Google is continuing its recent uptick in new features for Google Reader with Google Reader Play, a visual reading tool for feeds.

The easiest way to describe Play is to compare it to a slide show which emphasizes images in a post. Think slideshow in iPhotos, Picassa or Flickr, but with a text extract under each picture. Google describes it as

items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you’ve read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen.

There’s also a link into recommended items, with Play “personalizing your stream to only show you stuff from those categories” you like.

To use, Google Reader users click on the drop down menu to the right of each folder, then select “view in Reader Play.”

Of the top, Play is pretty. In fact, it’s the most beautiful feature ever offered in Google Reader, although not that the bar was set particularly high to begin with. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Google’s other useless Google News feature Fast Flip, but nicer looking.

The key though is its usefulness. As a novelty, you can’t help but like it. But Google is pitching this as RSS for the masses, and I just don’t buy it; RSS most certainly isn’t dead, but it’s not mainstream either. Those who use a service like Google Reader do so not for the beautiful browsing experience, but because it’s the quickest and most efficient way to read/ keep up with a pile of sites. Those users aren’t about to start embracing Play because in delivering beauty, it sacrifices efficiency.

As a novelty it’s useless as a serious feed reader, and I’m predicting that it won’t last because it’s a niche product delivered as part of an already niche product. Still, credit to who ever created the visuals; if there’s one thing we can say about Google today, is that the company which once mastered the art of delivering visually ugly services has sure changed its ways.

Google Reader Play: Completely Useless And Won’t Last, But It Sure Is Pretty is a post from: The Inquisitr

Technically Buzz isn’t a scraper in the truest sense of the word, however the way that Buzz presents our blog posts is identical to all those scrapers sites that the tech blogosphere goes ape-shit over. Now, it was pointed out to me in a private message on Twitter from a friend that this is exactly how Google Reader Shared Items does it. My reply back to him was that Reader and Buzz are two totally different beasts and the content being shared via Buzz should be treated differently.

The thing about Reader is its reach. In contrast to Buzz; which is meant to reach as many people as possible, Reader Shared Items is typically a much smaller segment of people. The ability for items to go viral in Buzz is profoundly greater than those same items in Reader. The problem is that there is no benefit for blog owners to have their content piped into Buzz as there is literally no chance of any traffic finding its way to the originating site.

This is the one thing that Friendfeed did right. With Friendfeed only the post title was posted and if you wanted to read about what the post was about you had to click through. With Buzz on the other hand the entire contents of the post is there – there is no incentive for click through traffic. Buzz gets all the buzz and the content provider gets none.

There will be those really irritating people who say it doesn’t matter where the content is as long as it is being read and talked about. Bullshit. Period. For bloggers who are either doing this professionally or as part of building themselves a home base of the web our blogs are our headquarters. Everything we do emanates outward from there but with the way that Buzz handles our posts they are claiming defacto ownership over over it. Then on top of it just as they are with GMail you can be assured that at some point they’ll be running ads on Buzz – against your content as well as everyone else’s.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat on this – which will happen anyway – I have no problem with Buzz carrying my content. After all I’m the one who agreed to piping it in there however the solution to the scraping problem is an easy one. Either go the same route as Friendfeed did and just post the headline or even just a short blurb from the content for context. I do however draw the line ad making the complete contents available.

There are two other points that I want to raise about how Buzz displays content especially when it comes to the blog posts we pipe in there.

The first point I want to make is the whole URL thing. As you can see in the above graphic is extremely hard to tell exactly what the blog post headline is. Unlike the rest of the items that show up in Buzz there is no way to visually distinguish what the post headline is as well unlike the rest it isn’t permalinked to the original post.

Sure the blog name from where the post comes from is linked to the original source the only problem is that it is displayed in such away that it blends into the page. Even I didn’t think that the link headed to the original post but rather was just a default link to the blog itself. Oh, and yes there is a handy dandy link option in the drop down menu but again this is a secondary option and not one that the average user will think of.

The second point that really needs to be addressed is the display of images. There are two definite problems with the way that Buzz currently handles it. First off in some cases even if there is only one image in the post Buzz for some reason displays multiple copies of that image. This is just bad design folks – seriously. It gives Buzz a real look of being an amateur effort.

Sticking with images the second problem I have is that when there are actually multiple images within a post Buzz will display all of them (or as is the case above displays the same image for the number of actual images within the post). The thing here is that often times multiple images are setup in such away to entice the potential reader to click through to see them all. Sure the way Buzz is doing it is more in favor of the reader and keeping them on Buzz but once more this is taking traffic away from the originating site.

