Okay maybe it’ll take 60 seconds. The process for getting NewsGator Go! on cell phones used to be somewhat cumbersome. You had to create an account using NewsGator Online, request a download link in NewsGator Online, wait for an email with instructions, and the proceed.
Well, that’s old news. Now the entire process can be done from your device in just 2 steps (it is in beta, so keep that in mind).
Got to http://mbeta.newsgator.com/d (don’t forget the /d for download) and grab the installer. Once the process is flushed out completely, we’ll drop ‘beta’ from the url:
Fire up the client. If you already have an account you’re done and off to the races. If not, just enter a username and password and you’re done (we’ll create an account for you on the fly):
If you just created a new account, you’ll be teed up with a mobile starter pack.
At this point, you are good to Go! with mobile RSS! That was easy, yeh? You can always add more feeds or tweak your settings from Go!, NewsGator Online, or one of our awesome and FREE clients (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, or Inbox). Thanks TD for helping with the html and artwork.
Enjoy!
February 25th, 2008
Every now and again the debate stirs up over the merits of desktop vs. web based software. The debate ends here! And the answer is simple – it’s both!
My co-worker and friend, Nick Bradbury, sums it up in one line:
“PS: As I’ve written before, I think the so-called battle between web and desktop apps is overblown. It’s a hybrid world, not an either-or situation.”
January 11th, 2008
I was just watching Jay Leno doing a Q&A session with his audience. Someone asked him who was his least favorite guest… he answered Ken Wahl. So I googled poor Ken and in a few seconds landed on his Wikipedia entry and right in the entry was the following:
“On January 9, 2008 Jay Leno stated that he was his least favorite guest ever on the Tonight Show, adding (lightheardedly) that Wahl was “a pain in the ass.” Check it out.
Wow! That is pretty impressive and is a great example of the power and immediacy of user generated content!
January 10th, 2008
NewsGator Go! is now free!
So, you’ve went out and bought a shiny new mobile device, and now you are looking for some great software. But that new device and the holiday’s have tapped your budget. Well, I have good news for you. If you want to keep up with what’s going on in your world from your mobile, you can do that now and it won’t cost you a penny. NewsGator’s mobile news readers are all FREE:
And while you’re at it, grab one or all of the other NewsGator client products. They are all free as well! The clients are all fantastic, and they all synchronize with each other:
- Windows – get FeedDemon for FREE
- Mac – get NetNewsWire for FREE
- Outlook – get Inbox for FREE
I’m glad we are giving our killer consumer products away – it’s a great move for the company and a great move for our customers! A few months ago I was on vacation in the mountains outside of Denver relaxing in the hot tub with some other folks from the area. We started talking about what we do; all these folks were intelligent and technology savvy. However, none of them knew about RSS – I explained what it was and they all agreed it sounded great and useful. Well, now that our clients our free I hope I don’t need to do any more explaining!
On top of spreading the love about RSS, this move will certainly help my friends and co-workers in the enterprise side of the house sell more software. As folks learn about RSS and the aewsomeness of NGES, their job of selling becomes that much easier! In addition to helping enterprise sales, we will also be focusing the clients on delivering more relevant content – you’ll be hearing much more about that in the following weeks and months.
Nick and Greg do a great job of explaining this transition so be sure to check that out. Get ‘em while their hot!
January 9th, 2008
Yep, we all know that. So that’s all I have to say about that.
But what about the opposite. Nice people don’t suck. In fact, when you meet nice/good people make sure you value that relationship. I have a really good exaple about a great person and one who I am really glad to call a friend.
That cat is Andrew Hyde. Last week I was supposed to meet Andrew to kick around his business plan/idea (which is really cool btw). Unfortunately on the bike ride up from Denver to Boulder, I hit a patch of ice south of town, slid into an intersection, and tagged a car. I didn’t get hurt too bad but dinged my bike up a bit. I showed up to the Trident coffee shop way late and Andrew had left already.
When I told Andrew what happened and that I was about to leave the coffee shop, Andrew was just concerned about me! In fact, Andrew drove over. On the way, he saw me waiting for the bus, picked me up, and drove me home. We had a great conversation on the ride home, and I am really glad to have such a kick ass friend. Thanks Andrew!
[On a side note, if you are thinking about funding Andrew's new business, do it. Andrew is guaranteed to be successful - just look at what he's done with Startup Weekend.]
