Microsoft M&A waking up to RSS? Onfolio acquired

Onfolio is my favorite app.......I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I hope they don't screw it up.

First improvement to make: have it work so that it syncs across different computers.

Dave Rakowski
Allentown, PA

I love love love Onfolio.. out of all the aggregators, it's the best one hands down. Keep the feeds IN THE BROWSER, not in some pseudo-Outlook app.

Onfolio (I have never used it - at least not yet!) is already incorporated into Windows Live Toolbar according to a press release from Mircosoft I just posted about.

http://blog.windowsobserver.com/2006/03/07/micr...

I'm not looking forward to this. I spend more time in Onfolio than I should and to think of Microsoft trying to cram in into a "live" format, make it look and act like every other application and start stripping away features (like firefox support) is a major bummer. Also, please keep this out of OFFICE as well!

The beauty of Onfolio as an RSS feeds reader is the ease of keyboard navigation. This is something totally lacking in the current MS feeds reader, in Newsgator for Outlook, and many other programs. Let's just hope Microsoft doesn't kill this part of the program.

Wow...if only RSS worked on platforms that aren't Windows. Gosh, it's just too bad for everyone else, because RSS is like this cool thing that only exists on Windows and all.

John: actually, where do I complain that NetNewsWire only runs on Macs?

Great, I can only assume they will make it stop working with firefox. It is a sad day for onfolio firefox users. Scoble can you pull some weight and make sure they keep firefox support?

Jeff: I use Firefox. Why would we stop it from working there?

Robert: you could complain to us, and we'd recommend our Windows product :)

Great move by Microsoft, Onfolio is a gem, and their team is a world class asset! The best part is a bunch of them are from Minnesota!

I use Onfolio all the time, recommend it to everyone, and they also keyboard enabled it so that we could script it with ActiveWords! Should be exciting to see how it all rolls out!

While you are talking to Nick and NewsGator, ask them about mobile... I think there are some cool things cooking in that space ;)

Kevin: I love NewsGator. But I've already said that about 500 times publicly. :-)

That damned checkbook still hasn't arrived! Sigh.

Don't take this wrong, because I'm a died-in-the-wool Windows user. I'm usually a "glass half full" kind of person, but I'm afraid on this one I'm in a "glass half empty" mood. I hope this doesn't mean "R.I.P." for Onfolio.

Bought by Microsoft and already integrated into Windows Live Toolbar...? That explains why I haven't heard squat from Onfolio in ages. At least, the version I currently have (2.02) seems to work well for me. Hopefully, they'll continue to support this standalone version for a while.

Any Onfolio users care to add it to AggCompare? http://www.aggcompare.com/

All I can say is - amazing. I love Onfolio - ease of use, power to capture and organise. Please keep in browser environment!!!

All I can say is - amazing. I love Onfolio - ease of use, power to capture and organise. Please keep in browser environment!!! standalone, as well.

Robert, go complain to the NetNewswire folks, oh wait, didn't they get bought by Newsgator? I'd imagine, and this is just me, that in the near future, NetNewsWire will become the Mac "plugin" into the Newsgator ecology.

That's a pretty silly example to use Robert...that of a company that saw a hole in its product offering, and bought what is, pretty much the best of the breed on the platform to fill that hole. That would seem to point out that there is real money to be made in a heterogeneous product offering, and it allows you to diversify your income streams. Considering the lower support costs of Mac software development, there's little logic in making things like Onfolio Windows - Only.

Unless you're the Senior Leadership of MS, still dreaming of the halcyon days of the late 90s, when people did your bidding.

Scobleizer : "Jeff: I use Firefox. Why would we stop it from working there?"
Yes ! Why ?

Robert: You are saying "I use Firefox. Why would we stop it from working there?". That's a good question, but unfortunately it is a fact that the Microsoft version of Onfolio will NOT support Firefox:

http://www.onfolio.com/support/faq_acquisition....

