I what I can do is tell you what I read, where I go and what is important to me in this space. When it comes to my blog, which often includes my professional live, and sometimes my personal life, this is what matters to me. This is where you can reach me:

• Meetups:
• NY Tech Meetup
• NY Video 2.0
• NY P2P 2.0 Meetup Group
• New York Online Advertising and Marketing Group
• New York Web 2.0 Social Networking Tech Meetup
• The Advertising Club of New York Meetup
• The Bay Ridge Friends Meetup Group

Notice a pattern? I care about New York. I live / love / breathe / dream / commute / work / love / love New York. If you want to market to me, market to the New York startup community.

• RSS Feeds:
• Mashable
• BuzzMachine
• Read/Write Web
• Signal v. Noise
• Online Video Watch
• NewTeeVee
  
• Beet.TV
• FASTForward Blog
• The Business of Online Video
• Mapping the Web
• This is Going to Be BIG
  
• Joel on Software
• Digg - Top Stories
• Engadget
• MacOSXHints
• ProBlogger
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog
• WCBS
• Andrej Gregov's Weblog
• evhead
• Paize Digital Design Journal
• Rahoi
• PaidContent
• A VC
• VentureBeat
• VC Ratings
• Susan Wu
• Genuine VC
• Silicon Alley Insider
• Alley Insider Twitters
• Feld Thoughts
• Mark Pincus
• Napsterization
• The Gong Show
  
• Brightcove
• Deitte
• ROO Blog
• Chartreuse
• Copyranter
• Outside.in 11209
• TNM Video News
• VideoCafe Blog
• Facebook Friend's Status

Whew! That's a lot. I read those every single day. Most are what you would call work related, but I really love this stuff. If you want to reach me, reach these guys.

• E-mails / Newsletters:
• Cynopsis Digital
• Cynopsis International
• Cynopsis
• MediaPost's Section One, Media Daily News
• MediaPost's Section One, Online Media Daily
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Two, Around the Net in Online Marketing
  
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Two, Around the Net in Media
  
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Three, People on the Move
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Three, Accounts on the Move
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Three, Media Classifieds
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Three, Letters to the Editor
• MediaPost's Online Media Daily, Section Three, Media Events Calendar
  
• MediaPost's Just an Online Minute...
• MediaPost's Online SPIN
• MediaPost's Video Insider
• MediaPost's Behavioral Insider
  
• Center for Media Research, Research Brief
• Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog
• Bulldog Reporter's Winning PR Campaigns
• Bulldog Reporter's PR Jobmart
  
• AdAge Daily News
• AdAge MediaWorks
• AdAge Digital
• TVNEWSDAY
• The Bowery Presents
• NY Chapter PRSA, Notice of Upcoming Events
• Sunbelt Software's WXP News
  
• Pacha NYC
• Creativity Online
  
• SPJ PressNotes
• Adrants Daily
• Lijit Weekly Stats
  
• American Express Rewards Watch
  
• eMarketer Daily
• MediaBistro Daily Media News Feed
• Apple Newsletter
• ROO News
  

Obviously MediaPost sends way too many e-mails and no, I don't read all of these word for word, but I do look at them. The Daily Dog makes the best use of advertising space. If you stopped me on the street I could probably name the companies listed across the top from memory.

I always read Adrants Daily all the way through. The writing is good, the commentary is funny and I look forward to it each day. I also usually read MediaBistro's Daily Media News Feed. It's a great recap of media related news in a nice layout that looks great on my iPhone.

So, the point of all this is two fold. First to give my readers some insight into where I get my news and entertainment, but more importantly, to illustrate that there is no central place to market to bloggers. We are part of a community and that community directly reflects the things we're interested in. If you want to reach us you have to go super-local. You have to take the time to find out where we are and become part of our community.

RSS Reader

At home I use NewsFire on my Mac and I love it. It's easy to use, it looks good and it's not stupid. At work, I use Attensa integrated into Outlook. They call it a River of News. Cute. It sucks.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good RSS reader for Windows that doesn't look like hell and act out like a red-headed step child? Anyone!?

Morning Notes

I ran across a few cool things this morning that I wanted to share.

Outside.in provides super-local aggregation. I've always wanted to find a source of news for my little corner of Brooklyn, but I didn't want to read everything, everyday on blogs like Gothamist. Using Outside.in I can enter my zip code and get a news feed pertaining only to items in Bay Ridge. Even better, I can subscribe to an RSS feed. Super cool - I love it.

Blogger Play is a Google service which is, simply, a photo stream of pictures people are uploading to their Blogger blog. It's a time-suck, but you see some interesting photos you wouldn't have otherwise. Plus, if you see something you like just click on it and it takes you to the original post.