When Robert Scoble urged Microsoft to acquire Newsgator in an article in WebProNews it caught our attention. Craig Barnes took the opportunity to set the record straight and to invite Scoble to take a closer look at our work building a new "attention based infrastructure company" that is a lot more than another RSS reader for Outlook.

Based on Scoble's follow-up post - Attensa DOES have RSS Synchro API - it looks like we are starting to get through and we hope Robert takes us up on our open invitation to share more about our technology and strategy with him.

Ever since Microsoft previewed Outlook 12 at Syndicate there has been a meme on the imminent death of Newsgator and Attensa. Before people start writing more obituaries we're declaring "We're not dead yet. In fact, we're feeling much better."

Here's why...

1) Ubiquitous RSS is good. At Attensa we believe that pervasive use of RSS benefits everybody and that makes our technology more valuable. Who better than Microsoft (and Google and Yahoo) to educate and make available basic RSS capabilities? Attensa is about value-add, not the inevitably commoditized RSS reader. We, and our investors (announcement coming soon), are betting that over the next several years Microsoft will do the heavy lifting and educate the masses of the benefits of adopting RSS.

2) But RSS is dumb. Already users are subscribing to dozens of feeds and receiving hundreds of posts per day. And it is only going to get worse as marketers utilize RSS in lieu of traditional internet media. Further, the enterprise and enterprise application vendors are embracing RSS for every conceivable task. As RSS users (whether through Outlook 12 or the common RSS reader) we will soon all be drinking from the proverbial fire hose. The problem will dwarf email inbox overload. At Attensa think there is a big opportunity for smart RSS that cuts through information overload.

3) With RSS "less is more" At Attensa our business and technology focus is improving the RSS experience through real-time attention stream analytics - the fact that we have or will soon have best of class solutions for Outlook, Mobile, Online and more is almost incidental. Long term (i.e. once Outlook 13 or 14 finally gets it right) our attention stream infrastructure will sit quietly, behind the scenes, making the defacto standard RSS reader simply "work better."

4) Outlook 12 adoption happens when? In the meantime, and surveying the competitive climate for readers and pondering the en mass adoption of Outlook 12 in the enterprise (early 2008?) we think there is considerable opportunity to provide quality RSS experience for users of Outlook 2000 and later for the foreseeable future. As for Outlook 12, I think most would agree without even seeing it that there will be considerable opportunity to make it better.

"Attensa ... ist der absolute hammer!"

"OK, the name (I meant "Attensa" - since it's not known for German users) does not yet say very much, but what's behind is the absolute hammer ("Hammer" means on one hand the hammer as you may now [sic] it, but in combination with "absolute" (engl. absolute(ly)) it's colloquial language - we use this word in Germany if something's tremendous, amazing, incredible or outstanding)."

                   - Eric Haas

I think that says it all. Let's get right into it then, shall we?

Here it is... Attensa for Outlook 1.0 Beta. It's feature complete and rarin' to go.

Search More...Work Less

Need to find something? Now you can add search feeds from these engines: Blog Digger, Daypop, Del.icio.us, Feedster, flickr, Moreover, MSN search, Technorati, Wired News, Yahoo! News, Plazoo, SeekItAll, Google News, Google Blogs, Wikipedia, Feed24, IceRocket, Digg, and Yahoo! (whew!). With such a variety of search engines you're sure to find what you're looking for and have it delivered right into clearly labeled folders in Outlook.   

There's so many engines, we had to make two screenshots just to show them all:

Bug Fixes

There's significant improvement in Outlook performance when working with a large number of subscriptions and when switching folders located on Exchange and other remote servers.

We've fixed memory leaks in AttensaEngine.exe. Memory use holds steady without spiking.

Implementation of auto-delete preferences in the configuration menu pane is now cleaner and easier to use.

The problem which prevented the Publishing feature from working properly, for some users, has been fixed.

Finally, we've fixed a potential crash for users upgrading from You Subscribe: RSS.

Also!

In addition, we've added one more great feature. The version number has been changed from 0.992 to 1.0! We give a hearty applause to our engineers for working this one out.

Hammer on it

   - The Attensa Team

(Images borrowed from http://www.toymania.com/columns/rtmisc/ssthorhammerpics.shtml)

I returned to Attensa's galactic headquarters today after three days in San Francisco attending the Syndicate Conference. Coming off the heels of our Series B investment by RRS Investors and SmartForest, Syndicate was a bit like our official coming out party.