I am using Onfolio every day and I love it for supporting Firefox AND IE. From my point of view this aquisition is a desaster for current loyal customers of Onfolio. Shortly there will be no more technical support and in the near future a lot of powerfull features like Firefox support and the Onfolio Publisher will be lost forever. It is a very sad day...

I take back my "benefit of the doubt" comment that I posted last night.....based on the information provided on the Onfolio FAQ site, they've already screwed it up.

And yet MS continues to wonder why people dislike them.

Dave Rakowski
Allentown, PA

Why is anyone surprised that the first MS version would be IE only?

I mean, did you REALLY expect other browsers to get equal support at the same time? From MICROSOFT?

Next you'll be wondering why it doesn't work outside of Windows.

Do keep in mind that outside of a single division, The Mac BU, MS actively hates non-Windows platforms as corporate policy, and every new software release from every division apart from the Mac BU shows just how much MS leadership hates having to admit that they have customers not drinking the Kool-Aid.

I'd bet a dollar that BallmerGates both have FF/Linux toilet paper in active use in their homes.

Onfolio is the best RSS reader out there - but also so much more than just a feed reader. You can create your own newspapers (from RSS, websites, documents) and share them among a group of people (and have feeds for those, too), publish collections to websites. It's just the perfect web research tool. The only thing missing was synchronisation to other computers and mobile devices. I really hope that Microsoft does provide one edition of Onfolio with the features of the professional version. Please, don't break this great little application.

"For those who don't remember Onfolio..."??!!

Some of us use it every day - it is by far the most effective of the RSS reading tools which I have tried. And on the very day of acquisition, Microsoft has made absolutely clear that they are determined to break it.

I have never subscribed to anti-MS hysteria - I take what works from where I can find it. But to go out of your collective way to break stuff which works brilliantly and to stop a browswer-based application from working in a standards-compliant browser is a measure of breathtaking contempt for users of Onfolio. Scobleizer has done much to humanise the face of Microsoft. All of that goodwill is thrown away in a single act of destruction.

So where is it? I see that I can load an OPML file and can subscribe to feeds (in the Live.com beta), but I don't see anything that looks like Onfolio. The current RSS support looks exactly like all the other portal-based services, i.e., it requires heavy use of the mouse and is completely inefficient. Surely there should be, somewhere, a trace of the excellence that was Onfolio. Or did MS just buy them to destroy them?

If you download the Beta of the Windows Live Toolbar, you'll find Onfolio will be downloaded and installed by default (Onfolio is in the list of components that are installed as a part of the Toolbar install, and it is default checked!).

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

-charles

All the resources of Microsoft couldn't conjur up a simple add-on's like OnFolio? And they have to resort to paying way too much for half-broken shareware and now mixing it in with that Windows Live trainwreck? Some days I really don't think they know how to develop software anymore.

Robert: Isn't it so much easier to write about marketing bubbles like Origami than commenting on Microsoft screwing up an existing great product like Onfolio? And by the way: it is not the first time. Anybody remembers Lookout for Outlook?

People keep talking about "downloading" a "toolbar," but I don't see any place to do this on Windows Live. Also, I keep getting switched to a Japanese-language site just because I happen to be in Japan. I have a feeling the available features are not yet in sync.

I've been using Onfolio since Robert wrote a post 'bout them a few years ago. I think it is an excellent piece of sw.

I really cannot see anything negative coming from the acquisition! I'm really looking forward to se how the product may be integrated with other MS products.

Personally, I would like to see a function that publishes a collection to a Sharepoint site.
During the last two years, I've som 50 collections with adademic papers, presentations and articles. I now see that som of the collections should be published on our company's knowlege portal.

As a huge Onfolio fan, I'm disappointed in two things. First, the "new" Onfolio will only work with IE. I've used it as a standalone, paid product with Firefox for almost a year. Even worse: I just found out that if you don't set IE as your default browser (which I don't), the MS Onfolio Deskbar will open a unique instance of IE for every RSS feed I click! This is a terrible limiting factor that sucks up resources for no good reason. Robert, can you pass this to the Windows Live team so they're aware (assuming they're not)?