Google Reader Play
March 15, 2010 1:39 AM   Subscribe

 
Well, there goes my last shred of productivity.
posted by mek at 1:49 AM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


this is awesome! thanks for sharing.
posted by crystalsparks at 1:49 AM on March 15, 2010


So good it's https:
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:08 AM on March 15, 2010


There's some sort of url hack you can do to it to get it to actually use your actual google reader feed subscriptions (if you have any set up) instead of just showing you randomly "recommended" content, lemme see if I can dig it up...
http://www.google.com/reader/play/#stream
posted by juv3nal at 2:26 AM on March 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


Cool.
posted by OmieWise at 3:02 AM on March 15, 2010


I don't get it. What's it for?

No, seriously. I don't get it.
posted by salmacis at 4:13 AM on March 15, 2010


"​And now for something completely different" attempts to explain it.

I don't understand it either yet; it is irritatingly engaging though, kind of a fusion of Reader and television (gasp!).
posted by fydfyd at 4:23 AM on March 15, 2010


The genius of Google Reader, like the genius of Google Mail, is that you have to be logged in to use it. Which means you are also logged in to use Google Search, which is win-win (for Google and the companies/government agencies they sell you to).

Firefox's next major advance desperately needs to be a way to firewall tabs from each other.
posted by DU at 4:49 AM on March 15, 2010


I thought this was going to be an actual ply about Google. You know:

Sergey: What light through yonder window breaks?
              It is the east, and Larry is the sun.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:51 AM on March 15, 2010 [5 favorites]


play
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:51 AM on March 15, 2010


Can we play a game called "Don't fuck with my back button?"

Apparently not.
posted by eriko at 5:23 AM on March 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


So it's like StumbleUpon, only prettier? I found it quite irritating, but I'm all about scanning text. I'm guessing people who prefer to scan for images will quite enjoy this.
posted by harriet vane at 5:55 AM on March 15, 2010


So... this is what the internet is masturbating to today.

Interesting.
posted by Theta States at 6:15 AM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Ran across this on Saturday. Played with it for 2 minutes. A friend and I have completely different feeds we follow, and it was suggesting all the same things for both of us. Pretty weak. Now, juv3nal's stream link - that's kind of fun.
posted by cashman at 6:29 AM on March 15, 2010


Meh.
posted by diogenes at 6:35 AM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


First, Google went for AIM, and I said nothing, as AIM was never that great.
Then, Google went for Facebook, and I said nothing as Facebook was kind of a walled garden,
Then, Google went for Digg's picture section, and I said nothing, as I thought Digg was kind of a boy's club,
Then, Google came for Metafilter, and my $5 donation was for naught.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:42 AM on March 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


I like this one, as it shows that gun nuts have an inflated sense of importance.

[NOT-GUNNUT-IST], actually have a somewhat moderate stance re: guns.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:47 AM on March 15, 2010


Oh, opps, looks like I can't link via URL. Nevermind...
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:57 AM on March 15, 2010


Ha! This post came up as the fourth or fifth thing on my list.
posted by rtha at 7:21 AM on March 15, 2010


This is neat ... but as it is, it feels like watching cable television with a one-button remote.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:28 AM on March 15, 2010


I'm waiting for Google Oxytocin, the cuddlier search experience.
posted by storybored at 7:33 AM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Some of the links it shows may be NSFW.

In other news, I just found the subject of my next FPP.... Subject might be NSFW for some folks.
posted by zarq at 7:49 AM on March 15, 2010


When I read "gun nuts" in McCarty.Tim's comment, I first imagined some variant on truck nuts, only designed to hang off the butt of a handgun.
posted by ErWenn at 8:03 AM on March 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


Television was once described as the greatest time-waster ever invented.

Things have changed. It is now possible to be more asleep than ever before.

Sweet dreams all.
posted by RoseyD at 8:23 AM on March 15, 2010


imagined some variant on truck nuts, only designed to hang off the butt of a handgun.

yur doing it rong
posted by DU at 8:23 AM on March 15, 2010


i did it rong to let me tri agin

imagined some variant on truck nuts, only designed to hang off the butt of a handgun.
posted by DU at 8:32 AM on March 15, 2010


The genius of Google Reader, like the genius of Google Mail, is that you have to be logged in to use it.

