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Google introduces "Fast Flip"
- bjclark 17y agoI actually think this is pretty cool. I know I tend to jump from cnn.com to bbc.co.uk to espn.com to velonews.com so it would be cool to have a quick way to do this.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoAaargh. This uses one of the principle UI ideas we're integrating into our wanna-be YCW10 app. EDIT: Hah. Plus "like" and the mobile UI -- that pretty much is 80% of our client interface.
- JacobAldridge 17y agoTry to stay positive - this demonstrates that you're onto a good thing.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoYeah, we've still got some tricks up our sleeve. OTOH, we were really counting on surprising a lot of people with the UI, and that's out the window at this point. ...And, this isn't just an idea on paper -- we've written a huge chunk of both the server-side and mobile client code already.
- chime 17y agoDon't worry about there being similar concepts. You never know if something like this will pursued beyond a Labs project. The main thing to realize is that if you consistently work on your idea, it does not matter if someone else has a similar product. Being a smaller, more agile developer, you can continue to innovate much faster. This applies to your ideas being stolen too. Sure, anybody can copy what you have made. But remember, nobody can copy what you haven't even thought of yet. So just keep thinking of cool new things your users can benefit from and make them so you stay ahead of the curve.
- wmeredith 17y agoYikes! If your UI is what's surprising people, then I would generally consider that a bad thing. By their definition, a surprising UI is bad. (Obviously there are exceptions but they're very very rare.)
- smokinn 17y agoIt depends. There's surprising as in what is this software doing!? and there surprising as in the wow, this is so much better. The pinch zoom is a perfect example of a surprising UI that most people love. When someone sees a two fingered pinch zoom for the first time they go wow, that's awesome. Surprising isn't always bad.
- jonnytran 17y agoI wouldn't necessarily call "pinch zoom" surprising, though, b/c the first thing I thought after seeing it was, _this is so intuitive -- i.e. unsurprising -- you never have to show anyone twice_. The wow-factor is less surprise, and more delight.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoWell, like I said, we've got other tricks yet, and it's still a fledgling system. We just thought that we had a better UI for browsing content than anyone else had yet, and then Google debuted something that was uncomfortably close. But, I'm hoping that the really surprising thing will be the ... naaaah. :-)
- shotgun 17y agoWelcome to the club! I think this is a UI design pattern we're going to see used a lot in the future. What I find interesting is that you and I are both working on a journalism/publishing startup and found reason to use similar UI ideas. We must be onto something!
- thaumaturgy 17y agoHey! I didn't know who else around here might be working on something in the same market, but I'm not at all surprised that someone is. I wouldn't mind "competing" with someone in the YC or HN crowd, it would be fun -- and it's a big enough market, there's room for a couple of people to steal some lunches. Hope to hear more from you and what you're working on. We might start releasing some teasers around the end of October; I haven't figured out yet if that would ultimately help us or hurt us, but it might be fun either way.
- jonmc12 17y agoWhen I can import OPML, do I need Google Reader?
- joez 17y agoMobile version also available! Same site. "Swipe left and right to move between articles. Stretch & pinch or rotate the phone to zoom in and out."
- Keyframe 17y agoIt has potential... I'm having trouble with readability of headlines though :|
- adamhowell 17y agoWow. They're shamelessly wrapping ads around other people's content.
- axod 17y agoAFAIK with the consent of the content producers, and giving them a cut.
- adamhowell 17y agoAh, I do believe you're right: http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/sources http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/sources Surprising they did it here b/f News and Reader.
- chaosmachine 17y agoPre-rendering websites in the cloud, and sending them as images is an interesting concept. If there was some way to keep them interactive, it'd be even more interesting.
- jrbedard 17y agoThat used to be the concept behind searchme.com
- jongraehl 17y agoRSS skimming is better for me, but I can see the appeal.
- zeynel1 17y agoI think the logo doesn't go well with the concept. Their other logos are pretty good in my opinion http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
- wmeredith 17y agoNot to nitpick, but I think you're talking about their icons.
- zeynel1 17y agoyes, and I have a design background I should know. I just saw MG Siegler too writes "the smiley face is built into the logo." http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/a-new-way-to-visually-search-google-news-they-call-it-flipper/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/a-new-way-to-visually-s...
