Monday, February 20, 2006

Small new features at Findory

In response to a few suggestions and requests, I've added a few small new features to Findory.

First, several people who enjoy the Findory feed reader, Findory Favorites, wanted an RSS feed for the Top Stories from My Favorites.

Top Stories from My Favorites is a personalized selection of articles picked from your favorite feeds. It's designed to emphasize interesting articles based on your reading habits rather than forcing you to read every single post from every single blog in your feed reader.

To use this nifty new RSS feed, go to Findory Favorites by clicking on the "[N] Favorites" link at the top right corner of every page on Findory. If you don't have any favorites yet, you'll want to list your favorites by upload an OPML file, import from Bloglines, add RSS feeds individually, or pick favorite sources by clicking source names on the Findory site. Make sure you are signed in, then look for the "RSS" button at the bottom of the Favorites page.

Second, others who like Findory Favorites wanted to see more top stories than the 20 or so we list by default. So, Findory Favorites now allows you to read up to 200 stories, 20 at a time. Look for the "Read more" link at the bottom of the Favorites page.

Third, I've seen several requests for clustering in Findory similar to the clustering seen in Google News or Memeorandum. I added a first step toward exposing some of our clustering data in a new feature called Findory Similar Articles. You can see it from the article landing page you see when you click on any article from a Findory RSS feed or from Findory Inline.

For example, on Findory's article page for my earlier post, "Google and The Happy Searcher", there is a link to the cloud of similar articles.

Fourth, for no particularly good reason, I added a feature called Findory Tags that automatically extracts common keywords used by a news source or weblog. For example, see the tag cloud for this weblog or for Bruce Schneier's security weblog, Schneier on Security.

A link to both Findory Neighbors (which shows similar sources) and Findory Tags is on every source page. If your blog is in Findory's database, you can see your neighbors and tags. If you aren't listed yet and want to be, please enter a request to add your blog.

Hope you enjoy the new features!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fantastic and timely features. Just this evening I was blogging about the need for what I call "Idea Agents". A number of your enhancements address some of the items I thought would be nice to have in an "Idea Agent".

Anonymous said...

Great new features! This makes Findory even more useful. The personalized page has become my #1 page when surfing from my cell phone, btw (using Opera Mini).

Scott said...

Greg, great work as always. I usually visit Findory's homepage once or twice a day, and was looking forward to the RSS feeds. What's a little disappointing is that the RSS links take you to Findory, rather than taking me to the article itself. It's an extra click and a wee bit annoying.

I understand that you want to draw more page views to the site to help monetize your efforts, but for me I'd rather just hit the homepage manually than have to click through twice via RSS...

My two cents...

(Keep up the good work, the site is thoroughly enjoyed! :-)