Google Reader Play, the feature we are discussing right here, works fine without being logged in. And how would the main Google Reader work without you being logged in? It's storing all sorts of data for the user in order to operate. If you're really stressed out about it, create a couple of accounts and juggle logins and hope they never correlate you by IP address. Or you could always, you know, not use Google's free products.

Firefox's next major advance desperately needs to be a way to firewall tabs from each other.

Google Chrome has that, incognito mode (aka porn mode). I never thought I'd need it, but it turns out to be remarkably useful for all sorts of things. Not just browsing porn, but testing cookies, site behaviour when not logged in, etc. MSIE has something similar. So does Firefox.
posted by Nelson at 8:57 AM on March 15, 2010


Google Reader Play, the feature we are discussing right here, works fine without being logged in.

Well if you're just viewing, sure. But you can't "like" or "favorite" anything, obviously. So for full functionality you have to be logged in.
posted by zarq at 9:38 AM on March 15, 2010


I was gonna snark about "of course you have to be logged in to store data, duh!". But in fact, you don't in theory. Google Gears (soon to be part of HTML 5) allows for good structured client-side storage of data. There's a lot of drawbacks to doing it that way, I'm sure most users would prefer server-side storage associated with an account. And I don't think it'd make sense for someone like Google to try to support both server-side and client-side as a user preference. But it is technically possible.
posted by Nelson at 9:47 AM on March 15, 2010


I've been using stumbleupon for a few years and the variety of topics are one of the great parts of it. I have found great websites there, since there are millions of people who vote with their thumbs. Yes, there are some things that are repeated but I think there are enough people using it that it is hard to fake interesting things. If it isn't of good quality, not many people will give it a thumbs up. Maybe Google Play will grow into something, but I think they've missed the boat on it. There are only so many wacky images one can stand.
posted by mearls at 9:49 AM on March 15, 2010


For those saying "what's the point" I remember reading somewhere that the idea to make a feed reader that's easier to navigate on a touch device. *shrug*
posted by juv3nal at 10:19 AM on March 15, 2010


I found an animated cat GIF.

Kind of like searching for sand on a beach.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:31 AM on March 15, 2010


Is this only for pictures? What happened to words?
posted by k. at 10:40 AM on March 15, 2010


Cannot. stop. this. cycle.
I've seen repeats by now, I've seen Metafilter referenced. This is awesome! And horrible! If StumbleUpon was a college course this would be the elementary school equivalent. Pictures, 180 words or less, can not longer type whole sentences, need help. meep. meh.
posted by deacon_blues at 2:57 PM on March 15, 2010


I keep wishing the google explore/play things had DISLIKE buttons. They keep showing me things I don't like, like it has a strange desire to show me TMZ and Perez Hilton, and I would really rather those things be kept as far away from me as humanly possible.
posted by that girl at 8:47 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is cool.
I would very much like the ability to do this with the dataset being my google bookmarks/googlehistory, even something more swift to navigate a larger database, more cooliris like in its scale.
A visual bookmarker for large sets of data bookmarks (including smaller chosen "clips" or a quote, a picture, a video from within a site... SemiMetaMarks.) oh, annotatable. almost exactly like this; this Is a good strong step.

I remember some noise a while ago to create a standard for "marking up the web" with opinions or something similar, I see the potential for graffiti and abuse that likely caused the delay.
It would however be appreciated for use in users' bookmarking/history. A more organizable and visualizable, personal web, but mostly a manageable, navigable web always seems more useful.

(I only say because I just got a bunch of basically lolcats... and I know the internet isn't just the cats and this... But it is a nice way conceptually to package the web.)
Also... will now best of the web just be whoever can press the right arrow key the fastest... (whoever's fastest gets to the far ends of the internet quicker right? Unlike the Earth, far as I've heard tell, the internet falls off once you press the right arrow key too many times... it just breaks... "you have internetted, that's far enough.")

Seriously though, hold your finger down on the right arrow key, watch the semi-knowledge scroll through you, then watch fifth element... you know what to do Neo.
posted by infinite intimation at 1:34 AM on March 18, 2010


DAMN YOU! I just said goodbye to productivity.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:43 PM on March 22, 2010


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