You post this exact same complaint in my blog, and then you post it here before even giving me a chance to respond?
-nbradbury
There is nothing wrong with posting the complaint here, nor with you responding here, or me relating your response if you did not. As for the blog, it is yours, you can erase my post if you wish.
"There was absolutely no attempt on our part to hide the fact that FeedDemon 3.0 has ads, as a quick search of this blog will prove. It has been mentioned here - and several other places - many times before, and it seemed pointless to bring it up again since my only goal with this post was to introduce the new features.
-nbradbury
Nick, I wrote as much above. I know (I saw later) that this is mentioned in the support forum postings. Please understand that this means exactly
zero, because you cannot expact everyone to first read / search your blog or the forum, and only then download and install the software. This may be true for some existing users who follow your blog, but most people first install, and then maybe visit the blog or the support forum if they are interested or need assistance. Myself, I had version 2.7 installed, but never used it much, since most of my reading was through Google, and maintaining two sets of subscriptions wasn't convenient.
An advertising-supported program absolutely
must disclose this in the installer. Some vendors place that information only in the license. That is an intentionally underhanded approach, because a lot of users don't read EULAs, or wouldn't understand them if they read it, since English is not their native language. But at least the vendor can claim they do disclose the fact before users commit to installing the software.
Yet FeedDemon does not even do that much. If you go to the website, read the overview and what's new sections, download and proceed to install, at no time during this process are you told you are going to see ads in the program. FeedDemon does not carry any privacy statement, either, while the Privacy Policy at NewsGator is not very clear, as I describe in my post above.
In fact, NewsGator's privacy policy does state that subscriptions and "actions" taken with regard to posts are collected. If that information pertains only to users' online activities through the NewsGator site, then the policy needs to be amended, since it is not relevant to FeedDemon.
FeedDemon doesn't automatically subscribe you to those feeds unless you tell it to, and you explicitly have to click "Yes" for those feeds to be added (the default is "No"). I can only guess that those subscriptions were somehow left over from the previous version, or that you misread the step in the startup wizard which asked whether to subscribe you to anything.
-nbradbury
You are right that the default is no, but I am not lying to you, either. I do not think those were leftover subscriptions, because (a) as I have already said, I chose the option to clear the cache and subscription data when uninstalling version 2.7, then went and manually removed any traces of the program left on disk. (I did that to ensure that any old subscriptions would not get merged with my current Google Reader feeds); and (b) though you have to take my word for it, there is nothing in the world more boring to me than sports, and I would never and have never subscribed to any sports feeds. Or, indeed, a Gossip section.
I may be wrong about the bug in the installer, though. I suppose it is possible that (a) the uninstaller for v2.7 did not clear the cache even after I clicked Yes twice, and that subsequently I did not manage to find *all* the remaining traces of those old subscriptions. (I did not check the registry, for example.) In that case the bug may be in the 2.7 uninstaller, rather than the current version.
Again, I repeated the procedure twice with the same effect.
FeedDemon doesn't share your subscriptions, nor does it share your Google login. Your login is stored locally, encrypted in the registry. It's only sent to Google itself, and then only using secure HTTP."
-nbradbury
Thank you for the direct reply. My request would be to include that information on the NewsGator's FeedDemon page, as well as on the installer screens. Also, please describe the nature of the advertisements. It is becoming standard practice today to serve contextual ads, in which case the program would have to provide at least some subscription information to the advertisers. Whether or not this is the case for FeedDemon, there should be a statement to that effect in the license or a privacy policy distributed with the program.
Please understand that, while I am not a fan of adware, and would not have installed FeedDemon had I known about the ads, I accept that this practice exists. I am not out to rid the world of advertisers (a nice thought, though). My sole issue is with the lack of clear, accessible, prominent disclosure, because FeedDemon did not give me a fair chance to back off. That's all I'm asking for.
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OK, that's a lie: when traveling in the US, I sometimes stopped to use their lavatories, when there was nothnig else for miles along our Nevada trail. I would order tea so as not to feel guilty about ripping them off. But at McDonald's, tea is as far as I will go.
). I think the feature you're asking for would require macros, to be able to invoke a series of commands. Unfortunately TC doesn't do macros. One button or one keypress can only execute a single command.