Bloglines Bows Web Services, Addresses RSS B’width Issue

Mark over at Bloglines sent me a note about his company’s new web services, very cool. He’s working with FeedDemon, Blogbot, and NNWire to support a new open standard that reduces RSS bandwidth demands. More here and here. Release in extended entry. Way to go, Mark!

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For Immediate Release

New Bloglines Web Services Selected by FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and Blogbot to Eliminate RSS Bandwidth Bottleneck

First Open News Aggregator Standard Expected to Advance Syndicated Feed Adoption and Enable a New Generation of Web Services

Redwood City, Calif.—September 28, 2004 —Three leading desktop news feed and blog aggregators announced today that they have implemented new open application programming interfaces (API) and Web Services from Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) that connect their applications to Bloglines’ free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. FeedDemon (www.bradsoft.com), NetNewsWire (www.ranchero.com), and Blogbot (www.blogbot.com) are the first desktop software applications to use the open Bloglines Web Services.

Bloglines Web Services address a key issue facing the growing RSS market by reducing the bandwidth demands on sites serving syndicated news feeds. Now, instead of thousands of individual desktop PCs independently scanning news sources, blogs and web sites for updated feeds, Bloglines will make low-bandwidth requests to each site on behalf of the universe of subscribers and cache any updates to its master web database. Bloglines will then redistribute the latest content to all the individuals subscribed to those feeds via the linked desktop applications—FeedDemon, NetNewsWire or Blogbot–or via Bloglines’ free web service.

“The exploding popularity of RSS and ATOM news feeds has put the spotlight on a potential network bandwidth problem that could stifle the technology before it can develop and mature. As the leading web services provider in this space, we saw an opportunity to resolve this issue,” said Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines. “Bloglines Web Services expand our vision of Bloglines as an innovative platform for dynamic personalized content. Since the beginning we have been open to outside parties enhancing our web offering, with utilities such as notifiers. Bloglines Web Services take that open approach to the next level.”

In addition to helping address bandwidth concerns, Bloglines Web Services transform hundreds of thousands of existing feeds into “clean RSS” and insulates developers from the current blog syndication format wars. This interoperability will encourage broad adoption of news feed technology among content publishers and consumers.

With the implementation of the new Bloglines Web Services, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and Blogbot customers also gain access to Bloglines’ many web features, including personalized recommendations, an integrated web community, and social networking features for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing the world of syndicated content.

Bloglines Web Services Enable Synchronization for Desktop News Aggregators
“Our customers have been looking for the ability to synchronize their feed subscriptions across multiple computers, said Nick Bradbury, founder of Bradbury Software and creator of FeedDemon, the leading RSS aggregator for Windows. “By partnering with Bloglines, we are now able to offer the rich desktop functionality FeedDemon customers have come to expect, with the flexible mobility and portability of a web service.”

Bloglines Web Services Enable Fast, Efficient Feed Updates
“Linking NetNewsWire to Bloglines web services gives our customers big advantages like faster and more efficient feed updates, without changing their preferred newsreader,” said Brent Simmons, founder of Ranchero Software and developer of NetNewsWire, the top RSS Web newsreader for Apple Mac OS X. “By focusing our expertise on creating great software for the Mac platform and its users, and leveraging Bloglines, the largest central web repository for news feeds and blogs, we are delivering the highest value in feed reading for our users.”

Bloglines Web Services Make Possible New Generation of Web Applications
“Today both consumers and developers have to make hard choices when they consider RSS software options: desktop features versus web mobility, desktop control versus web community,” said Dru Nelson, founder of Blogbot, an easy-to-use Microsoft Internet Explorer plug-in for tracking RSS and ATOM feeds. “With this API we can offer the best of both desktop and web worlds, with an open path for us to create new applications around the Bloglines platform.”

Bloglines Web Services Availability
Bloglines Web Services are free, open source and available at www.bloglines.com/services/ for interested developers wishing to work with on current and future projects. FeedDemon is Bloglines Web Services-enabled immediately. NetNewsWire and Blogbot will be Bloglines Web Services-enabled within 30 days.

About Bloglines
Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) is a free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds and blogs, and was recently named as one of Time Magazine’s 50 Coolest Web Sites. The most popular service of its kind, logging millions of page hits daily, Bloglines offers unmatched features for consumers of online news and information, and the people and organizations that publish syndicated web content. Founded by Mark Fletcher, the entrepreneur behind ONElist (now Yahoo!Groups), Bloglines is privately funded and headquartered in Redwood City, Calif.

About Bradbury Software
Bradbury Software (www.bradsoft.com) was founded in 1999 by Nick Bradbury. Nick, a former cartoonist, is the creator of the HTML editor HomeSite, which was acquired by Allaire in 1996 and is now owned by Macromedia. After leaving Allaire in 1998, Nick created the CSS/xHTML editor TopStyle and the RSS aggregator FeedDemon.

About Ranchero Software
Ranchero Software (www.ranchero.com) develops software for Mac OS X and specializes in bringing the web to the desktop with easy-to-use interfaces.

About Blogbot
Blogbot (www.blogbot.com) was created by Dru Nelson at Blue6, located in San Carlos, Calif.

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