In both cases I believe the Google Buzz team really needs to rethink how it is displaying our content. As it stands our content is being used to the benefit of Buzz not the content producer.

Now don’t take this post as coming out against Buzz because I am not against it. In fact I hold out a lot of hope for Buzz because I believe that there is a hell of a lot of potential for all parties involved. I just want some equality for the content producers so that we don’t end up just being the fodder for their cash cows.

Google Buzz: the newest scraper on the block is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google has upgraded the sharing feature in Google Reader to allow for multiple comments on shared items.

The immediate difference for Google Reader users is the addition of a comment option at the bottom of each shared item. Users can leave a comment, and have that comment shared with others within their shared items group. A “switch to comments view” top right allows you to view shared items with comments, including your own items.

Google is pitching the change as delivering “watercooler” discussions to Google Reader

With our new conversation feature, you can have private discussions on shared items with your friends. Now, instead of obsessively asking everyone in your office if they have seen that awesome lego cake article you shared last night, they can tell you how awesome you are, right within Google Reader!

The implementation is a little clunky; for example you now see your own shared items in the Friends shared items view. The commenting takes place at the bottom of the item, despite an original comment left by the person who shared the item appearing at the top.

The implications of the move though could be more serious. Adam Ostrow at Mashable claims that the feature “steals conversations” and so far, he’d be 100% correct. There’s no way to import these comments back into a blog, although a work around may appear via use of the API in the future.

My bigger concern is that in creating a community around full content, Google Reader is reducing the likelihood people will click through to the site featured given readers can now comment inline. The pitch of an RSS reader has always been about allowing people to read your content easily, and hopefully from a publishers perspective, visit your site more regularly as a consequence. For example, previously if I felt opinionated about what I was reading, I’d click through to the site to leave a comment (in fact, I’ve left three comments only this morning on posts initially read in Google Reader.) This move works against that.

In perspective, the threat is small today. The Google Reader shared items is an underused feature, so any effect on site traffic would be small. However, this feature is being offered to make shared items more appealing, and no doubt Google hopes that it will drive high use rates; the more users, the bigger the potential loss.

Imagine for example Google creating a community around newspaper content in this way (actually, newspapers offering full feeds will get caught up as well), and imagine it was on Google News instead. The outcry would be huge, but I digress.

What we may likely see as a result of this move is a shift away from full feeds to part feeds; after all, if Google Reader reduces the desire to visit a site, publishers will look to counter that by trying to force the point. Not a great outcome for end users, but understandable. The other thing that will increase is the use of RSS advertising, because if you’re going to lose page views because people don’t leave Google Reader, you’re going to want to find ways to make money from your content where it is being read. I’ve held out and not run RSS ads so far for The Inquisitr, but I’ll be reviewing that in the next few days.

It could be worse: Google Reader could be running ads against the content like some of the “2.0″ services we’ve seen in the last year. Lets hope that’s not the next step.

Louis Gray also has more here.

Update: one note I should have made, while making the comparison to FriendFeed in the comment style, there is a radical difference: FriendFeed doesn’t show the content. A conversation on FriendFeed often results due to people having clicked through and read the content. There’s a real incentive to click through, where as with Google Reader, there isn’t.

Google Reader adds FriendFeed style commenting, and why it could be bad is a post from: The Inquisitr

Feedreaders are for many working in blogging, or following the social media/ web 2.0 space a lifeline into keeping up with the latest news. And yet for many, a feedreader can be a beast that consumes time and isn’t always easy to manage.

I’d neglected doing a serious cleanup for a while, but decided that given I wanted to broaden my reading some more, I needed to undertake a spring clean. This included everything from dropping feeds, through to rearranging and creating new folders.

Here’s a couple of observations from the exercise

Organization is the key

I’ve always been big on grouping content into folders, but I’ve found over time that some content didn’t sit properly in existing folders, and other folders often duplicated interest areas. I found myself both consolidating folders and creating news ones.

If you’re not using folders yet, the key is grouping them in a fashion where you prioritize reading. In my case, I created a “first read” and “competitors” folder, and placed both of them at the top of my folders list. This is content I need to read first thing in the morning, and keep an eye on during the day.

I then refined a couple of others. Corporate, which use to be Google and Microsoft was expanded to include all company blogs I follow that were previously in other folders. Three folders covering tech/ web blogs became Web-A and Web-B.

