Official Google Reader Blog: Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

Google Reader is bringing in some changes that will aid you in locating more interesting content than you already have discovered. When Google launched the Personalized Search in 2005, we were skeptical because we were worried about personal information. But we came to realize that it helped us in our searches.
Now the same search feature is helping you with your reading habits, that you do with your Google Reader.
The Explore section helps you find new content, with the two new features Popular items and recommended sources, which uses your Reader Trends and Web History (if you're opted into Web History) to generate a list of feeds we think you might like.
Personalized Ranking will help you with sorting your articles, using "Sort by Magic" under the Feed Settings menu in your reader. The traditioanl sort options are still there but better because it is based on your reading and sharing habits. If you try these out, please let the them know about how you feel about them on Reader help group, Twitter or the Reader section of Get Satisfaction, a third party support community.
Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking
Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

Your Feeds "Talks" To You, If They Are On Android

Yes there is an App for that, certainly on Android based phones. So Android users now can listen to their news out loud while your hands are busy to handle phone.
Or just take the case of the author of the article and the app, Stephane Doyon,that I have pointed at the bottom, who is blind.

The Talking RSS Reader does the task via text-to-speech library adapted from android eyes-free project, helping mobile phoning for visually impaired. Sometimes I am amazed at what a mind could do to solve simple tasks ans this is one of them! Here are some facts about the App from the project page.

It begins reading each article out loud as soon as it is displayed. The sentence currently being spoken is colored in green.
Speech can be interrupted and restarted by pressing the CALL button.
To move to the previous or next sentence, spin the trackball up or down while the app is talking.
If the text is scrolled, speech will pick up at the first full sentence from the top of the screen.
Links can be selected with the finger, or trackball when the app is not talking. Clicking a link launches the browser, which does not talk.
You can have sentences spoken one at a time by holding the CALL button and spinning the trackball up or down.
The Next and Prev article buttons are located at the bottom corners of the screen, where they can easily be tapped without looking. Each article is marked as read after you click Next.
If you are a first time user of Google Reader, you may need to initialize your account by going to http://google.com/reader.

Google Open Source Blog: Talking RSS Reader for Android

Feedburner Subscriber Status Might Change, Starting Today.

Google Feedfetcher, one that keeps an eye on subscribers to feeds on behalf of Google Reader and the iGoogle has shaken up it's dust and updated it's database after a long period of inactivity.
So this update could take you Feedburner subscriber count will reflect this change which could either be up or down.
Feedburner folks assure us that the changes will begin to show up in feedburner subscriber counts starting today, 26th of September.

Google Sidewiki, Anotate Me Please!

Google released Google Sidewiki today. Sidewiki allows one to;

• Publish helpful information
  about any web page right in your browser
• Read insights in context
  from Sidewiki entries added by others
• Share Sidewiki entries through
  Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles 

There is a link to learn more after the jump.


Learn more about sidewiki

Blogger Joins the Hubbub Via The PubSubHubbub Protocol

We have been working with the PubSubHubbub protocol for a while now to adopt it for Feedotopia. Now that Blogger has adopted it, we will have instant updates from millions of blogs under Blogger wing.
Basically the PubSubHubbub protocol turns web feeds in to real time streams and as developers adopt the protocol, feeds will appers in readers in near real time.
Google Reader, my favorite reader has also implemented PubSubHubbub. You can find a link to at the bottom of this article.

The protocol in a nutshell is as follows:

• An feed URL (a "topic") declares its Hub server(s) in its Atom or RSS XML file, link rel="hub" ... . The hub(s) can be run by the publisher of the feed, or can be a community hub that anybody can use. (Atom and RssFeeds are supported)

• A subscriber (a server that's interested in a topic), initially fetches the Atom URL as normal. If the Atom file declares its hubs, the subscriber can then avoid lame, repeated polling of the URL and can instead register with the feed's hub(s) and subscribe to updates.

• The subscriber subscribes to the Topic URL from the Topic URL's declared Hub(s).

• When the Publisher next updates the Topic URL,, via. the publisher software pings the Hub(s) saying that there's an update.

• The hub efficiently fetches the published feed and multicasts the new/changed content out to all registered subscribers.

