I try not to spend too much time pimping Google’s products in this space, but let’s face it: we make really cool stuff, and whether I work for the company or not, I absolutely adore most of our products. Fact is, our engineers and product teams cook up tools that are really useful for those who are ready to embrace the digital future. Google Reader is one of those tools, and the team has just released a set of features that have got me plain jazzed.
Google Reader is a tool for pulling interesting content to a central inbox via “feeds.” Almost every website on the web that publishes regular updates also sends out a feed that can be subscribed to via various tools. As a result, instead of clicking through a long list of bookmarked sites to see if there’s something new to read, you can just subscribe to that site’s feed and all the new content will build up in your inbox. (If you want to subscribe to Tropophilia’s feed, click here.)
Though it got off to a rocky start, Reader has been incrementally socializing and personalizing itself over the past two years. First it let you share items publicly; later, those shared items became directly available to your contacts who also use Reader. Recently, the team introduced the ability to “like” an item in addition to sharing it, and it also created a section of “recommended” feeds based on your reading, sharing, and liking history (although it was a little hard to find). It has also given users new ways to share with the “send to” feature that lets you post to Twitter and other third party sites.
At first, it was confusing as to why there was both a “like” and a “share” feature, with many people not understanding when they would do one without doing the other. This week, the Reader team cleared that up by delivering the punch line:
- You can now sort any feed (including the comprehensive feed) by “magic.” The sorting is based on what Reader has determined you’re interested in, as reflected by your reading/liking/sharing history.
- The “recommended feeds” feature now has prime real estate in the main sidebar in a new “Explore” section.
- There is a new “popular items” feed (also sortable by your personalized “magic”) that shows you what items have been popular across the web recently.
Yesterday, I had an envelope in the mail from my dad. I opened it up to find a photocopy of the “Opening Statement” of the Summer 2009 issue of Litigation, the official journal of that section of the American Bar Association. The Litigation Section’s chair, Lorna G. Schofield, dedicated
A few weeks ago I read an
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