Google Reader, one of my most favorite tools just got a lot better.
They recently added Personalized Ranking, which sorts feed folders according to which articles Google thinks I will like the most.
I have a few folders in my GReader that are completely out of control. This sample folder, where I track mainstream print media news, tends to fill up with a bunch of junk I don’t want to read. I spend more time scanning article titles than I actually spend reading body text.
I would love to read the most interesting 1% of these articles each day, but it can be taxing to find the diamond in the rough.
Now, with Personalized Rankings, I enable the humorously named “Sort by Magic” feature, a Google guesses which articles I will like the best. I’ve experimented with it a bit, and it seems to work reasonably well.
The feature works based on your history of Likes and Sharing. Unsettlingly, it also uses the nefarious Google Web History to rank feeds and articles based on my search history. This thought gives me the heebie jeebies, but Personalized Rankings is the first feature utilizing Web History that just might win me over.
Would you trade privacy for getting back some lost time?
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2 responses so far ↓
"Would you trade privacy for getting back some lost time?" Yeah, If all data and processing is sandboxed on my personal pc and not in the cloud. Not going to happen any time soon, unfortunately.
Vern,
I have two different browsing behaviors. One, at work, I read mostly blog and news posts on technology and the economy. At home, I'm more browsing for entertainment (e.g. http://icanhascheezburger.com/).
Speaking for myself, if Google can make me more productive at my work, then they can have all of my work browsing history they want. They already accumulate an absurd wealth of information on me through my search history, and my visitations to AdSense and DoubleClick websites.
The browsing I do "off the clock" I'm a little more private about. In this case, I'd rather use one of Firefox's extensions to block Google and Yahoo tracking cookies.
I haven't yet deployed a two pronged approach like this, but I'm considering it. It would require some discipline in order to always make sure to keep the right browser open. [yes, I'm aware of "private browsing" modes for FF, Chrome, and IE, but they don't precisely accomplish what I'm looking for here.]