Today, Google is rolling out its update to Google Reader which features the promised user interface overhaul, and, more importantly, the new Google+ integration. Now, Google Reader users can “+1″ items directly from Google Reader to share it with their friends on Google+. This feature now replaces the “Share” and “Share with Note” options previously present.
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Hmm … Maybe RSS isn’t dead after all? After the replacement of the Google Reader link in Gmail with a link to Google Photos caused a user revolt on Friday, Google has vowed to bring the link back and tells TechCrunch its removal was accidental.
And while Google is uncertain as to exactly when the highly dramaticized link will be back, the Gmail team is working hard to fix it and is targeting Monday morning, according to representative Victoria Katsarou. → Read More
More proof that RSS is on its way out, and the apocalypse is nigh: Google has seemingly replaced the top link to its RSS reader product, Google Reader, with a link to ‘Photos’ (Picasa) at the top of the Gmail web interface. To be clear, the link is still there, it’s just hidden behind the ‘More ▼’ link now.
Boy, that place has really started falling apart since Larry Page took over as CEO. → Read More
Earlier today, we ran a “TechCrunch 2010 In Review” post featuring some key data WordPress.com sent our way for 2010. Interesting stuff all around. However, as some people have noticed, in our top referrers for the year, Facebook is nowhere to be found. Further, Google Reader, an RSS reader, comes in number three!
Is Facebook dying? Is RSS reborn? Nah. It would appear that referrer data is just a bit screwy.
I ran that data against our own data coming directly from Google Analytics. The view from there is quite a bit different — and interesting. → Read More
Given the success Apple has seen this year with the launch of the iPad, they decided to single out the device to give it its own “App of the Year” award. The winner? Flipboard. The social magazine app launched in July with some glowing reviews and since then, a few small updates have made it even better. But the update they’re releasing today makes it a lot better. So much so that if Flipboard was already the app of 2010, they’ve got to be the early frontrunners to be the iPad app of 2011 as well.
First of all, Flipboard has added both Flickr and Google Reader integration to bring more content into the system. Users of those services can easily link up their accounts to create new areas to browse on their Flipboard.
But the bigger news is what they’ve added to the content options that have existed on Flipboard since the beginning: Twitter and Facebook. Both of these areas on Flipboard now feature support for various sections of the services. So on Facebook, you can browse items shared in the News Feed, on your Wall, on the various Pages you follow, or filter items by the Friend Lists you have. You can also filter the stream to show just pictures or just links. With Twitter, you can now choose between your standard Timeline, just your Tweets, your Favorites, your @Replies, or any of your Lists. → Read More
As if they weren’t busy enough releasing the Chrome Web Store, the Chrome OS test drive, and inadvertently letting the first Google +1 image leak, Google had one more trick up their sleeve today: the new Google Groups.
Technically, Google is just previewing the new Google Groups user interface. “The new Google Groups user interface represents the first in a series of updates to Google Groups,” Google writes here. And it really is a complete revamping. The new style is much more in the Gmail/Google Reader mold. And in fact, some elements even seem a little Wave-like. → Read More
Of all the tech echo-chamber arguments, one of my favorites has to be the “RSS is dead” one. Sure, perhaps I’m a bit partial because Steve Gillmor set the discussion in motion in May of 2009 for TechCrunchIT. But it’s still interesting to watch all the sides swarm around the topic. But what’s most interesting lately is how for every one person that busts out the death of RSS meme, a dozen people seem to pop up with posts that refute it.
If RSS is doing just fine, shouldn’t that be self-evident? Why do we need so many posts pointing out just how not dead RSS is? → Read More
Google Reader has been my go-to RSS reader since October 7, 2005. How do I know? A new update to the service today tells me that and a few other interesting tidbits about my reading habits.