You collect a lot of dead feeds

One thing that really surprised me was the amount of dead feeds I was still subscribed to. If you’re like me, you usually stay in the updated view, so feeds that aren’t updated just aren’t seen. One example: I was still subscribed to Robert Scoble’s Microsoft blog that hadn’t been updated since 2006! Picking up dead blogs saw my subscriber count drop by over 30 feeds.

Marginal blogs have to go, unless you have a strong personal connection

Over the years I’ve added blogs sometimes only because I’ve read something on the site I liked, but never really liked much more again. A lot of these blogs were in big folders, so I was use to glossing over them, but each blog I wasn’t really reading was adding time in my daily use of Google Reader, so a number of blogs had to go.

Likewise though there are some blogs I’ve stayed subscribed to because I know the person (either in RL or online), so I have a person connection and would like to keep up with them. In some of those cases, it wasn’t so much that I don’t like the content, in that it was rarely updated. In fact I was surprised by the number of infrequently updated blogs from people I would have expected to see more from. Ultimately put in a “personal” folder, they do little harm even if there is a marginal return from them in terms of regularly reading.

People who don’t redirect feeds are stupid

One thing that was strange in the dead feeds was the number of blogs that had changed address, and not bothered redirecting the feed. Although it’s not always an available option, it would have been with the majority of them. Telling readers in a post that they should sub to the new feed once is a quick way to lose subscribers. Old feeds should always be redirected to new feeds, out of respect for your readers, and because it makes complete sense; every subscriber counts, you don’t want to lose any.

Conclusion

Now I’ve had my spring clean it’s time to add new feeds, and the net result is I may end up reading more than before. But ultimately what I’ll be reading next week will be hopefully offer better value, and will be easier to manage.

I’d never encourage anyone to go mad and cut a pile of feeds, but prioritizing feeds and better managing them should be part of your regular mix…and I need to do this more often

Also if you’re subscribing to The Inquisitr and it’s too much for you, don’t forget we offer feeds per category so you can pick and choose what you want to read; that’s our commitment to making sure you get the best out of our content without having to deal with all of it.

Observations from a Google Reader Spring Clean is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google has launched a redesigned Google Reader (GReader) including new looks and features.

Collapsible navigation is now offered in the sidebar so users can now maximize or minimize all controls. Friend sharing gets an improved look in, with a dedicated section. Users can now turn off unread counts that according to Google cause anxiety, and “Feed Bundles,” the grouping of related feeds you are offered when you first sign up are now automated.

That’s the good part, and then there’s the looks.

Gone is the traditional Google hard but functional aesthetic into something out of a Jane Austin novel, well a Jane Austin novel interpreted by Sergey Brin anyway. It’s soft and feminine and you can’t switch back to the old version, or even customize it, which is a bit rough given Google has been rolling out customization options for iGoogle and Gmail. Some may like the new looks, and they are certainly more consumer friendly, but I live in GReader, and I liked it just the way it was thank you.

Google messes with GReader: The new Google is soft and feminine is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google’s feedreading service Google Reader is now offering built in feed translations.

The new feature comes from a Google 20% project and is as easy to use as subscribing to a feed in any language, then from the feed options drop down menu in Google Reader selecting “Translate into my language.”

The option opens up the world of non-English speaking blogs to the general US and Anglo-blogosphere. Previously the only other option was to use Yahoo Pipes to deliver a translated version, as I have done with a number of feeds over the years. This is far easier, and the Google Translation while not perfect, on the surface seems a bit better than Yahoo’s Bablefish as well.

(via The Google Reader blog)

Google Reader now offers built in feed translations is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google has announced the launch of Power Readers in Politics, a political news aggregation site where journalists and political campaigns share stores via Google Reader.

Included in the aggregation mix along with both the McCain and Obama campaigns are leading political journalists including Mark Halperin and Adrianna Huffington.

Google is pitching the site as:

We’re reading a lot about the candidates and the media this election season. But what are they reading? At google.com/powerreaders now you can track the news sites and blogs Barack Obama and John McCain read (from Drudge to The Daily Show) and follow articles catching the eyes of leading political journalists….share articles that interest them. You can follow shared articles and blog posts, or you can add participants’ reading lists or shared news feeds to your own Reader account.

Shared Google Reader blogs aren’t new, but this is the first time I can recall Google creating a special site for shared feeds based around a topic. More notably though, it’s a content play by Google. This is a news aggregation site, and a decent one at that, but it automatically competes with any existing players in this space. Whether that’s good or bad I’ll leave others to call, but it does seem to be part of the pattern where Google is moving away from empowering creators to being a competitor in its own right.