The protocol is decentralized and free. No company is at the center of this controlling it. Anybody can run a hub, or anybody can ping (publish) or subscribe using open hubs.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger Joins the Hubbub
Official Google Reader Blog: PubSubHubbub support for Reader shared items

Tags: feedotopia, PubSubHubbub protocol, Atom, RSS

DIGG Bans Laughing Squid

According to Laughing Squid, DIGG has blocked the popular blog without reason or warning. We like LS, both the blog and the hosting company.
Hope this get resolved soon!

Tags: DIGG, Laughing Squid

NewsGator Adopts Google Reader As Its Online COmpanion

RSS Readers
From Agust 31, Google Reader will become the online vehicle for NewsGator. News Gator has announced that Googlr Reader will be the companion and the synchronization platform for its RSS Reader applications. NewsGator has FeedDemon, for Windows and NetNewsWire, for the Mac as RSS readers. It also has an iPhone App, NetNewsWire for the iPhone, one of the favorite nes readers.
New versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are available as of today, NewsGator mentions NetNewsWire for iPhone will be available soon.
If you need any futher encouragement, following paragraph will give you plenty;
"Users of FeedDemon, NetNewsWire for Mac, and NetNewsWire for the iPhone will have 30 days to download new versions of these applications that can synchronize with Google Reader. Syncing will give you a consistent reading experience across your PC, Mac, iPhone, and web browser. For example, if you add a new RSS feed, organize your folders, or mark some stories as read on one device, the changes will immediately reflect across the others. Users of NewsGator Go! can select from the mobile RSS reader options that synchronize with Google Reader."
NewsGator

Tags: iPhone App, NetNewsWire for the iPhone, RSS Reader, FeedDemon, google reader, NetNewsWire, newsgator

Party with Blogger & Google Reader At South By SouthWest (SXSW)

Google Buzz just announced that it is going to host a party together with Google reader team at the SXSW and if you are attending, check out the venue at Six Lounge (117 W 4th St @ Colorado) on Sunday,
Blogger Buzz: Blogger & Google Reader Party @ SXSW

Tags: Google, Google blogger, google reader, SXSW

Transfer FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts, More Info

Google Adsense for Feeds blog has published following information as of February 28th 2009, people will have problems managing accessing Feedburner accounts, if care is not taken. Simply create a google account and information is availale after the jump.

• The FeedBurner functionality of analyzing, optimizing, publicizing, and monetizing your feeds is not being shut down or reduced in any way. We have made some strategic decisions to remove some of our functionality that is not directly relevant to managing feeds for reasons we hope will become apparent over time. Names may change, things may move around, but in general our plan is to provide a lot more functionality that makes sense in 2009, and beyond, for all publishers. Learn more here.



• On February 28th, if you have not moved your feeds to a Google Account, the traffic to your feeds will not be cut off or terminated, but you will not be able to view or manage your feeds until you have moved to a Google Account, unless you use MyBrand. Technically, this means that all traffic will now be served out of our Google data centers, and there will still be a way to move your account that will be in place indefinitely.



• If you used MyBrand at www.feedburner.com, you absolutely must move to a Google account and update your DNS CNAME records by March 16, 2009, or else your MyBrand URLs will return a 404 error. If you use MyBrand and have not moved, you should have already received an email from us with detailed instructions. If, for some reason, you have changed the email address associated with your FeedBurner account, you will receive another message once you have finished the move process to the email address associated with your Google Account.

Transferring FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts FAQ

Tags: Google Adsense for Feeds, FeedBurner, FeedBurner Accounts

Feedly, As Explained By Robert Scoble

Feedly brings together Google Reader, friendfeed, twitter, and anything else to bring you a better and bigger News source. Robert Scoble spoke with Feedly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian and prests us how the newest incarnation of the application works. Get Feedly here.

Tags: Feedly, feed aggregation, Google Reader, friendfeed, twitter

Your Quotes, For The Last Five Years, On Google News!

