New From Google Labs: Google Reader Play

I have been using Google Reader for years, but until I started getting serious about blogging, I was never a devoted user.  Over the last month, I have cleaned out my feeds, subscribed to only the most useful content to stay informed for this blog, and fallen in love again with Google Reader.

Enter: Google Reader Play

I typically catch up on tech news using Google Reader on my iPhone, but today I fired up my MacBook and noticed one of their famous experimental offerings:
New! