ReadWriteStart

LazyFeed: Get the News, Vids, and Pics You Want Without Even Trying

Written by Jolie O'Dell / July 12, 2009 3:04 PM / 6 Comments

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is a resource and guide for first-time entrepreneurs and startups. The channel is sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. To sign up for BizSpark, click here.

Appealing to users' laziness is a two-sided coin. On the one hand, you risk offending users who like to think of themselves as essentially industrious, on-top-of-it, finger-on-the-pulse go-getters.

On the other hand, who are we kidding? We love being lazy, and if your app will allow for ever more user laziness, well, that's just what we call "driving innovation," now isn't it? For those of us who are too lazy for RSS feeds but still in the market for real-time, personalized blog searches, we recommend checking out LazyFeed. We've got invites, too; just keep reading.

The site launched just two days ago and appears to be a bottomless pit of information culled from the depths of the blogosphere and sorted around a simple system of tags. Users type in a tag or single-word search term, and LazyFeed returns videos, photos, and blog posts tagged with that term. Users are then prompted to add that term as a topic, which essentially means the search is saved and results will be returned in real time through the left-hand topics menu.

Although LazyFeed combs through about 100,000 of the most popular blogs online, users can also add specific blogs, Twitter profiles, Flickr streams, and Delicious accounts for a more personalized feed of information and recommended topics. Topics are updated in real time, so users get up-to-the-minute information.

The drawbacks are apparent. Users can't refine searches; for example, I can have "realtime" and "search" in my topics list, but I can't have a "realtime+search" topic. And there's no way to tell LazyFeed to look for certain types of content within certain domains or accounts. Nor is there a way to limit the stream to certain types of media or block certain tags (such as "marketing") from appearing in the results.

Still, lazy beggars can't be choosers. In other words, it's still a nifty little tool that we barely had to lift a finger to use, and we did get some good reading out of it. Check out our screencast, and if you're one of the first 100 interested parties to read this, you can sign up with the promo code lazyrww. You're welcome.

Microsoft BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. Click here to apply.


Comments

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  1. Jolie, the promo code only works with a regular l rather than the capital

    Posted by: Zee | July 12, 2009 5:00 PM



  2. Jolie, thank you for the great post!
    @Zee didn't know that it was case-sensitive. Sorry for the confusion, and thank you for the correction. Please use lazyfeed with lower case L.

    Posted by: Ethan Gahng | July 12, 2009 5:19 PM



  3. sorry, but This promotional code has expired.

    Posted by: pestwave | July 12, 2009 6:27 PM



  4. Thank you, great Dampier rightup! Just to clarify, the sidebar is not only a collection of sections, but it is the actual real-time action. Whenever there is new content of some topics, the topic to the top of the springs, so that you do not have to browse the entire list to find out what the problem is new. This is cool when you see the actual action, so if you are interested in, adjusted to Crunchup events!

    Posted by: Ricky | July 12, 2009 9:19 PM



  5. You might also check out ThyNews http://thynews.com ,
    It was designed to be very easy to use.
    Here's a demo http://bit.ly/thynews-demo

    Posted by: John Wright | July 12, 2009 11:23 PM



  6. can anyone guide me to updated promotional codes

    Posted by: funny flash games | July 13, 2009 3:27 AM



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