Google launches another content play: political news aggregator is a post from: The Inquisitr

At its core, Genwi is a RSS Reader. Users subscribe to feeds, creating a personal “wire.” Feeds can be added manually, or Genwi offers a range of suggested feeds that can be browsed by category, most subscribed to, or highest rated. When connecting with friends on Genwi, users are also offered their friends subscription list as well.

Feeds within Genwi are delivered river of news style in a similar fashion to Google Reader, although the initial view is via part feed. Users can only view a full feed when logged on, and this is a simple as clicking on the item. Notably though you can only view a full feed when subscribed to that feed, so website owners get more traffic from the main page, or if people want to view it via Genwi, they get new RSS subscribers.

The friend sharing comes in different levels. At the basic level you can share items with friends, and you can also swap feeds as well. Then it gets into FriendFeed territory, as you can also add external content (FriendFeed style) into your profile, and that data is then shared with friends within Genwi. Other social aspects include commenting, specific item sharing, and rating items.

My only negative comes with the look of the service; it demonstrates why coders should never be left alone with aesthetics, but it’s a minor draw back when considering the overall functionality of the site.

This continues to be an interesting space, and Genwi presses a lot of the right buttons. It’s fairly user friendly, therefore as a consumer level service it has a lot of potential. Power users and first adopters may find it a little simplistic at times, but it’s certainly still worth a look. The new Genwi goes live midday PDT July 8.

First look at the new version of Genwi: Social RSS is a post from: The Inquisitr

Of the bat this would be one of the most aesthetically pleasing services I’ve seen in a while. The default Feedly view post install (it needs a browser reboot) is clean, functional and highly pleasing. Magazine style Feedly pulls your feed information from your favorite service or services (Google Reader, Bloglines and Netvibes are some choices), adds an image and gives you a choice of views. Cover offers feed categories with lists underneath, What’s New offers highlighted information, or you can go to categories directly.

Also built in is a range of social sharing tools. Users can star feeds and share them with others. In my case it pulled in my Google Reader friend contacts and allowed me to see their favorite feeds. Feedly also offers the ability to share, annotate, recommend and even email feeds, all from the one screen.

It’s great eyecandy and what’s not to like about it…but alas it’s not for me. Aesthetics doesn’t always equal functional, and if it did I would have switched back to Bloglines from Google Reader about 9 months ago. I’m a slow adopter with mission critical tools, and feed readers are one of the most important tools I use. I hit my category and I scroll down, taking in the full feed as I go on one page with a minimum of fuss, river of news style. Feedly is set up to be pretty, appealing, and will be a brilliant product in introducing people to the world of RSS feeds or even for those who don’t see RSS reading through the functional stare I do. This is My Yahoo 2.0 done really, really well. But it’s not for hardcore RSS consumers. Yet.

Feedly: My Yahoo 2.0 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Here’s the scripts I’ve created so far. Each script can be used with each other and has been tested on Firefox 3 on the Mac and Windows. Before installing any of them you’ll need to install Greasemonkey if you haven’t already (the latest beta for FF3 RC 1 can be downloaded here). The last proviso is that unfortunately the tabs don’t create a second row at the moment so if you install every one and don’t have your browser at a decent width they’ll end up blocking existing FriendFeed tabs. This wasn’t the case for me, but it can happen, at least until I code a work around for it.

FriendFeed ReadBurner (download)
Adds a ReadBurner tab to FriendFeed

FriendFeed Plurk (download)
Adds a Plurk tab to FriendFeed

FriendFeed Twitter (download)
Adds a Twitter tab to FriendFeed. Note, that this is the actual Twitter page so many wont need this nor want it. However if you’re like me and have had to block tweets from FriendFeed it’s a work around that allows you to switch into Twitter from within FriendFeed.

FriendFeed Google Reader (download)
Adds a Google Reader tab to FriendFeed, inspired by Louis Gray.

FriendFeed Netvibes (download)
Make FriendFeed your start page and have Netvibes as a tab within

FriendFeed Facebook (download)

FriendFeed Techmeme (download)
Note: although the original script these are based on displayed Techmeme, it isn’t compatible with these scripts due to the way it displays tabs, so a new Techmeme script is required.

I’ll probably create some more in the coming days, and am happy to take suggestions on additional scripts and even code improvements. Enjoy + screen shots as follows:

Turn FriendFeed Into Your Start Page With These Greasemonkey Scripts is a post from: The Inquisitr