Greg Reinacker, 34, is President of NewsGator Technologies, whose eponymous product works as a part of Microsoft Outlook.  Recently, the company added a subscription version that offers web, POP, and mobile access, as well as support for machines running Windows XP Media Center Edition. Prior to NewsGator, Greg ran a software development consulting company in Denver, Colorado.

Harold Check: How do you approach developing NewsGator? Do you have a vision you're working towards, or is user feedback the main driver behind changes to the software?

Greg Reinacker: There is most definitely a vision to what we're developing, both in NewsGator for Outlook, and the NewsGator Online Services products. The motto we've published in various places is "The content you want. Any time. Any place. Any device." That gives a good hint as to part of what we're working toward.

That said, of course we listen to customers, and much of what we have built is based on customer requests. Without our customers, our vision won't matter too much.

HC: What do you make of the standards wars? As a developer, does it bother you to spend time addressing multiple formats and the uncertainty of future formats? Are you in touch with any of the keepers of the current standards?

GR: We're absolutely in touch with the keepers of all of the major standards.

At this point in the game, supporting multiple standards (RSS 0.x, 1.x, 2.x, and Atom) is just the cost of doing business. It doesn't bother me all that much to have to do it. Our users shouldn't have to care what flavor a feed happens to be—they just want the content. If they have to care about the specifics of what kind of feed it is, then we've failed a big part of the customer experience.

HC: Do you think that standalone readers will ultimately flourish? Or is feed-reading destined to morph back into existing web clients? (Or vice-versa?)

GR: Tough call. We don't, at the moment, build any stand-alone clients, other than some of our online editions. Building into Outlook was a strategic decision—it makes a lot of sense, especially for business users. It doesn't require someone to learn a new tool or a new GUI. Our POP edition lets users use whatever email client they want to read RSS—again, very little training involved.

I think there will be a market for lots of different forms of clients—not everyone wants the same experience.

What's more interesting than multiple client applications, is the multi-device story. Mobile devices (think NewsGator Mobile edition). Media devices like televisions (think NewsGator Media Center edition).

HC: What will happen when syndication becomes much more pervasive? How will our online habits change?

GR: It's hard to predict—no one really knew just how much email would change our lives, and look at it now. IM changed things. Syndication will change things. For a taste, look at the early adopters of syndication technology, and how much they say it has changed their online habits, and how much it has changed their lives. It's likely this experience will affect more mainstream users in a similar way.