"Many of our online customers who are Mac users have asked if we had plans to extend our product platform to the Mac desktop," said Greg Reinacker, founder and CTO of NewsGator. "NetNewsWire is the dominant RSS application for the Mac OS, and was an obvious choice for us. We’re very excited to integrate our advanced synchronization and other capabilities into the product and roll it out to our combined customer base."

"After hearing so many NetNewsWire users ask for synchronization – not just between copies of NetNewsWire, but with their PDAs, with newsreaders on Windows, with a browser-based service – we thought about how to make this happen, and found that NewsGator had the technology already in place," said Brent Simmons, co-founder and partner of Ranchero Software. "But they didn’t have a Mac client! So it was a perfect fit, and we couldn’t be more excited."

NetNewsWire is the premier news reader for Mac OS X. First released in 2002, its deep feature set and continuous innovation have garnered widespread adoption by Mac users. NetNewsWire is available in both free and paid versions, both of which will continue to be developed and enhanced with new features and capabilities.

Reinacker added, "Brent has done a great job building this product – we’re not only excited to add NetNewsWire to our portfolio, but also to incorporate Brent’s excellent design and development skills to our team. We’re excited about the Mac platform, and we will continue to invest significantly in this area."

"Synchronization is set to be the killer feature of the next generation of feed reading software. NetNewsWire already offers terrific synching between multiple copies of NetNewsWire; but it's no longer enough just to track feed subscriptions from one computer, using one application," said John Gruber, author of the popular Mac weblog Daring Fireball. "What's needed is a way to track your subscriptions from different applications on multiple platforms, including from the web itself. I'm happy to see Brent Simmons and NetNewsWire have joined with NewsGator to bring these features to Mac OS X."

As part of this deal, existing NetNewsWire full-version customers will receive a free 2-year paid subscription to NewsGator Online. More details will be announced with the next release of NetNewsWire, which will include advanced features and functions from NewsGator Online. via