Matthew Bookspan of Attensa gave me a tour of their new RSS reader right before they released it. I was particularly impressed with the ease of Outlook Sync.
My first negative thoughts were on privacy issues, but their privacy policy is pretty clear and I have no concerns there anymore.
It does beg the question, “what happens when Office 12 comes out and Outlook has RSS built in already?”
Some thoughts:
1. Attensa offers online sync ($20 a year) so that when you are not home you can check your feeds from any web connection. Mobile RSS is optional but will probably be a pretty hot ticket for them as well.
2. Is there an easy OPML export?
3. It’s Enterprise-level service so you should expect extreme stability. Compared to Bloglines, and other free services that’s pretty darn important.
4. The sync is almost real-time if you push the sync button and within 30 mins if you don’t. I think that’s pretty important.
5. The attention-stream part will be exciting to advertisers at some point I’m sure.
All in all, it was enough to induce me to download and install the demo.