Either way, it’s useful to get a look at what they are doing (hopefully I’ll sit down with Newsgator soon, but here’s Attensa’s Scott Niesen talking with me and demoing Attensa.)

Hey, was that a new swooshy ScobleShow logo? Why yes it is! Damn, my new editor, Rocky Barbanica, is a hot dog! (This is his first video that he’s edited and already he’s making me look better. I like this guy!)

INTERVIEW:

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“The beta program was focused on large corporate customers,” Niesen said of Attensa for Outlook 1.5. With the stability changes and improved administration capabilities coming along nicely, Attensa decided to skip the incremental number and round up from 1.5.

Having access to information being distributed through RSS has become more in demand from larger companies like ones that have been testing Attensa. Outlook has a dominant presence on many desktops in those enterprises, so that received the careful ministrations of Attensa’s developers.

Niesen said the logic of making Attensa work on Outlook was pretty critical. Having a stable product to work with the sometimes finicky email program proved paramount, but Niesen felt they had met that challenge.

Making the client freely available represents a change from the for-pay model Attensa used for the last version. Niesen is refreshingly candid about this. Attensa wants to build demand for their premium product, the Attensa Feed Server that we discussed in August.

One of the notable changes in the client comes from a particular need within some companies. Our recent coverage of the Podcast & Portable Media Expo showed a subset of the interest in netcasting, in audio and video formats.

Niesen said there are companies that have embraced these technologies internally, to distribute those creations within the corporate ecosystem. To meet that demand, Attensa has added a media player to their Outlook 2.0 client. That client currently supports Windows Media Format content, but Niesen said they plan to add support for other formats too.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

I tend to prefer to sit back and listen to what people have to say during interviews. They are the ones who bring something interesting to the conversation. All I try to do is make it accessible to our readers.

Sometimes there is a question begging to be asked right at the start, and my recent chat with Attensa’s Matt Bookspan and Scott Niesen about their RSS appliance, Feed Server, brought one to mind.

“If I’ve already got a feed reader, and everyone else in the organization has one as well, why do we need a Feed Server?”

Why a Feed Server?

Bookspan gave me three reasons. First, the Feed Server aggregates the feeds being served to readers in the organization. This way, instead of a thousand people all hitting a bunch of feeds across the firm’s Internet connection, they go across Ethernet to reach the feeds at the appliance instead.

The next two reasons go together. Through use of the Feed Server, the organization can designate and enable certain feeds as mandatory for employees to read.

Activity is measurable when using Feed Server. This way a particularly garrulous CEO can see who is and who isn’t reading the feed from his executive blog. Then he can arrange for a chat with the reluctant staffer to discuss the situation.

On the road

Feeds would not be limited to the enterprise. Feed Server can use MAPI to link with Microsoft Exchange; if ActiveSync is in use, feeds can be pushed to mobile devices. Feed Server can also connect with GoodLink or a BlackBerry Server for pushing feeds.

On the PC in the office, Attensa provides a web-based client with a rich Ajax-driven interface for users to read their feeds. A simple stylesheet can be applied to a feed’s content to remove undesired content.

Users can perform a number of actions through the client to tailor what they receive from the Feed Server to their needs. They can edit feed descriptions, designate logins for secure feeds, synchronize between office and mobile devices, and even arrange to receive a feed’s items as email instead.

When Feed Server arrives at the doorstep, the appliance will have some 2,000 feeds enabled on it already. Attensa has selected from a variety of popular and heavily subscribed feeds.

Administering the feeds

Some feeds may be of more use to particular users and groups than others. In an Exchange environment, group defaults can be set at the server level for feed reading. Feed Server can import from Active Directory, and tracks when users leave a group and join another.

Administrators can manage the available feeds, and add and delete categories of feeds as needed. For example, a marketing group may want to have continual access to information on blogging. Appropriate feeds can be assigned to a marketing group, and when anyone joins that group they will have the pre-selected feeds available.

