Mountain View, California — In an aggressive attempt to demonstrate more of what is available via its RSS reader, Google on Wednesday launched a new, labs experimental interface dubbed as Google Reader Play. The new tool aims to simplify things and empowers users to view content from their RSS feeds in a more stylish way.
Google’s Reader is a web and content aggregator that as yet is still only in beta. The latest experiment from Google, its visually attractive Reader Play, which, in reality, has less in common with Google Reader and more with Fast Flip, is designed to complement a new way of experiencing feeds and finding new stuff from blogs and sites making for a much more visual experience by ditching much of the text. Rather than display stories, videos or photos from sites users subscribe to in a list, Google’s Reader Play displays that content in a slideshow-like format.
“Today, I’m happy to release an experimental service from the Google Reader team that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone, while giving Reader users a new way to view their feeds. It is dubbed as Google Reader Play, and it is a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web that is easy to use and personalized to the things you like,” Google engineer Garrett Wu wrote.
According to Wu, Google Reader Play is designed to make Reader more accessible, and easier to use and try. So we tried it and it did not work. Easy to try yes. Easy to use. No. “Reader Play suits to your tastes — as you browse, you can let us know which stuff you enjoy by clicking the ‘like’ button, and we will use that info to show you more items we think you will like,” Wu wrote in a blog post.
Visually, Google Reader Play expresses it own richness from Google Reader. Each element in Google Reader Play is showed one at a time. Reader Play allows you to flip through selections from Google Reader without actually setting up a formal Reader account.
While the latter emphasizes usability and cramming in as much information without being overwhelming, Play cuts everything down to the bare minimum. If a specific element contains a photo, Reader Play automatically expands it.
It draws up links, videos, or photos at random in a style similar to StumbleUpon, however, a filmstrip below the page displays previous and upcoming selections. Any videos included in the feed will “auto-play” once they are brought to the fore. Items are presented over a black backdrop, there is a thumbnail list of stories in the lower part of the screen and that is pretty much it.
Both sides of the app contains arrows to help users flip back and forth between content. Users can also choose to see items from specific categories like arts, business, entertainment, health, news, science, sports, technology, shared, and recommended.
Wu emphasized that Reader Play is complementary to Google Reader and will not replace it. Reader Play is “designed to be a fun and easy way to view interesting items, while Reader is a highly customizable way to organize your feeds, keep track of what you have read, and much more,” he said.
The appeal of Play, apart from the visual display, is that it is bundled with the most starred and shared items in Google Reader at any one point. As a result, the list can be very similar for all users, but, if they are logged into their Google accounts, the stories are customized based on what they and their friends find the most interesting.
It is a fascinating experiment, but under no means a replacement for Google Reader. The service is superbly-designed and is pleasing on the eyes, but power users looking to quickly customize their RSS feeds will want to stick with Google Reader.