January 9th, 2008
I have a fax/printer/copier/scanner that I bought a few years back… it’s a Brother MFC8840D. The thing has been rock solid until my 4 year old, Asher, decided to use the top door thingie as a diving board.
I think it gave him some pretty good spring action until the hinge broke off. I called Brother and within 5 minutes I had a new hinge on the way and will be sure to keep the Brother out of harm’s way from now on.
Way to go Brother – solid customer service!Â
Â
December 28th, 2007
“Mobile goes big in 2008″ …okay, so I’ve been hearing this sentiment for the last 10 years or so (and it’s making the rounds in the plethora of ‘08 blogosphere predictions). Although, I don’t think ‘08 is going to be the breakout year, we are going to see a very interesting year in the mobile space:
- The iPhone was a big step in the direction of usability/beauty and will force Nokia, Microsoft, and RIM to up the ante – i.e., we will see some cool new devices
- We will see some Android phones in the wild and with that some innovate software and hardware
- Location based services will begin to emerge (Google’s “My Locations” is brilliant… if I could get the darn thing to work) and Yahoo’s Fire Eagle looks promising
- Very interesting mobile applications based around social software and location (that isn’t a PITA to use) will emerge and engage consumers
- One of the big guys (probably Google) will start to experiment w/ mobile payments which further entrenches mobile devices in the hands of consumers
- Live streaming video to/from mobile devices will mature and create a killer opportunity (Scoble is already messing around with Qik and comvu has had this for Windows Mobile for a while [thanx for that pointer Andrew]) – I called this one way back in the olden days
- Exposing and sharing data (docs, video, photos, etc) to your mobile will see some interesting action – I created a very cool syndication platform a couple of years ago that I tabled and now is the time for something like this to go big time.  Take a look at this to see what I am talking about – http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/12/run-vista-gadge.html
But, we won’t see the true mobile revolution until the middle man (yeh, you know who) is out of the equation!
December 24th, 2007
[point your mobile browser at http://m.ttwt.at to get the latest version of Tiny Twitter (v 0.9.9 12/15/2007) on your mobile phone. You’ll be up and running in under 2 minutes]
Earlier in the year I started regularly using Twitter… soon after (aka pre-iPhone era) I built a mobile Twitter client for my Blackberry. I built Tiny Twitter for several reasons, but mainly I wanted a way to avoid the SMS traffic. On nights and weekends over the past year I have tuned Tiny Twitter – mainly adding features and fixing things for me and my fellow Tiny Twitter users. The latest version, 0.9.9, is looking pretty good!
Tiny Twitter will work on Nokia devices, Blackberries, and pretty much any mobile device that is Java enabled (including T-Mobile phones for those feeling the T-Mobile/Twitter pain):
[Tiny Twitter on Crackberry]
[Tiny Twitter on Nokia]
*NOTE: on Nokia devices you’ll want to adjust the font size to the smallest setting (go to Font Settings from the Options Menu).
I also own a few Windows Mobile devices and have been wanting to build a Twitter client for these devices too (my Tiny Twitter Java client is just to wonky on Windows Mobile). The biggest thing holding me back from creating a Windows Mobile version of Tiny Twitter was the need for creating a custom control for rendering the follower timeline. This is something I had done in the past, and I just never had the time or desire to jump in head first. Well, one day I was having coffee with my man Matthias and turns out he was psyched to tackle this task. Matthias hunkered down and a few days later had the beginnings of a rock solid control – Matthias is the man. With the hard part out of the way courtesy of Matthias, I took some time over the Thanksgiving break to clean up some things, fix some defects, and add some features. I and some early users started using Tiny Twitter on Windows Mobile… and now you too can get Twitter love on Windows Mobile:
*NOE: you’ll need to have the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP 2 at a minimum.
Enjoy! Twitter is a cool AND useful application after you start using it and it gets even better when you have a Twitter mobile client. I love Tiny Twitter and hope you will too.
Here are some of the features you’ll find in Tiny Twitter:
- Automatically updated follower timeline
- Automatically updated inbox (direct messages)
- Delete all or single tweets
- One click replies (@) and direct messages from the timeline
- Quick access to see a follower’s timeline
- Access links embedded in tweets
- Hide friends (Java only)
- Settings to customize the update interval and UI appearance
- And of course most importantly send tweets!!!
Have fun you twittering fool go to http://m.ttwt.at and be sure to follow @Wirefly and check it out! 
