SpotBack - a customizable news aggregation site

Filed under: Business, Finance, Games, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Blogging, Web services

SpotBack - a customizable news aggregation site

by Jason Clarke Jan 21st 2007

I'm personally tiring of all the news aggregation sites that have popped up all over the web, and am frustrated and dismayed that as of yet the holy grail of personalization seems not to have been achieved successfully. It was with some trepidation then that I followed James Kendrick's advice (he co-runs the wildly popular JKOnTheRun blog with Kevin C. Tofel) and decided to check out SpotBack, the latest in the line of news aggregation sites.

Right off the bat I was impressed with the pleasant and easy to read user interface. It's not overdone, just attractive and approachable. Clicking a headline opens the article in a new browser window or tab. Rating stories is achieved through the use of an interactive slider; slide it to the left to rate a story negatively, or to the right to give it a positive rating. Interestingly, if you give an article a positive rating, SpotBack will immediately display a related article immediately below the one you just rated, giving you the opportunity to get more information about a subject you've shown an interest in. Slick.

The categories range from things like Computers and Internet to Sports, Business, Science, and even include a Blogs category.

It remains to be seen how well the personalization engine works in SpotBack, but based on my first experience with the site, I'm willing to give it a shot.

Tags: aggregation, news, news aggregation site, news aggregator, NewsAggregationSite, NewsAggregator, personalization, personalized news, PersonalizedNews, SpotBack

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Badger Gravling said 4:18AM on 1-22-2007

I've given it a quick try, but I seem to get a lot of page loading errors in Firefox...

I'll persevere, but I may stick with live bookmarks

Thor said 4:37PM on 1-22-2007

I actually likes it cause it seems like their site thinks for me, knows what I’m looking for, and gets it straight to my home page.
Spotback is just a smart way for knowing everything without working too hard:).

Eludium-Q36 said 10:21AM on 1-28-2007

The power of SpotBack lies in its News Snacks section where you can add your own news feeds as well as your own categories. Because of this power and flexibility it's become my browser homepage. Good stuff.

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