A lot of feeds deliver a high volume of information, and after a certain number become difficult to keep up with and manage. Through the use of Attensa for Outlook, people can benefit from what Bookspan described as a “river of news.”

The River of News

In the River of News View provided in Attensa for Outlook, presently at beta version 1.5, the Attention Stream technology behind Attensa’s products really comes into play.

The technology can determine a number of details about a user’s feed reading habits: what is being read or shared and when that is taking place.

After learning a bit from the user, the Attention Stream technology begins organizing information by priority depending on what and when feeds are being read. This way the user should see relevant content at the times when he normally would look for it in a feed reader.

Attensa for Outlook includes tagging support. It can also sync with the tags a user already has on Delicious, the bookmarking service owned by Yahoo.

What’s next

Reporting features still need to be fleshed out for enterprise use. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the Fortune 500 knows that businesses seem to run on reports. A measurable product should have data available that an Excel or Crystal Reports user can haul into their software.

Today, a lot of information exists on RSS feeds. That market should expand as more companies like financial and health care firms embrace secure RSS options for making private information available through RSS.

A savvy company that steps up today for the Feed Server will be running ahead of the curve in the business world. Used effectively, the beneficial information a quality site can provide rapidly over a feed can help competitiveness in the marketplace.

Discuss this article with your fellow WebPros at WebProWorld.
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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

“Syndication is undoubtedly the heartbeat of the web 2.0 movement,” Gruber began by way of introduction for his substantial post on TechCrunch about online feed readers. A feed reader does the heavy lifting for a user, by scouring sites and collecting all the new items in feeds in the reader.

Gruber did not include MyYahoo in his assessment, though he called it the “most widely used web-based reader.” Online virtual desktops and portals like NetVibes and Live.com also did not fall under his purview. Nine purely online feed readers did, as listed here:

•  Attensa Online
•  Bloglines
•  FeedLounge
•  Google Reader
•  Gritwire
•  News Alloy
•  NewsGator Online
•  Pluck Web Edition
•  Rojo

Gruber found Google Reader and FeedLounge had the fastest average times per feed when loading five feeds. He gave Rojo credit for its “Mojo” system where users can rate the items being displayed. Rojo and Gritwire received special mention for their contacts features, which allow for the “social aspect” of sharing information of interest with others.

Pluck’s FeedFinder and Rojo’s recommendations feature offer users the chance to discover new feeds of interest.

Ultimately, Gruber acknowledged that out of this admittedly small slice of the online feed reader market, FeedLounge and Google Reader won out on performance, while Bloglines and Rojo offered the broadest feature sets.

A chart he created comparing several features among the readers will be a living document, which he plans to update depending on added information about these feed readers. But none of them managed to outperform “the speed and agility of the best desktop based readers like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon,” Gruber wrote.

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I agree with Mike that the RSS reader space is “hyper competitive” in terms of the number of companies in the space. SearchFox RSS came closest to what I wanted but I’m still not happy with what many of them are doing. They need to read my five ways to improve web based feed aggregators as a starting point.

The larger picture though, is that companies in the RSS reader space really fear the writing on the wall – Microsoft is going to eat the lunch of most of these guys. With an integrated reader in IE 7 and Outlook 12, Microsoft will seamlessly integrate this technology and effectively make things like the Attensa Outlook plugin obsolete.

For my part, I still see a fairly solid opportunity to make a web based aggregator for the tech and early adopter community that could really blow all the others out of the water. I don’t see that investment being made though. There is no legitimate business model there and the number of players in this space, especially by the likes of GYM, would cause most companies and investors to think twice.

I’m sorry to see you go SearchFox! Rojo will become my default reader going forward.

Ken Yarmosh is a consultant who helps organizations get the most out of their technology investments. He works with technology users and creators across various industries, focusing on technology education and strategy. With over 7 years IT experience, Ken has worked with small businesses, non-profits, federal agencies, and multi-million dollar companies.

His online efforts include acting as the Editor for the Corante Technology Hub and authoring the TECHNOSIGHT blog.