December 16th, 2007
Take a look at these two web page headers:
<head><title>MSNBC – MSNBC – Breaking News, World and US News Stories & Headlines – Get the Latest Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, & Technology updates from around the world Front Page</title><script src=”/js/std.js” mce_src=”/js/std.js” ></script></head>’
<head><title>MSNBC – Breaking News, World and US News Stories & Headlines – Get the Latest Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, & Technology updates from around the world- msnbc.com</title><link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”/css/html40.css” mce_href=”/css/html40.css” /><link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”/default.ashx/id/21589549″ mce_href=”/default.ashx/id/21589549″ /><link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”/default.ashx/id/21731496″ mce_href=”/default.ashx/id/21731496″ /><script type=”text/javascript” src=”/js/std.js” mce_src=”/js/std.js” ></script><script type=”text/javascript”>gEnabled=false;</script><meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″><meta name=”description” content=”MSNBC.com is a leader in breaking news and original journalism. Stay current with daily news updates in health, entertainment, business, science/technology and sports.”><meta name=”Search.Document” content=”front”><meta name=”Search.Updated” content=”Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:17:49 GMT”><link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”MSNBC – Top Stories” href=”http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032091/device/rss/rss.xml”>
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”MSNBC – Most Viewed” href=”http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/3058960/displaymode/1026/eventType/1/rss/rss.xml” mce_href=”http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/3058960/displaymode/1026/eventType/1/rss/rss.xml”>…
Can you tell the difference? Okay that’s an easy question… they’re totally different. Nice job grasshopper. Well, these headers come from the same web resource (msnbc.com). The only distinction is that one is served up to mobiles. And I’ve seen similar behavior for many of my test sites.
So, the piece that annoys me is the removal of the link elements (that’s bolded above) used for feed autodiscovery (the RSS icon that lights up in the browser, the super cool functionality you get in FeedDemon for adding subs, etc… you get it). Ah man, no feed auto detection love on mobile devices for lots of web properties. That sux.
December 3rd, 2007
I started to write my first simple Google Android app at 10:30 tonight and was done by 10:45. This included installling the SDK, installing and configuring the Eclipse plugin, coding (okay it was one line), and running the application in the emulator.
So, big deal you say. Well, I can tell you it is a big deal. Try to do a similar feat (configuring an IDE, coding Hello World, and emulator execution) in the land of Symbian C++ and it will take you a day if you’re lucky.  A Java ME Hello World app from end to end will take at least an hour and more likely two. The only mobile dev environment that is in the same ball park is Windows Mobile and building a .NET Compact Framework application. I’m not making these numbers up; this comes from first hand experience.Â
This is a great start… Android you got my attention.
Here is what you have to do run Hello World Andoid style (this is for a Windows machine w/ Eclipse installed):
Install the SDKÂ - (http://dl.google.com/android/android_sdk_windows_m3-rc20a.zip)
- Just download the package and extract to your file system… i stuck mine in c:\program files
- Set your path variable (Windows) – right click on My Computer, and select Properties. Under the Advanced tab, hit the Environment Variables button, and in the dialog that comes up, double-click on Path under System Variables, and add the full path to the tools/ directory – it’ll look something like C:\Program Files\android_sdk_windows_m3-rc20a\tools
Â
Install the Eclipse Plugin (excepted from http://code.google.com/android/intro/installing.html)
- Start Eclipse, then select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install….
In the dialog that appears, select Search for new features to install and press Next.
Press New Remote Site.
In the resulting dialog box, enter a name for the remote site (e.g. Android Plugin) and enter this as its URL: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/. Press OK.
You should now see the new site added to the search list (and checked). Press Finish.
- In the subsequent Search Results dialog box, select the checkbox for Android Plugin > Eclipse Integration > Android Development Tools and press Next.
- Read the license agreement and then select Accept terms of the license agreement, if appropriate. Press Next.
Press Finish.
The ADT plugin is not signed; you can accept the installation anyway by pressing Install All.
- Restart Eclipse.
- After restart, update your Eclipse preferences to point to the SDK root directory ($SDK_ROOT):
Select Window > Preferences… to open the Preferences panel.
Select Android from the left panel.
For the SDK Location in the main panel, press Browse… and find the SDK root directory (installed in step 1 above)
Press Apply, then OK
Code Hello World and Run in the Emulator
- Modify the XML based layout file
- Open main.xml in res/layout and modify the attribute as needed …something like so: android:text=”Hello Kevin”
- Run and your done!
November 15th, 2007
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