We spent the time demoing the 1.0 Beta of Attensa, showing off Attensa Online for the first time in public and meeting with lots of great people and partners. I've been so  busy preparing for the show and working the show that I haven't had time to write about our announcements and the great reception to our products and strategy.

We used the Syndicate Conference to announce two more steps in our on-going work to create an RSS network that uses AttentionStream synchronization to cut through information overload.

You can read the news release Attensa Introduces AttentionStream Synchronization at Syndicate Conference but here's the Reader's Digest Condensed Version:

We are taking the veil off Attensa Online, our free online RSS service that can be accessed anywhere on any computer. Attensa Online is an AJAX web based application that works like a dedicated RSS reader application to make keeping on top of RSS news and information easy. Subscriptions and articles load quickly and marking articles as read and deleting articles is easy.

Resizable panes and multiple views let users create an RSS workspace that is flexible and intuitive. Options for displaying articles include headline only, headline with one-sentence introductions, headlines with first paragraphs or complete articles. Users view the article source Web page without opening a new browser window or tab.

We will opening up the Attensa Online beta shortly after the conference. We want to test in stages. Sign up here and we'll notify you to set up your account.

We are introducing Attensa for Outlook 1.0 beta. The feature set is complete and we want to give you one more chance to get it for free and put it to the test.

We've come up with a pricing program that takes into account your extensive and valuable feedback. Attensa for Outlook 1.0 Beta is a free download. When it is released commercially Attensa for Outlook 1.0 will cost $19.95. The price includes a one year subscription for AttentionStream synchronization with Attensa Online.

For users who only need RSS in Outlook, Attensa for Outlook will continue to work inside of Outlook at the end of the first year's subscription. Synchronization with Attensa Online won't unless your subscription is renewed. For less than a double cappuccino a month at Starbucks, being able to access your feeds on any PC seems like a good deal to me, but you'll be the judge. 

Attensa for Outlook and Attensa Online use our unique lightweight AttentionStream synchronization for fast updating of subscriptions at the article level and frequent synchronizations across multiple RSS clients. Every action from subscribing to new feeds, updating articles, reading and deleting articles, to creating categories and adding tags will be synchronized in Outlook and on a personal, privacy-protected Web page at Attensa Online. The AttentionStream also includes near real-time analytics which, as we continue our development, will be the key to providing you with prioritized, more relevant articles.

We also announced our strategic partnership with FreeRange Communications to bring Attensa to mobile phones and PDAs. FreeNews is a dedicated RSS Reader app that works with Blackberries, Palm and Java enabled devices. It's fast, it's easy to read and it saves you money because it pulls your feeds and articles down all at once and stores them on your phone so you can read without racking up air time. Will put the Attensa brand on their reader and send the AttentionStream data to our backend so when you read articles on your phone everything will be synchronized and down the road the AttentionStream data you generate will add more fuel to the prioritization filtering.

In this podcast David Berlind and Dan Farber share their thoughts and take-aways from Syndicate. It's a terrific overview of the conference. Stick it out to the end to find out why David thinks Attensa is totally cool and why it blew his mind.

I spent a lot of time over the past few days looking at the other Syndicate exhibitors and I realized Portland companies made up a sizable percentage of the vendors hawking their wares, sharing the love and spreading the RSS gospel at the conference.

In addition to Attensa, Janet Johnson was working the Marqui marketing magic. Charles Smith, from Pheedo was mixing it up and Jon Maroney and Scott Rogers were waving the flag for FreeRange.

With four out of the 19 Syndicate exhibitors from Stumptown, there's more than just coffee brewing in Portland.

Hey mister that's me up on the Podcast.

David Berlind and I had a chance to talk at Syndicate about Attensa and our development plans. You can listen to the podcast here. If I had a dollar for everytime I used the word "information" I could take the winter off.

Based on this quote from his write-up, apparently he liked what he saw and heard...

"Now that I've had a chance to see Attensa's solution in action (here at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco), I can understand why John Palfrey's RSS Investors venture capital outfit selected the company as one of its initial investments  (valued at $9 million)."

He gives a great perspective on the similarities and differences between Attensa and Newsgator.

The Chiclet problem surfaces at the Syndicator Blog. The post is spot on. The rash of badges is totally out of hand.