If you thought the feeds that we get too much and there should be a better way to check out the news, I am with you. I have three separate news feeds that, I use to manage daily doze of various news. Still they fill up fast, 1000-2000 articles each. But until I have a better way to parse these, I have to deal with it.
Main while Google News team, has done something marvelous with the "Quotes" system. I have used the thirty day span of quotes by various people many a time. But now I am able to do that for a span of five years!
Just imagine indulging yourself in analyzing quotes by various people over last five years. I can forget about parsing my news as I will be spending a quite a bit time, with these quotes!
Just check out the quotes by Presidential Candidates, Obama and McCain.
But if you not into politics, there are many other people who uttered good and bad stuff, that might interest you.
To access these new features, first search for a person's name on Google News. If Google News has a recent quote, it will be shown above the search results, and if there are more quotes, you can expand on it!, which is again sortable depending on date or relevance. Go get quoted!
But the custom edition was much more enjoyable.
Google News Blog: Words matter

Tags: News Feed, Google, quotes, Obama, McCain

Google Toolbar 5 Ready If You Got Firefox

Sneaking behind Google Toolbar for Firefox users, Google updated the Google Toolbar for IE with new features a few months back. (What? how could that be?) Yes a few others also thought so and promptly emailed the toolbar team asking when those new feature will be available to Firefox users.
The answer and the new toolbar is ready. You can download the Google Toobar 5 in 29 languages and it is the the first Toolbar launched out of our St. Petersburg, Russia office. So head over to Google toolbar for Firefox site get yours.
The Autofill stands out as you can keep your profiles ready to be filled on your computer and those pesky sign up forms could be filled with just a one click.
Of course what is the toolbar without Google gadgets? you can add any gadget from the Google Gadget Gallery.
So lastly here is a video, that shows the virtues of Google toolbar 5 for Firefox.




Official Google Blog: Google Toolbar 5 now available in Firefox

Tags: Google Toolbar 5, Firefox, Google Gadgets

Google Reader Brings Friends Everywhere, And Gets Friendlier.

Google Reader Blog posted about some improvements to the Google reader. First of all it the sharing feature that was only available to US friends, now expands to the rest of the world. The other feature is that there is a new way to sort your feeds, if you do not like to drag and drop to arrange them, alphabetically.

Official Google Reader Blog: Friends Everywhere, and other Friendly Features

Tags: Google Reader, feed aggregator, RSS Technology, feedotopia

Sergey Brin goes blogging.

Sergey Brin goes blogging. With the first post about Parkinson's disease, shows that it is truly a personal blog. He also tells us what Google got to do with Googol.

Tags: Sergey Brin, blogging, Google feed, Googol

BOTW To Buy DMOZ! (End Of Free Reviews?)

According to a post on Shoemoney, BOTW, Best Of The Web is on it's way to acquire DMOZ. DMOZ had so far maintained a premier position on the web directories due to several reasons. The strict control of listing, and the association of companies like Google that relied on the directory maintained by AOL to create it's own Google Directory.
According to the article, BOTW has already hired those top editors away from the DMOZ and by any means doing much better than DMOZ already.
In the age of Google looking down on web directories, (Page rank drops etc) DMOZ (and BOTW) maintain a heafty ranks. But there is a big difference between DMOZ and BOTW. DMOZ is free and wether your site get included might boil down to a boil in the pants of those volonteer editors. I have managed to get some of my sites included but sometimes I wonder if it is worth it.
BOTW on the other hand charges a $249.99 review fee which is a prerequisite. BOTW also makes the point that their review for inclusion is not a guarantee of inclusion in their directory.
But I doubt that many people get excluded but I have not tried nor do I know the inner working of BOTW. But Google thinks they are good enough to give them a high PageRank.

I have no idea nor the Shoemoney, how the drama may unfold. But it might turn pages, web pages pretty soon. May be it is time we down loaded a copy of the directory. A few years ago we started parsing the directory for one of our search engines but I have not visited the DMOZ recently. Hope BOTW do good to DMOZ.

Tags: DMOZ, BOTW, WEB DIRECTORY, google, shoemaoney

Google Gadgets For Your Blogger Blogs!

Fresh out of Blogger's own testing ground, Google Gadgets have now been enabled for all layouts blogs. This new interface allows for the integration of iGoogle Gadgets directly into your sidebar, with an array of customization options for easy tweaking. Also built into Gadgets is our robust Gadget Directory, which lets you browse through thousands of cool gadgets and add them to your blog with a simple click of a button.
Blogger Buzz: Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets!

