Get a Search Fox Invitation « planetOzh

SearchFox is a rather new web-based RSS reader, currently under private beta testing, with some promising features.

What makes SearchFox special is their claiming that sources and new articles can be (this is optionnal, of course) sorted by relevance and interest, based on your reading and clicking behavior. According to them : "Initial studies show that our personalization engine surfaces 50% of the interesting posts to the first page after a week of use, and reaches the 90% level after two weeks of use.". This sounds interesting for people who subscribe to more than a few dozens of feeds : you can't read them all, and sometimes you cannot tell from a post title if this is going to be of interest or not.

The whole thing, after a few minutes of test, seems to be well done. The interface uses some trendy Ajax, is fast, and even works with MSIE 5.0. You can import as an OPML file your sources from another reader and start reading some feeds. However, I didn't find out how to re-order feeds from a folder to another.

As for content personnalization, it's too early to tell how effective it is. Anyhow it has already detected that planetOzh was my favorite feed, that's a good point :) So far, this sounds like an exciting feature : content personnalization is something that has really impressed me with Findory, I'm willing to see how it can help with a feed reader.

If you want to try this for yourself, go ahead : this is private beta testing, but beta testers are welcome to ask for an invitation. "We still have a couple thousand beta accounts to give away, but they are going quick.", says Product Manager. Visit their website and simply send an email asking for an account.