Bloglines Gets A Triple Dose Of New Features
Bloglines has added three new features to its RSS reading service.
First up is the ability to save posts including text and graphics from within Bloglines to a “Saved” folder. This allows users to have quick access to previously read posts at a later date.
“Photo Widget” provides large thumbnails of images from Flickr feeds; previously only a text description was available.
Last, but certainly not least is the blog view function. The allows users to switch into a 3-pane view that shows the full post on the actual blog, as opposed to just a feed only version of it. What this means is that you can now view a full post within Bloglines where only a part-text feed is offered, but perhaps more impressively users will be able to interact with the blog as well, for example read comments and see other elements of the site, including ads.
The new Bloglines was launched in August and since that time Bloglines has continued to roll out improvements and new features, including support for OpenID (with APML and oAuth support coming). Bloglines has lost its once dominant lead in the RSS Reader market, mostly to Google, but with continuing feature additions such as these it offers an appealing product that may well be worth another look for those who have left, or for those who have never tried Bloglines before.
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You Can Now Share Reader Content With Google Talk Friends
Google has added the ability to share content from Google Reader to friends on Google Talk.
This is essentially how it works: you log into Reader and see a friends tab where you can now specify friends from your broader network (ie: Gmail/ GTalk contacts) to share items of interest with.
I’m a little underwhelmed by it all, but Robert Scoble isn’t and Steve Rubel sexes the announcement up to the point of calling it part of “Google’s Stealth Social Net,” which makes it seem a whole lot more interesting than it would appear on the surface. Of course like any good Google product it’s another cross-promotion tool that encourages you to use more of Google’s products.
More at the Google Blog here. Maybe after the bombshell of Knol yesterday I’m just easily unexcited today. If you share things using Google Reader now you can share with more people…which is great if you’re heavily into sharing, if you didn’t even know that you could share things in Reader or don’t use the feature, then nothing exciting here.
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Google Reader Gets Recommendations, Drag-and-Drop
Google has released two new features for its RSS reading product, Recommendations and Drag-and-Drop.
The Discovery recommendation feature suggests new sites a user may wish to read based on current subscriptions and (interestingly) browsing history. Google has previously offered feed bundles based on subjects, but this is the first time it has offered customized recommendations in this way.
The drag-and-drop functionality allows users to re-order or move subscribed feeds within a folder or to another folder. This style of functionality isn’t unique, and as Google itself points out, RSS readers such as Bloglines and NewsGator already provide drag-and-drop functionality.
Google thanks a number of interns and ex-interns for the new features, a nice thing to do.
As a Google Reader user I know I’m certainly going to use the drag-and-drop functionality, and I’m even looking at some of the suggested feeds as well, but I’ve got to ask: how is it that we can get drag-and-drop in Reader and not Gmail? Surely Gmail could do with this functionality. Maybe the Gmail team needs some interns as well 
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Google Releases New Google Reader For iPhone
Google has released a new iPhone specific version of Google Reader powered by the Google Web Kit.
The new iPhone Reader combines the Google AJAX Feed API with a user interface geared for use on the iPhone.
Google’s Research Actualization Engineer Bob Vawter said that the primary take-away from this project is to say ” The Google Web Toolkit can be used to create applications that, in the same code base, work well on an iPhone and a traditional desktop browser.” Having played with the new Google Reader for iPhone I can’t say that I disagree.
It’s not the most stunning iPhone specific site I’ve used so far (Facebook holds that honor for me) but it does work, and work well. I heavily use tags in Reader to categorize content; unfortunately the only way to quickly go back and forward between tags is by scrolling to the bottom of each post then tapping on a small link, as opposed to a more usable button that is always present. Reader for iPhone also doesn’t discriminate based on tags with content and without, so a tag list includes every tag you’ve ever used in Reader, meaning you have to scroll past them to return to the navigation options. I shouldn’t complain too much however, being able to access this data on an iPhone is still light years ahead of my previous Nokia experience. Here’s hoping Google has future improvements planned for it.
See also our coverage of Netvibes for the iPhone here.
(via Steve Rubel on Twitter)
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Google Plugs Google Web ToolKit For iPhone
Google has plugged the Google Web ToolKit demonstrating an iPhone specific version of Google Reader.
The iPhone Reader combines the Google AJAX Feed API with a user interface geared for use on the iPhone.
Google’s Research Actualization Engineer Bob Vawter said that the primary take-away from this project is to say ” The Google Web Toolkit can be used to create applications that, in the same code base, work well on an iPhone and a traditional desktop browser.”
We haven’t reviewed the Google Reader for iPhone before (not to be confused with the Web Toolkit Version) so I gave it a spin. It’s not the most stunning iPhone specific site I’ve used so far (Facebook holds that honor for me) but it does work, and work well. I heavily use tags in Reader to categorize content; unfortunately the only way to quickly go back and forward between tags is by scrolling to the bottom of each post then tapping on a small link, as opposed to a more usable button that is always present. Reader for iPhone also doesn’t discriminate based on tags with content and without, so a tag list includes every tag you’ve ever used in Reader, meaning you have to scroll past them to return to the navigation options. I shouldn’t complain too much however, being able to access this data on an iPhone is still light years ahead of my previous Nokia experience. Here’s hoping Google has future improvements planned for it.