Technically, the big news of this update to Reader is a new fullscreen mode. I guess it’s nice to have in certain circumstances (just hit “f” to activate it). But to me that’s a little ho-hum. Much more interesting to me are a few of these new statistics they’re dishing out. → Read More
I’ve often found myself countering the argument that the Internet is making us dumber by citing Google as a second brain: the search engine lets us remember stuff that we didn’t actually know, which is sort of true as connectivity becomes ubiquitous. But what if there was a service designed specifically to retrieve information that we have already come across but didn’t explicitly log for future use, perhaps because at the time it didn’t seem relevant or useful.
At a higher level, that’s the concept behind Sentimnt, a personal and social search engine that at its simplest aims to answer the question: “Where did I read that?”. It does this by connecting to a user’s Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Gmail and Delicious accounts, indexing all of the updates, articles, and resources that are referenced so that they can be recalled later.
The site is in private beta but TechCrunch Europe has invites (see below). → Read More
Back in January, Google announced it was removing Google Docs and Sites support for older browsers such as IE6. Starting June 1, it’s doing the same for its popular Google Reader product. And that’s not the only thing they’re removing — gone as well is Gears support. But to make up for those loses, they have added something in their “Spring Cleaning” — a simplified social structure.
To be clear, IE6 isn’t the only browser getting the axe. Firefox 1.0 and 2.0, Safari 2.0 and 3.0, and even Chrome versions 1, 2, and 3 are all being pulled. “This will allow us to spend our time improving Reader instead of fixing issues with antiquated browsers,” Google writes. Again, this will happen June 1. → Read More
One of about a half dozen tabs that I always have open in my web browser on my desktop or laptop is Google Reader. Even though other sources such as Twitter and Facebook are now better at uncovering news more quickly, Reader remains a great catch-all backup plan for the content I read online. But I’m increasingly finding myself browsing for news on my iPhone. And sadly, all the Google Reader applications that have launched over the past few years have, in my opinion, sucked. And I’m hardly the only one who thinks that. But that changes, today.
An app called Reeder, by Silvio Rizzi, has always been a nice-looking app that syncs with Google Reader. Unfortunately, it has also been clunky, and slow, and lacking some features such as state-saving. But the latest version, 2.0, which just went live in the App Store last night, corrects all the issues I had with it. It’s wonderful. I have absolutely no doubt this will be one of my most-used apps now. In fact, I’m so sure of it, that I’ve already placed it on my the first page of apps on my iPhone screen. → Read More
Google launched a new service today in from its Labs called Google Reader Play. It is a more visual way to browse through the most popular items being saved and shared on Google Reader. When you launch it, you are presented with a large photo, video, or text excerpt on the main part of the screen, and can flip through by clicking on arrows or selecting an item from the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen.
Google Reader Play doesn’t require you to sign in, but if you do then you can star, share, and like items, and it starts to recommend things to you based on what your friends share, star, and like in Google Reader. The user interface seems to borrow a lot from StumbleUpon, with its concept of randomly flicking through the best stuff on the Web. In particular, it’s very similar to StumbleVideo, except it includes more than just videos. It is very image-heavy. The user interface reminds me of some elements of enjosythin.gs as well in the way that it presents images and text excerpts in a blown-up manner. The arrows are very Fast Flip, another Labs experiment for the Google News in making magazine and newspaper articles more visually browsable. → Read More
Google News is testing out a new design, as I reported earlier this month. It includes trending topics on the left and new personalization options. But today someone in the bucket test noticed something different. The sharing options changed. Each story can be shared via email, Google Reader, or Facebook.
Most people won’t see this. It is just in a limited test. But it does suggest that Google is starting to seriously think about ways to drive more sharing of content across the Web. But why push content to Facebook and not to Twitter? And for that matter where is the Google Buzz button? → Read More
Social sharing is becoming a big contributor to traffic for many sites. While Facebook and Twitter drive more sharing than any other services, Google is trying to compete with Buzz, which is now part of Gmail but shares links to article and blog posts through Google Reader. Over the past month, according to AddThis, sharing through Google Reader is up 35 percent, with a big jump on February 9, the day Buzz launched. This number only measures sharing through the AddThis button, which is on more than 600,000 Websites and gives you the option to share content through more than 200 services. So it is only a proxy for total sharing on Google Reader, but a decent one.
