PostRank posts

Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

NewsGator adds RSS PostRank

by Brad Linder Apr 18th 2008

NewsGator and AideRSS have partnered to add PostRank features to NewsGator's online RSS feed reader. PostRank is basically determined by looking at each item in a feed and determining its popularity based on factors such as how many comments it has received, how many other sites link to that post, how many times it has been saved to del.icio.us, or voted up on Digg. Each article is then assigned a rank between 1 and 10.

NewsGator users can now choose to sort their feeds according to PostRank, which will display the most popular items first, followed by less popular items. Of course, the system doesn't work very well if you're primarily interested in breaking news, as it takes time for an article to become popular. But if you just want to read the top news and skip the rest, PostRank can save you a lot of time.

AideRSS maintains its own website where you can enter any RSS feed to get its PostRank scores. Or you can install a Firefox plugin that will add PostRank to Google Reader. But thanks to the NewsGator integration, you won't need to visit a separate web site, download a plugin, or even know who AideRSS is to take advantage of their PostRank system.

Tags: aiderss, newsgator, postrank

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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