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.
