08.25.2003
TypePad and aggregators
Posted by Mena Trott in Third Party Applications
First, what is an aggregator or news reader? Basically, it's an application (desktop, web-based, plugin) that allows you to subscribe to "feeds" of weblogs and news sites. Usually, these applications are scheduled to check and see if any of the sites you have subscribed to have been updated and if they have, the new version of the site (usually a post) will appear for you to read. Aggregators are great because they bring weblog updates to you, instead of you having to actively look to see if your favorite reads have been updated.
The image to the right is an example of an aggregator (in this case, NetNewsWire for the Mac). You can see in the left pane some of the sites I'm subscribe to. In the right pane are the most recent posts from one weblog. Depending on the feed you're subscribed to, you can either see the author's entire post or just an excerpt. With TypePad, your feeds (the file people can subscribe to) are generated by default.
TypePad does not have a built-in aggregator for syndication (RSS) feeds. While we may consider adding syndication features in the future, or the ability to use a feed at a TypeList, we have found that the majority of our users prefer being able to work with the aggregator of their choice and then publish items of interest through TypePad.
There are a number of popular aggregator clients that run as desktop applications. On Windows, one of the more popular desktop clients is FeedDemon, which makes it easy to add feeds and view them in a newspaper-style view or as individual entries. A similar view that can be integrated directly into Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express) is available with the NewsGator plug-in. NewsGator can also be configured to allow posting directly to TypePad from within Outlook.
On the Macintosh, most users prefer NetNewsWire as their desktop aggregator, and NetNewsWire Pro adds the ability to post to TypePad directly from within the application.
In general, any desktop or web-based aggregator which reads RSS feeds is appropriate for use with TypePad, and we recommend trying a few to find out which aggregator client best complements the way you work with TypePad.
