bill - 1:05 am on Jan 11, 2008 (gmt 0)

Here's the official press release from Newsgator [newsgator.com].

This is a major move, and the feed reading public can only benefit. Among the services and software that are now free is my personal favorite feed aggregator, FeedDemon. Now that this software is free and is coupled with the Newsgator synchronization services I believe it can be a major competitor for Google Reader and Bloglines, which collectively control majority of the market for readers.

When my Newsgator subscription ran out last year I decided to give Google Reader and Bloglines a try. Despite my efforts I could never get the same performance and features that I could with FeedDemon. If you want to keep track of feeds then you'll really want to add FeedDemon to your toolbox. With the Newsgator synchronization service you can run multiple copies of FeedDemon on different machines and all your feeds will be kept in sync by Newsgator.

I doubt it has anything to do with the former infamous spyware filled product, but I weary of any software with the word "Gator" in it.

No, they have nothing to do with the old Gator spyware. Gator became Claria, and they went out of the adware business a few years ago.

Funny you mention that because as a long-time user of FeedDemon, when Newsgator acquired the software I had some major problems because of the name. One of the IT techs at my company had blocked the string "gator.com" at the corporate firewall level so I couldn't access any of the Newsgator services directly. I had to resort to some round-about proxies to bypass this block. It took me years to convince them that this string should be removed, and I only succeeded in November of last year. That's when I renewed my subscription. If I had just waited a couple more weeks I would have been eligible for a refund. <sigh>