See also our coverage of Netvibes for the iPhone here.
(via Steve Rubel on Twitter)
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Google May Add Comment Feature On Shared Reader Feeds
Google Blogscoped got their hands on an internal video created by the Google Reader team where they discuss future plans for their popular service.
There’s a pile of interesting information; highlights include Google developing a new way for publishers to notify Google of updates, plans to integrate more social features into Reader including recommendations based on existing subscriptions, a new service called “Activity Streams” that will be a Facebook style feed of activity including integration with Gmail, and new ways to monetize feeds by tapping into Reader.
On the stats side, the video provided some interesting insights: two thirds of all feeds only have one subscriber, and are only polled for updates every 3 hours. Feeds with multiple subscriptions are polled every hour (so Reader is intentionally slow at picking things up). The Google Reader backend stores 10 terebytes of data from 8 million feeds, and according to Feedburner stats Google Reader is the most popular feed reader, followed by My Yahoo.
Its great stuff from the Reader team, and kudos for their ongoing innovation of a great service; but there was one negative: Google is interested in allowing users to comment on items they share, but this currently isn’t a priority.
Please Google, drop the idea altogether.
We all know about the constant battles Google has had with newspapers over Google News, and what seems by some reports so far to be a failed strategy of allowing comments on News Feeds. With the exception of the licensed wire stories which are now reproduced in full, those news stories are always presented only with a small fraction of the story itself, the equivalent to a part RSS feed; ultimately readers must visit those news sites to get the full story and the use of data in this way is usually argued to be fair use.
Google Reader’s share tools on the other hand republish full blogs post for all to read without obtaining permission from blog publishers. So-called link blogs in Reader already break copyright and in a small way undermine blogs and content creators. If Google offers a comment service on “shared” items they are in effect creating copyright infringing blogs; after all they’ll have chronological entries and comments so they’ll look like blogs, even if they don’t provide a fully customizable CMS.
There will always be those who argue that any syndicated content is fair game for republication; it’s the favorite defense of spam bloggers. RSS feeds are in the most provided for personal use/ viewing and are not provided (unless otherwise specified) for someone to use that information to republish on their own site in full, be that powered by Google Reader, Blogger or WordPress.
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Google Finally Adds Search To Google Reader
The most popular online RSS reader (depending on what stats you believe) just got better. Google has announced that Google Reader now has search.
The search box is located directly above the reading panel to the right of the Google Reader logo. Users can search all subscribed feeds or search by category/ tag.
Google Readers biggest competitor Bloglines recently released a completely new version that has been getting positive coverage; adding search to Google Reader (a feature Bloglines has had since May 2006) shines the spotlight back in Google’s direction.
It may be completely unrelated, but at the time of writing anyway Google Reader is experiencing difficulties with showing read/ unread items in the reading panel, showing all items as unread since roughly the same time search went live. The sidebar list of tags though is working fine.
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Google Adds Search To Google Reader
The most popular online RSS reader (depending on what stats you believe) just got better. Google has announced that Google Reader now has search.
The search box is located directly above the reading panel to the right of the Google Reader logo. Users can search all subscribed feeds or search by category/ tag.
Google Readers biggest competitor Bloglines recently released a completely new version that has been getting positive coverage; adding search to Google Reader (a feature Bloglines has had since May 2006) shines the spotlight back in Google’s direction.
It may be completely unrelated, but at the time of writing anyway Google Reader is experiencing difficulties with showing read/ unread items in the reading panel, showing all items as unread since roughly the same time search went live. The sidebar list of tags though is working fine.
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Google Adds Search To Google Reader
The most popular online RSS reader (depending on what stats you believe) just got better. Google has announced that Google Reader now has search.
The search box is located directly above the reading panel to the right of the Google Reader logo. Users can search all subscribed feeds or search by category/ tag.
Google Readers biggest competitor Bloglines recently released a completely new version that has been getting positive coverage; adding search to Google Reader (a feature Bloglines has had since May 2006) shines the spotlight back in Google’s direction.
It may be completely unrelated, but at the time of writing anyway Google Reader is experiencing difficulties with showing read/ unread items in the reading panel, showing all items as unread since roughly the same time search went live. The sidebar list of tags though is working fine.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Google Adds Search To Google Reader
The most popular online RSS reader (depending on what stats you believe) just got better. Google has announced that Google Reader now has search.
The search box is located directly above the reading panel to the right of the Google Reader logo. Users can search all subscribed feeds or search by category/ tag.
Google Readers biggest competitor Bloglines recently released a completely new version that has been getting positive coverage; adding search to Google Reader (a feature Bloglines has had since May 2006) shines the spotlight back in Google’s direction.
It may be completely unrelated, but at the time of writing anyway Google Reader is experiencing difficulties with showing read/ unread items in the reading panel, showing all items as unread since roughly the same time search went live. The sidebar list of tags though is working fine.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.