Tags: Gadget Directory, Blogger, Blogspot, Google Gadgets

Happy 4th Of July America!

Happy 4th Of July America!

Tags: 4th of July, America People We See, Independence day

Super Charged Blog List, RSS Powered

This example at work on the sidebar on the left side, scroll down to see.

Blogger has released a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. If you were using Link List before to create a list of your own or friends blogs, Blog List is the link list with a woomph!. Instead of the static links, now you can have dynamic list that uses blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Here’s a quick summary, that I took from Blogger Buzz, of the features that a Blog List gives you:

• Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
  
• For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
  
• Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
• Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
  
• Import subscriptions from Google Reader
  
• Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to

Read more here and watch a video.

Blogger Buzz: Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

Tags: RSS feeds, Atom Feeds, Blog list, Link list

Tags: RSS feeds, Atom Feeds, Blog list, Link list

Bloglines VS Google Reader, Show Me The TOPDOG

I came across a post by Heather Hopkins of Hitwise about how Blogline doing it's deeds against Google Reader. I use both bloglines and Google Reader and so does my collegues. So who is the top dog? Who does the best fetching? (TOPDOG is the best hotdog around where I live and where we get our midnight snacks, usually two dogs! Calabrese and Hot Link, eaten on the street, leaning against the car! So this dog fetches me, time to time)

According the analysis done by the lady and her firm Hitwise, Bloglines is still running in the front but Google Reader is steadily closing in.

I am more of a numbers guy than a word guy, so I am going to grab some graphs and let you go and digest the words of Heather later. The graph above is how they stood in August of last year and the one below is how they are doing now. Both are heavy climbers and Google Reader seem to be doing some catch up. There are other players as well but these two dominate the scene now. (until Feedotopia shakes the ground!)

But the gem of the analysis was the graph below!. These are the downstream visits to publishers from both Bloglines and Google reader. This makes me want to have Google Reader be my traffic cop. Because except shopping, Photography and personal blogs, Google Reader seem to be doing wonders. I think Photo attributes to the new Flickr feed module in Bloglines Beta. I use the feature a lot and I like it. Further more if you are a Shopping or Retail site, it is better to have Bloglines behind you!.Following is Heather's view of it;

• The top downstream category for both feed readers was News and Media. However, Google Reader sent 61% more visits to News and Media websites than Bloglines.
• Bloglines sent almost as much traffic to Blogs and Personal Websites as to News and Media (9.98% and 9.95% respectively). By contrast, Google Reader sent more than twice as much traffic to News and Media websites. This indicates that Google Reader users are more inclined toward mainstream media - using the reader as a front page of a newspaper - while Bloglines seems to be used more for following blogs.
• Bloglines users are also more inclined toward Photography websites, while Google Reader users are more inclined to visit Television websites.
• And the last difference I'll highlight is that Bloglines users are 24% more likely to continue on to a retail (Shopping & Classifieds) website.

You can see more data and Heathers analysis at her Blog, here is the post.
Bloglines Beta.
Google Reader
TOPDOG

Tags: Flickr feed, Heather Hopkins, Hitwise, Blogline, Google Reader, feed aggregator, RSS Technology, TOPDOG, feedotopia

RNews 0.91 With a bunch of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

Rnews has released a new version, 0.91, at the beginning of this month. I have tested RNews in many test settings but yet to deploy in a production environment. Perhaps this new release will convince me to do so. I have just downloaded and soon will replace one of my test setups of old version.

This release has a raft of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements. It's definitely the best Rnews, yet. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas and bug reports!

• Feeds are scored using personalized statistics, one- and two-column block views are more flexible, keyword search is supported, heuristics try to fix broken feeds, and feeds may be added using bookmarklets or a Firefox extension.
• New user options were added for keeping stats, expanding articles in single-feed view, and opening links in a new window.
• Rnews received a styling upgrade, with rollover icons and more AJAX interaction.
• IP-locked cookies are now optional (though recommended).
• Many bug fixes, in caching, IE presentation, redirects, and elsewhere.

Database structure has changed, but there is now an automatic upgrade process (from 0.8x only). See the instructions on the download page.

Update: minor bug in 0.90 is fixed in 0.91, which is drop-in compatible.

Tags: RSS Aggregator, RNews 0.91, feed Aggregator