Mergelab Update (or, How I Discovered that Alan Likes Country Music)
We rolled out a Mergelab update earlier today that adds a handful of new features: easier reading of updates within Mergelab, searching within news, and automatically mined summaries of information about the people you are following.
First up are bread-and-butter features: it’s now more convenient to read updates about the people you are following right in Mergelab. This is particularly handy for short blog posts, quick comments about items elsewhere, and such. You will notice a preview of each update’s content right below its title:
Expanding an update shows you more detail, even if there’s quite a bit:
For items that catch your attention, you can always hit “View Original” to jump to the original page. I find that being able to quickly preview updates right in Mergelab means less bouncing around between sites.
We’ve also added a few frequently requested features to give you more control over your news. You can now stop listening to updates from someone using the “Ignore updates” link on their contact card. You can ignore all twitters using the checkbox under account settings.
Beyond the basics, we have been experimenting with various approaches to summarizing and surfacing information about the people you follow, and you may notice some preliminary results. Here’s a piece of Alan’s summary card, which you can see if you are a Mergelab user and know Alan:
This display shows me what Alan’s been talking about lately (although anyone within earshot doesn’t need Mergelab to tell them that Obama’s been on his mind), as well as some information mined from Alan’s wishlist on Amazon. Although most of the categories are what I would expect for Alan, it took me by surprise to see country music listed. That’s what you get for wishing for Dixie Chicks albums, I guess.
The summary keywords click through to a filtered view of updates from Alan, so you can see exactly where, for example, he has been talking about Obama, or Google, or Mergelab. You can also take matters into your own hands; tucked away at the top of the stream of Recent Updates for your people is a free-form news search box:
We hope you find the new features useful. Please, keep the feedback coming!
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