Richard has a nice preview of a tool that some of you will find useful – iReader.
This tool is a little like Snap (which I tried for less than 24 hours here on ProBlogger – but took down after many complaints) but instead of showing you a tiny screen capture of where a link on a website leads – iReader lets you preview it’s content in text and as a little list (and don’t we love a good list).
Here’s what it did when I hovered over one of my recent posts (not the most intuitive of selections from the post – but it’d give readers a sense of what it was about):
The difference with iReader and Snap is that iReader is a browser extension – so it’s something that readers determine whether they’ll use – whereas Snap is something you as the website owner install.
As a blogger I can see the usefulness of this type of tool. I’m constantly surfing and to be able to get a quick sense of what a link might offer me could be useful. I wouldn’t use it 24/7 while surfing – but when in research mode it could be useful to have activated.
Performance wise – it runs a little too slow for my liking – in the time that it takes for the popup to appear i could click through and almost load the site – but as Richard says, iReader is in beta and can only improve.
Interesting idea. I’m torn on the usefulness of the Snap tool, but one thing it has definitely done is get publicity for snap.com the search engine started by former Goto.com and Overture founder Bill Gross. Whether he succeeds in overtaking Google remains to be seen.
I’m curious to see what business model iReader have, they don’t appear to be charging and their site looks like it was put up yesterday… case in point go to the “http://www.syntactica.com/products_wordmacro.html” page and look at the page title – “Untitled Document”
Well anyhow, it is beta time so good luck to them!!
I have to give this a thumbs down. First off, as you said it runs slow. But in all honesty, shouldn’t you be able to judge the content of the link before you click it based on the context of the article/post it’s contained in? I dunno, I just don’t see the functionality in this.
I’m glad it’s not something I have to disable, but rather something I have to install… Which I don’t plan to either.
Companies like this know that people don’t want something that they never asked for on their browser like snap assumes that we like it.
This definitely is good in research mode. I just used it for one of my posts and it actually made things go a little quicker.
Usually I just open all the links on a given page in a new tab, this prevents me from having to do that.
Thanks Darren.
Just thought I’d point out that you accidentally called it eReader at one point…
I use the cooliris plug-in for Firefox. I only enable it on hover with the CTRL key pressed, and have switched it off completely for some websites. It is particularly useful with Google images, giving the full-size image only in a pop-up window.
Installed it for a while, but I’m not impressed. Previews of Dutch links are hardly readable (grammar not correct and English words as part of the Dutch sentences). With Cooliris I’m also in control as a user (browser add on as well), if you’re looking for a Snap alternative.
I agree with Matt, actually I find it quite intrusive on sites that use the tool.
thanks alf – fixed
This is an interesting browser extension. I also think it is better to allow readers to install their own extensions instead of adding extra features which affect their usual browsing habit directly without giving them any choice.
deleted for spam
hmmm, i think that comment from “kas” is spam…
thanks collis – the occassional one slips through.
Another new tool that’s bound to loose interest again. Pop-ups are just not one of the good things in a site.
[…] on a computer screen such as a tour of a website. For example, ProBlogger’s recent post on iReader could have had a quick screencast showing it in action which would make your point much better than […]