Enterprise RSS channels your information streams

Of note, NGES’s developers understand this security part well. For instance, they’ve included their own routines to detect and remove malicious attack code that could be contained within RSS feeds. And in Windows 2003 domains, secure feeds are retrieved on behalf of users without needing to access or store users’ passwords.

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The NewsGator server logs and reports activity, such as who uses the system and the most-read feeds. As my testing progressed, this information proved valuable in discovering both feeds of little interest, which I removed, and popular ones, which I made sure were added to every group’s default package.

The end-user experience was just as pleasant. In my integrated setup, an NGES feed folder was automatically created in each user’s Outlook mailbox, conveniently separate from the Inbox. Users could merely interact with the initial feeds or they can add their own.

Reading feeds -- either individually or as a “river of news” -- is easy through a viewing pane. I especially liked the intuitive way NGES allowed me to mark feeds as read, rate their usefulness, and save important ones to a Clippings folder that could be shared with my coworkers.

NewsGator helps you quickly find information from potentially thousands of feeds. There’s a standard category filter to discover relevant articles within a feed or folder -- and a handy search form for locating feeds using keywords. These worked well, but I often relied on the innovative Recommend feature within search; it provided extra precision by ranking results based on what feeds others in my group subscribe to, along with their rating. Last, Smart Feeds pull back content-matching keywords into custom feeds.

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Another NGES distinction is its many possible interfaces. Power users have a plug-in for Outlook that integrates feeds from the Enterprise Server, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and NewsGator Inbox.

If you’re not running Exchange or Outlook, a subset of the Web administration interface -- designed for end-users -- provides a comfortable way to manage and read feeds. HTML-capable mobile devices can run NewsGator Go. I especially liked the ability to view feeds through my SharePoint portal sites. NGES synchronizes your actions among all these interfaces. That is, when I marked a feed as read on my PDA, I didn’t have to duplicate this step in Outlook.

NewsGator Enterprise Server balances needs across your organization. It’s easy to administer, especially getting relevant information to casual users through Outlook; in fact, they don’t even need to know what RSS means. Yet power users get their choice of interfaces, such as FeedDemon, synchronized to NGES.

KnowNow 3 Enterprise Syndication Solution 3.1.8

ESS integrates several components for syndicating information from RSS and various enterprise sources. The core LiveServer captures, aggregates, and routes internal and external RSS feeds. ESS’s pleasant Web administration simplifies creating channels, subscribing users and groups to feeds, and managing permissions.

LiveAdapter, a unique feature of KnowNow, automatically transforms data from back-office systems -- such as databases or CRM applications -- into Web events, which are accessed as RSS or HTTP subscriptions. ESS delivers information to subscribers using SpeedReader (a zero-install Web client), plug-ins for Internet Explorer and FireFox, or a Deskbar that sits in the Windows taskbar.

I tested the hosted version of KnowNow 3, finding that its administration side was on par with the other two products. The tabbed interface, which persistently displays a folder tree of categories, is especially intuitive to navigate.

Creating RSS sources from any RSS or Atom feed just involves pointing to the URL and completing a simple form -- with most minor complaints found in the earlier version rectified. As part of creating these feeds, I assigned them to multiple categories -- for example, a travel policy was assigned to HR, news, and finance feeds. Yet you may not have much feed-setup work beyond in-house channels; ESS ships with popular free Moreover channels -- this company also provides premium real-time news and business feeds for a fee -- that are quickly added.