Attensa has another approach to finding feeds and easily subscribing from a Web page or blog from your browser.

We use a toolbar in IE or Firefox to identify feeds and to let you see what kinds of articles are available before deciding to subscribe. This eliminates the need to clutter a page with branded badges. On the one hand this may not be the brightest marketing move on Attensa's part... but it sure makes sense from a user's perspective.

Here's a screenshot of Attensa auto feed detection at work

And here's the feed preview

Let us know what you think.

We're off to the Syndicate Conference next week. We'll be making some product and technology announcements and we'll be demonstrating Attensa Online.

We're sponsoring the Syndication Technology and Trends track covering mobile RSS, tagging, structured blogging, wikis, vertical market syndication, attention tracking, social software, IRC and more.

There are some great speakers lined up including
Marc  Canter, Tantek  Çelik, Anil  Dash, Salim  Ismail, Steve  Gillmor, and Mary  Hodder
 

If you want to connect with Attensa at the conference send me an email or give me a call 503.757.4957.

Jim Moore is a founding partner of RSS Investors. Here's his reasoning behind the Attensa investment.

" To cope with this volume and complexity of traffic, enterprises need partners that understand syndication, that understand corporate requirements and culture, and that can lead them to realise the reengineering potential of the new world of technology.  Attensa is focused on doing just that. "

Why we invested $5 miilion in Attensa: RSS Investors Fund

We're off and running. This morning we announced our Series B Financing led by RSS Investors. This is a big moment in the life of a company and now with the confidence placed in us by our investors it's all about execution on our strategy.

Our new partnership with RSS Investors is a great validation of our future plans. According to Craig Barnes the connection with RSS Investors was so tight during the initial pitch meetings, "we were finishing each other's sentences."

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for Hugh Mackworth and Debi Coleman at SmartForest Ventures whose long standing support have helped us through all of the ups and downs that early stage companies go through. We're all grateful.

You can read the news release here.

To get more color on investment read Randy Charles Morin's  interviews with Jim Moore, a founding partner of RSS Investors and Craig Barnes, our CEO, at the RSS Blog.

"It's funny, Attensa does exactly what I thought RSS readers were supposed to do but it seems no others (that I could find) came close to the functionality and ease of use. I use Outlook, I surf the net for news and blogs on varied topics. Now I do it with less time wasted. Nice work. Thanks."

If this is what Stig from Woolloomooloo says about 0.991, just wait until you see 0.992.

We've updated the interface:
The new interface makes it easier to add feeds, search and browse for feeds, import and export OPML files, and access the Options menu. Now you can see your settings for each individual feed every time you click on one.

Improved Performance:
There is a significant speed improvement when working with large subscription files (100 or more feeds.) It now takes one-third of the time to integrate large subscription files.  We've done more work on Outlook stability and performance, too, so your feeds will load lightning quick.

More Powerful Search Tool:
With our improved search tool, you can now select all search engines at once, enter your keyword, and have continuously updating news delivered to you into neat, clearly labeled folders. Now you can rummage through all of these search engines to find news that's right for you:

• Blogdigger
• Wired News
• Daypop
• Flickr
• Yahoo! News
• Moreover
• Feedster
• Technorati
• MSN Search
• Del.icio.us

New Tag Manager:
Now you can manage your tags from right inside Attensa.  Change the status of a tagged item to public or private, alter the description, add comments, or even add/delete tags from previously tagged items. Along with our tagging toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer, this makes using del.icio.us' social bookmarking even more delectable.

You asked for it: Customizable Firefox Buttons
We received lots of requests for a choice of where to put the Firefox toolbars. So now you have it. You can now customize the toolbar buttons completely, now they work like native Firefox buttons. Or, do away with all of that and keep the buttons in a discreet corner of the status bar. Customize it how you like, go crazy! But not too crazy. Whichever you choose, you'll be able to quickly add feeds as soon as you find them from the Web, and easily tag sites for reading later.

Drag & Drop OPML:
Got an OPML file from another aggregator that you'd like to stick into Attensa for Outlook? No problem! Just drag the OPML file into the main Attensa for Outlook window.  Then check off the feeds you want to add, and which categories you want to put them in. If there's duplicate feeds, don't worry, they won't be added twice.

We think Attensa for Outlook is superfly.

But don't take my word for it. We want your word. Hammer on it.