Gmail clips - short, sweet and simple
December 9, 2005 by Neil Maclean
This is oddly addictive.
I really don’t need another RSS reader in my life. I already have half a dozen set up to receive feeds on different kinds of content or for different aspects of my life and work. But Google has just added news clips to all their Gmail accounts and they’ve done it very well.
As Jared Jacobs, Gmail engineer, explains, with a vast dollop of parental pride:
I had a lot of fun working on this feature, and biased as I may be, I have to say I really love Clips. No new mail? Great, then I have time to read why pasta is made in different shapes. And even if I do have mail I should be getting to, maybe I’m in the mood to digress for a moment and investigate The Divine Secrets of the Cycle Commuter.
I spent far too long reading about pasta ergonomics and all the other little offerings Google chose to serve this morning. Happily if you want your own divine secrets revealed you can add any feed you like (though sadly as far as I can see, there is no way of uploading an OPML file so you will have to manually add feeds one by one).
But it’s the user experience which really rocks: just one line with a single link at the top of your mail box with arrows to scroll through your feeds.
I can imagine a situation where I might be travelling and having nipped into an internet cafe to check my mail I might just stay on Gmail to run through my feeds.
However, this layout does emphasise the importance of clear and useful headlines. There is no additional text to encourage you to click through.
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