Is Outlook 2007 going to kill Attensa?

Posted Thursday, July 20, 2006 5:14 PM by Shunjie

I begin Attensa, formly You subscribe, at the first quarter of 2005. That was a time when Desktop Search is emerging and coupled with a software called Lookout,I can easily search any RSS in my outlook. You subscribe + Lookout + Outlook means all my RSS feeds are indexed effortlessly.

 Attensa has released its 'Attensa for Outlook 1.5' last week. I suppose many developers around the globe alike, has also install outlook 2007 beta in the recent weeks. I think the bad news for Attensa is that Outlook 2007 has built in RSS reader, and its very much the same functionality and interface like Attensa.

Once Office 12 begins to ship, there seems to be little reason for people not to use its built in RSS functionality (even me is trying it now). I wonder what will be its impact to the many RSS aggregators and software in the market. With so many web browsers supporting rss natively, I think the market for RSS Readers are pretty over crowded. 

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Comments

# re: Is Outlook 2007 going to kill Attensa?

Thursday, July 27, 2006 1:40 AM by Chris Chamness

Your blog caught my attention, Shunjie. It happens that I work for Attensa and I must respectfully disagree with your post. Saying that Outlook 2007's RSS functionality will satisfy an information worker is a little bit like claiming that a graphic artist will take the bare-bones functionality of Microsoft PhotoEditor over Adobe Photoshop. This is not to say that Microsoft's product is bad in any way, just that it isn't what a professional is looking for. A professional knowledge worker, be they a CIO, blogger or news reporter, wants customatization, advanced search capabilities, the ability to get predictive rankings of their information so that they can get the best information quickly. Attensa 1.5 (beta) provides all of these functions and more. Outlook 2007 is also still in beta. When the final version of Outlook 2007 is released, Attensa will be able to integrate sucessfully with it and enhance the user's RSS experience. Attensa's CEO Craig Barnes has confirmed as much. His blog: http://craigslemonade.typepad.com/

Sorry for the long comment, just my two cents...

-Chris

# re: Is Outlook 2007 going to kill Attensa?

Thursday, July 27, 2006 8:57 PM by Shunjie

Hi Chris, thanks for the comment!

Personally I will like to see how Attensa will be able to integrate with Outlook 2007 too and how it can enhance our (end users) RSS experience.

As I have mentioned, I had been using Attensa since its called you subscribe and personally love its functionality. My only concern is that for a large number of end-users, what they might want is 'something that does the work' and my assumption is that many might just be satisfied with the 'out of the box' RSS functionality of outlook 2007 and thus over looked many other alternatives like Attensa.