Apparently the Attensa toolbars we introduced more than a year ago for tagging, identifying, previewing and subscribing to feeds and our tagging toolbar are pretty good ideas.

Newsgator just announced a beta of their toolbar today.

With the Attensa browser toolbar you can:

- identify all of the feeds available on a page
- preview the feed and articles to see if you want to subscribe
- subscribe with a click
- access all of your feeds and articles in your browser
- tag articles and synchronize with del.icio.us

Here's a duplicate of a post I wrote in December 2005 describing the wonders of the Attensa toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The Chiclet problem surfaces at the Syndicator Blog. 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.

P.S. Thanks for letting us know it's a great idea, Newsgator.