Proof Is In The Pudding

Now that's customer service! Answers, action items and comments from a human in a less than 24-hour turnaround. I'm telling you Newsgator kicks ass!

I've put the e-mail responce below, I haven't had time to reply with a clarification on the difference between question #3 and #10 with screenshots but I wanted to post the reply now to show the great turnaround time. My individual comments on each item later this weekend... because as the customer I have the luxury of answering if and when I choose ;-)

Thanks Newgator for impressing by doing the little things better than the rest.

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Hi Ross,

Thanks for the awesome feedback! It great to have customers who are active in helping us make our product better. Let me see if I can try to address your numbered concerns/observations:

1) We haven't actually come across anyone who has asked for this before, but I can see how it would be an advantage to some users. I've created a feature request (74542)

2) As you mentioned, this is actually set by the author. Currently NewsGator Online only displays what is in the source feed. When a posts drops off the source it also drops out of NewsGator Online. HOWEVER, we are currently in the process of redefining what is a current post. I can't give too many details before it is released, but be assured we are working on it ;)

3) Points 3 and 10 are related I think - We actually have this functionality in testing and will be releasing it sometime soon. I don't have an ETA at the moment (it is reliant on some other system parts) but you will be able to add a folder from the context menu of the Folder tree.

4) This is really a performance issue - in order to keep the rendering of the Newspage fast, we restrict the number of posts. Obviously the more posts, the longer it takes to display. In your particular browsing pattern where you open a number of windows and let them load in the background that doesn't really matter, but for the majority of our users they browse in a single window. That being said, it is a good idea, but I can't see it getting development priority in the near future.

5) Whether a post has full content, excerpts or titles is defined by the author, but I think it would be a great idea to make it possible to collapse full content posts to excerpts or titles! I know we have a feature request in the system for this already, but I've created a new one anyway (74543)

6) I see where you are going on this, but I'm not sure how applicable it would be for most users... I can, however, see how some attention reporting could achieve the same results. 2 reports in particular - "Feeds not updated in X days" and "Feeds with my least attention" - Reports are good because they don't clutter the reading UI, but allow you to find what you are looking for. do you think this would suit your needs??

7) There is currently a way to do this!
- Go to My Settings > Edit Locations
- Under the NewsGator Web edition location, select the "Feeds" option
- From here you can de-select the feeds that you don't want to see in your Web-reader. They will still be in your profile, and can be re-enabled at any time.

8) NewsGator Inbox would be the perfect solution for you:
http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=NewsGator+Inbox
It syncs Outlook with NGO including clippings.

9) You should soon be able to add feeds directly to the Folder tree, and I believe this will go to the URL import screen.

10) Covered above in 3

11) Not likely to happen ;) But if it isn't already, you can add it to the taxonomy. To add your feed to our system, you can go to this page to add your site to our search engine:
http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/Folksonomy.aspx

Once your request has been submitted you will get a response advising you that it has been added and instructions about adding our button will also be provided at that time.

Thanks again for your feedback, and I hope this satisfies most of your ideas. Customers like you help us create a better product!

Regards,

Jonathon McDougall
NewsGator Support

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