Posts Tagged ‘Google Reader’
Google Reader Lets You Subscribe to Any Page on the Web
January 26th, 2010 | 
Author: RSS technology makes it possible for anyone to keep up with fresh content without having to visit the site in question. Now the same holds for webpages without RSS thanks to a new Google Reader feature.
Today Google has rolled out a subtle change to Google ReaderGoogle Reader that lets you create custom feeds to track pages that don’t already have them. So you can subscribe to updates for any webpage simply by typing the URL into the “Add a subscription” text box.
Should you put the new feature to work, you’ll start to receive short snippets for any updates made to the pages, and GoogleGoogle asserts that it’s committed to improving the quality of these tiny blurbs over time. On the flip side, webpage owners can choose to opt out by adjusting a few lines of code.
So when might this come in handy? While most companies have their own blogs, receiving automatic notifications any time there’s an update to the homepage or product pages of a business of interest could prove to be vital. For example, with Apple releasing a “new product” and potentially news about the iPhoneiPhone on Wednesday, you bet that I’m going to create some custom feeds.
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Posted in Entertainment, Google, Google Reader, Internet | 
Tags: Google, Google Reader, RSS Feed | 
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Google adds more personalization to Reader
Google has added new personalization features to Reader, its RSS feed aggregator, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday.
One new feature is dubbed Popular Items. Using algorithms, Reader will “find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions).” From there, the app will lump all those pieces in the new Popular Items section. Based on a user’s subscriptions and what someone is reading, Reader orders those stories by what it thinks a person likes best.
Reader’s recommendations have been moved to the app’s Explore section. Google also renamed it Recommended Sources. Like before, that feature will employ the user’s Reader Trends and Web History to find a list of feeds he or she might like.
To make it easier for users to find the information they’re most likely to care about, all Reader feeds now feature a sort option called Magic. According to Google, Magic “reorders items in the feed based on your personal usage, and overall activity in Reader, instead of default chronological order.” Google said that the ranking is tailored to the user. The more the user clicks the “like” and “share” buttons on stories, the better the Magic sort will be.
Here is the Magic setting in action:
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
