I have Newsgator on almost every device I own, which is great because the syncing feature means I never end up reading the same news again and again. Except there's one problem, I have no offline version for my laptop. Yep crazy, my work pc (windows) is running FeedDemon, while my ipod touch runs Netwirenews and even my two windows mobile phones are running the newsgator go client. Usually when I'm connected I'll use the web site directly but when offline I have to use my ipod touch which is stupid when I got such a great display right in front of me. Anyway I'm not the only one.
I was thinking about this the other day now that I have an Eee PC. I'm liking it so far, but the keyboard is definitely maddeningly small. Still, I'm getting better at it. Anyway, one thing I'd really like on it is the ability to read feeds offline. I currently use Newsgator products to read feeds–both Feeddemon and Newsgator Mobile. I love the syncing capability.
But unfortunately, Newsgator doesn't have a Linux product. It does, however have an API into their syncing infrastructure. However, without a Linux product in the first place, most of the people I know that are using Newsgator are corporate types. Newsgator Go!, their mobile product, is for Blackberry and Win Mobile.
With no Linux client and no iPhone app, what are the chances that the developer community is going to care enough about their product in the first place to develop on top of their syncing api. Developers tend to build things to solve problems for themselves. Not surprisingly, NO ONE has built a Linux RSS desktop client on top of their API. Even a Thunderbird plugin would be nice, b/c Thunderbird can handle RSS feeds and it works in Linux. So far, nada, zilch.
Luckily Newsgator do have a POP3 service too, so its possible to get some kind of offline usage even if its nothing like the RSS service and I'm still unsure how/if the syncing works with it too.