The Next Generation Of Start.com
Microsoft has released the next version of its RSS aggregator at Start.com. They had said that the new version would be ...
... at Start.com/3/, but Jason Schramm noticed last night that page had finally launched with a quiz. Answer four questions (the answers are all given by clicking a link to MSN Search) and you get the URL. Go ahead and play it.
Dumdeedum…
Okay, here's the URL, lazy:
http://www.start.com/myw3b/
The new version is much improved. It includes a slick feed preview, convenient folders, and a nice list of pre-selected feeds for you try out. When you view the content of feeds, it is nicely formatted in an overlay window. The whole thing is an impressive bit of AJAX, and shows great promise. There are still some things that need to be added. They need to add the ability to sort feeds in folders, and favicons for your subscribed feeds. I'd like the feeds to show how many unread items there are, and to only show those items. An "expand all" button in the feed view would be nice. The ability to import my feeds from Bloglines would be helpful.
The "dashboard" is a nice new feature. You can put feeds there, drag them around, expand and collapse them, and get rid of them when you're sick of them. I would love it if I could double-click items in the dashboard to expand/collapse. Thankfully, there are blogger-friendly permalinks to copy wherever you need them to be. When you collapse the feed reader, the dashboard expands to fill the screen, being super-useful.
Let me know what you guys think of it.
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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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