http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/15/google-fast-flip/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/15/google-fast-flip/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:11:30 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=16353 Google and Microsoft are constantly working on new services and features of their search engines. Microsoft introduced a visual search option in Bing yesterday which allowed search engine visitors to access and sort information of specific niches visually. Google introduced a new Google Labs feature called Google Fast Flip which is offering a new reading experience by combining elements of print and online articles.

Fast Flip combines the paged accessibility of print magazines with the near real-time refresh period of online magazines. The number of sources that have been added to Google Page Flip reads like a who is who of the most popular online news portals including the New York Times, BBC, Business Week or the Washington Post.

Several categories are available on the Google Fast Flip website including Science and Technology, Politics, Business and Sports.

A click on any individual article that is being displayed on the Google Fast Flip website is loading the interface for the individual news source. It is furthermore possible to access the categories directly which will combine the news of all news sources in that category.

Google Fast Flip basically embeds the article that has been published on the website of the news portal in their interface with options to “flip” to the next article in line just like in any print magazine. A side menu on the right displays thumbnails of the articles next in line with the option to open one of them with a mouse click.

The only other options currently provided next to the ones described are to email articles and to “like” the article which requires a Google account.

Google Fast Flip could be an interesting option for users who access the Internet from devices with smaller screens, e.g. tablet PCs, netbooks or smart phones.

Interested users can head over to the Google Labs website to take Google Fast Flip for a test drive.

Tags: google fast flip, google labs, google news, google search, news

Related posts

• Credible Reporting eh? (4)
• Wolfram Alpha Is Live (16)
• Wolfram Alpha Gets Its First Core Update After Launch (3)
• Why Google Search Results Can Be Different (4)
• Using Google to find Free Mp3 files 2 (11)

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/15/google-fast-flip/feed/ 2 http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/21/credible-reporting-eh/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/21/credible-reporting-eh/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:24:12 +0000 joshua http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/21/credible-reporting-eh/ I use Digg (on occasion), StumbleUpon and sometimes Google News. The New York Times and Techmeme satisfy the rest of my needs.

I didn’t really think I could be interested in yet another crowd-powered news aggregating website… Mixx, Reddit, Regator, Social Median,  Soshable, Propeller, Sphinn even… whether they’re the next Digg I have no idea… but it sure isn’t worth the time signing up in my opinion.

I was very interested in the announcement yesterday however, that a new service called ‘NewsCred’ was launching with the aim of gathering and aggregating articles based on their credibility over blind crowd popularity.

It’s a fantastic objective, one which anyone who has used Digg over the last few years would probably love to see… it’s all too common where completely bogus stories are Dugg right to the front page (and sometimes consequently removed by the "invisible hand’ of non-existent editors’).

Crowd’s usually vote based on personal preference and opinion as well… a story about Microsoft may be brilliant, well-researched and accurate… but is buried by Apple fans purely because they dislike Microsoft.

W ether or not NewsCred can get around that will be interesting to see, although it isn’t the first to attempt this strategy; NewsTrust has been around for a few years (although I had never heard of it before) and has had slow but steady growth.

The most useful and interesting thing about NewsCred is the analytics option… you can examine the credibility of a publication based on how it fared on NewsCred. Just one indicator sure… but with time it should really be a good measure of the reporting quality of various news sources.

You can also customise the NewsCred front page based on your interests and the publications you prefer. In many ways, even if the credibility factor doesn’t worry you, it’s still a good source of daily news much like Google News.

Tags: credibility, digg, google news, news, newscred, stumbleupon, techmeme

Related posts

• Why Stumbleupon is better than Digg for Webmasters (11)
• Google Fast Flip (2)
• Fichey Digital Microfiche (0)
• When on Digg be careful (2)
• Use Stumbleupon without the toolbar (3)

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/21/credible-reporting-eh/feed/ 4