- dfranke 17y agoI was hoping it was an API for selling your startup to Google.
- adamhowell 17y agoThat was supposed to be App Engine.
- nearestneighbor 17y agoI'd love to learn more about this. Is your company more likely to be acquired by Google if it uses the app engine? Edit: what's with the downmodding without explanation? Is this reddit now?
- coconutrandom 17y agoI think the parent post was sarcasm.
- johnnybgoode 17y agoWhen App Engine was released, many people speculated that apps built on it could easily be acquired by Google since they would already be designed for and running on Google infrastructure.
- slig 17y agoI don't get it. What's the advantage on reading a image rather than normal rich text? edit: nevermind. Now I see the left scroll pane.
- DavidSJ 17y agoWhy does it say "Google confidential"?
- JBiserkov 17y agoLooks like Google's reply to Bing's Visual Search (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822206 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822206)
- mshafrir 17y agoOn a related note, what are recommended techniques of taking a screenshot of a web page from the server?
- sjs 17y agoThey probably use WebKit to render the HTML to a buffer and then compress it, save to disk. If you were asking more generally, see this discussion[1] on the WebKit mailing list, and these Qt links[2, 3] that I found in that thread. [1] http://www.nabble.com/Webkit-capture-web-page-content-API-td23516755.html http://www.nabble.com/Webkit-capture-web-page-content-API-td... [2] http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/11/03/thumbnail-preview-of-web-page/ http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/11/03/thumbnail-preview... [3] http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/01/15/capturing-web-pages/ http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/01/15/capturing-web-pag...
- mcantelon 17y agoHow is this useful (honest question)?
- moe 17y agoI second that question. I browsed through some of the articles but fail to see the appeal. Technically it's a nice little trick but usability-wise I can't see myself using this.
- req2 17y agoWhat was your last magazine purchasing experience like? You might just not be part of the target demographic if you aren't one to flip through a magazine or a newspaper.
- moe 17y agoThat's an apples and oranges comparison. Following your logic we should have TFT-displays with bendable corners, so we can make "real" bookmarks...
- txxxxd 17y agoIt's much much faster than loading and rendering the html, images, and ads on the actual sites. I can zoom through articles pressing the left/right arrows with no perceptible latency.
- mattparcher 17y agoAs a Mac user, I can’t help but feel a bit thrown-off by the aliased text, even if it’s the right decision on their end :/
- lucifer 17y agoSafari 4, ctl-t. No ads.
- cmars232 17y agoHey, that's cuil!
- johnnybgoode 17y agoThis is not impressive at all. From the way Marissa Mayer introduced this at TC50, you'd expect much more.
- bbsabelli 17y agoIsn't Google "Flip" enough? Why would they add "Fast" to the name?
- Pistos2 17y agoIn summary: I can barely read even the important text (titles, headlines), therefore this is of little use to me. I agree with others: I'd get a lot more out of being presented just clickable titles and headlines in a legible font size; and we already have that in several forms. Showing thumbnails of full-page screenshots is just a waste of screen real estate.
- petercooper 17y agoA few years ago I was playing with Web page screenshots and thinking it'd be a big deal. Some sites like DZone even got in on the action pretty quick and.. after all that time, I just can't see it having added value. It looks good but in terms of usability, I've found it adds little for me over time. Any studies been done into this usability wise?
- budwin 17y agoit's almost as if google is waiting to launch stuff until _right after_ a new feature comes out on bing
- omarish 17y agoI don't think this is a product intended for hackers who are connected via RSS and the such, but it's a fun product nonetheless.
- cpr 17y agoCan't they render the page images on a decent system like a Mac, with anti-aliased fonts and decent kerning? Horridly ugly images.
- riobard 17y agosame feeling, esp. after get used to Apple's font rendering engine ...
- Eliezer 17y agoBecause attention spans aren't short enough.
- sachxn 17y agoIts better in many ways.....they are going Chrome way..all the way... SD http://qtp.blogspot.com http://qtp.blogspot.com
- ssn 17y agoCrashes with accented chars. http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/search?q=á http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/search?q=á