I typically read/scan over 20 news on-line news sites a day, which, depending on the number of interesting stories, will take about 2 or so hours to complete. Yesterday, Google introduced an experimental service called Fast Flip that may reduce my - and many other news-aholics - time on the Web.
Fast Flip, says this article in the New York Times, allows :
"users to view news articles from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as quickly as they would the pages of a magazine. Google will place ads around the news articles and share resulting revenue with publishers."
Several dozen different news and magazine publishers are supporting the effort, including the BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate.
Google is planning a version for some phones as well.
It is unclear whether FastFlip will diminish or enhance Google's characterization by the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal Robert Thomson as being a parasite tech tapeworm "in the intestines of the Internet."
I found my initial foray on it interesting, but I wonder if it will, by allowing me to see even more on-line news sites in less time, only fuel my news habit. I also find that it doesn't carry many interesting stories that I find by going through on-line sites in more detail.
I'll let you know in a future post on how I find using FastFlip for awhile.
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.
