Friday, September 22, 2006

RSS and Atom Feeds for Outlook

Simple Syndication (RSS) and Atom feeds provide us an easy way to monitor multiple sources of news, blogs, and other content that is updated frequently. And since, I’m a big PC fan, we use Outlook to manage much of our data. That said, I’ve been interested in subscribing to an RSS aggregator but don’t want to check yet another devise or program on my computer. It’s bad enough that there are more than 100 actionable emails in my in-bin per day. So, why do I want RSS anyway? I know – I guess it’s because I’m a news junkie and I need to stay on the pulse of several industries and reporters.

So I found that Outlook does not directly access or display RSS or Atom content. However, there are add-ons by third-party companies that incorporate RSS and Atom viewing in Outlook. On the Microsoft website, this is what I found:

intraVnews is a state-of-the-art news aggregator that turns Microsoft® Outlook® into an RSS and Atom feed reader. With intraVnews you can subscribe to any of thousands of syndicated feeds from personal weblogs (blogs) to mainstream news sources to specialist publications. You never have to leave Outlook again to keep up with changes on the Web or your intranet. Supports the 2007 Office system. (http://www.intravnews.com/indexoffice.htm)

NewsGator is a news aggregator that runs in Microsoft Outlook®. It allows you to subscribe to various syndicated news feeds (such as Web logs, news sites, etc.) and have news from these sites be delivered right into your Outlook folders. There are thousands of sites that syndicate their content in RSS format, with more being added every day. (www.newsgator.com)

Attensa for Outlook RSS Reader for Microsoft® Outlook® is the smart way to bring up-to-the-minute RSS news and information from Web sites and blogs to Outlook folders. Automatically find and preview RSS feeds. Pick from more than 1000 RSS feeds, and get started fast. Stay on top of news with powerful search tools. Automatically download podcasts. Keep organized with categories and tagging. Import/export OPML files. (http://www.attensa.com/products/outlook/?cp=1)

Newspoint: RSS is the format used to communicate and automate news articles over the Internet. You can set up an unlimited number of RSS feeds, and specify which RSS news feed should be monitored and in which database to insert the information. When the NEWSPOINT tool is running in background on your PC, you can use this news to display it in your Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentations in combination with our DATAPOINT tool. Supports the 2007 Office system. (http://www.presentationpoint.com/microsoft/newspoint.htm)

I settled on NewsGator for $29.95. . . . . .