Google Debuts Feed Reader
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The search company adds a web application to its portal for monitoring site updates.
Google on Friday released a feed aggregator, one of the missing elements of its information portal, in a move that allows Net users to subscribe to web sites and news sources.
The beta Google Reader, which runs in a web browser, is designed to help users manage the web’s information overload. Newsreaders make use of RSS (really simple syndication) and similar formats, which bring in new entries from web sites, so they can appear in a list modeled on an email inbox.
While competitors Yahoo and Microsoft have publicly discussed their RSS strategies, many had wondered what Mountain View-based Google would add to the space. The new product fleshes out features from Google’s recent blog search, desktop, and email projects.
But currently, the RSS train doesn’t have enough passengers to leave the station, according to a Yahoo survey. Despite all the buzz around RSS among the technorati, the syndication technology has surprisingly low penetration. Ipsos Insight and Yahoo released a report Wednesday indicating that just 12 percent of Internet users are aware of RSS and only 4 percent know they have actually used it.
However, perhaps those numbers are mostly due to the opaqueness of acronyms; the study also found that an additional 27 percent of Internet users consume RSS content on personalized start pages like My Yahoo without knowing it.
The new Google product, which makes no mention of acronyms, was announced by Google VP of engineering Alan Eustace and product manager Jason Shellen at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. It is available with a free Google account.
“We often get asked how anyone's supposed to keep up with the firehose of stuff launched from the web's spigot,” wrote software engineer Chris Weatherall on the official Google blog, “so we're offering Reader as a way to help.”
Google Reader joins a large group of consumer aggregators, led by My Yahoo, Bloglines, and NewsGator. This week NewsGator announced it had acquired NetNewsWire, the leading Mac client. That gives the company the most complete RSS offering, with browser, Windows, Mac, Outlook, and mobile editions that can be synchronized. Denver-based NewsGator is also actively venturing into enterprise offerings.
The Google offering, while resembling other browser-based aggregators, takes advantage of some of the other technology coming out of the company’s labs. It includes an attempt at determining relevance along the lines of personalized search, sorting feeds based on how often a user reads its items.
Items can be tagged with labels, as in Gmail, and can also be forwarded or blogged from within the reader. Lastly, Google improves on other readers’ support for downloading podcasts by including a built-in player.
Article submitted by: Some1
Last Update: 10-07-2005
Category: Off Topic Info
Google on Friday released a feed aggregator, one of the missing elements of its information portal, in a move that allows Net users to subscribe to web sites and news sources.
The beta Google Reader, which runs in a web browser, is designed to help users manage the web’s information overload. Newsreaders make use of RSS (really simple syndication) and similar formats, which bring in new entries from web sites, so they can appear in a list modeled on an email inbox.
While competitors Yahoo and Microsoft have publicly discussed their RSS strategies, many had wondered what Mountain View-based Google would add to the space. The new product fleshes out features from Google’s recent blog search, desktop, and email projects.
But currently, the RSS train doesn’t have enough passengers to leave the station, according to a Yahoo survey. Despite all the buzz around RSS among the technorati, the syndication technology has surprisingly low penetration. Ipsos Insight and Yahoo released a report Wednesday indicating that just 12 percent of Internet users are aware of RSS and only 4 percent know they have actually used it.
However, perhaps those numbers are mostly due to the opaqueness of acronyms; the study also found that an additional 27 percent of Internet users consume RSS content on personalized start pages like My Yahoo without knowing it.
The new Google product, which makes no mention of acronyms, was announced by Google VP of engineering Alan Eustace and product manager Jason Shellen at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. It is available with a free Google account.
“We often get asked how anyone's supposed to keep up with the firehose of stuff launched from the web's spigot,” wrote software engineer Chris Weatherall on the official Google blog, “so we're offering Reader as a way to help.”
Google Reader joins a large group of consumer aggregators, led by My Yahoo, Bloglines, and NewsGator. This week NewsGator announced it had acquired NetNewsWire, the leading Mac client. That gives the company the most complete RSS offering, with browser, Windows, Mac, Outlook, and mobile editions that can be synchronized. Denver-based NewsGator is also actively venturing into enterprise offerings.
The Google offering, while resembling other browser-based aggregators, takes advantage of some of the other technology coming out of the company’s labs. It includes an attempt at determining relevance along the lines of personalized search, sorting feeds based on how often a user reads its items.
Items can be tagged with labels, as in Gmail, and can also be forwarded or blogged from within the reader. Lastly, Google improves on other readers’ support for downloading podcasts by including a built-in player.
Article submitted by: Some1
Last Update: 10-07-2005
Category: Off Topic Info
Current rating: 5.13 by 22 users
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