Google Reader still barely registers when compared to Twitter and Facebook, which account for 31 percent and 8 percent of all sharing via AddThis, respectively. But Buzz is definitely giving it a boost. → Read More
Back in October of last year, Google Reader rolled out a nice little update that added a new “Popular items” feed to the “Explore” area of the service. In here, you would find items from around the web that were gaining popularity fast. Of course, one person’s gem of popular content is another person’s crappy video. So today, Google has rolled out another update to Reader, to recommend items more personally tailored to you.
The new “Recommended items” feed replaces the “Popular items” feed in the same Explore area. “With the latest round of improvements, we’ve started inserting items selected just for you inside the Recommended items section,” Google writes. → Read More
In case you missed it, Apple announced the long-awaited iPad yesterday. And while there’s been no shortage of coverage by just about every technology-related blog on the planet, perhaps you’d like to be able to use Google Reader without every third post being about the device. If so, there’s a very simple search trick you can use to filter out all the iPad-related hoopla. → Read More
Distinguishing feeds on Google Reader can be a little hard. Since every feed has the same default blue RSS icon, it requires reading on your part to tell them apart. Reading is hard. Pictures are easier. Today, Google Reader takes a step in that direction by finally adding favicon support to feeds.
The new feature certainly livens up Google Reader quite a bit. The only problem now is that you have a lot of feeds, like I do, it’s not exactly easy on the eyes with zillions of colors bombarding your peripheral vision. But hey, no doubt some people will like this, and most importantly, it’s opt-in. → Read More
Editor’s note: Today, being a news junkie requires not just the ability to keep up with hundreds of breaking stories a day, but the ability to redistribute those stories to your followers and news sites. To get some insight into the modern news junkie, we asked Mrinal Desai to share with us how he screens the news in the guest post below. Desai is the co-founder of CrossLoop, but some of you may recognize him more from Twitter or Techmeme, where he tips stories every day—580 of those tips have appeared as headlines since the beginning of this year. You can read his last guest post here.
Like many out there, I have been, am and always will be a news addict. For many news junkies, it is the fleeting, current fix of information about a breaking topic that interests them, only to be replaced by the next headline. They jump from headline to headline, forgetting the one they just read as they move on to the next one.
For me personally, news is not only timely information on the current state of affairs but also a way to take a deep dive, to connect analysis and information together and learn through application. I am looking for insight. It could be patterns, it could be knowledge about an industry or it could be an opportunity to become introspective and ask questions.
Keeping this in mind, here is a snapshot of my consumption and distribution of news both offline and online. I’ll divide the way I screen the news by the screens on which it comes to me. → Read More
A few days ago, I sent out a tweet wondering how long it would be until Google Reader added a tweet button to the bottom of each feed item. My guess was that it would be very soon. I was quite right. Today, the Google Reader team has unveiled a bunch of new updates to the product, including, yes, the ability to easily tweet any item.
But that’s hardly all this update contains. You can also now easily send feed items to a number of places including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogger, and others. To enable any of these, simply go to the “Settings” area of Google Reader and enable the ones you want to use. If the services you want aren’t listed, you can even customize the “Send To” feature to enable sending items just about anywhere. → Read More
At our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp event last month, one of the most interesting things that was demoed was PubSubHubbub, a new protocol made by a few Googlers in their spare time to improve the speed at which Atom and RSS items travel around the web. As expected, they have a big player on their side now: Google Reader.
The Reader team notes today that it has begun the adoption of PubSubHubbub, starting with the publishing of Shared Items. As you can see in the demo video below, with PubSubHubbub support, when you share an item in Google Reader, it instantaneously shows up on services like FriendFeed (which pull in Reader Shared Items). → Read More
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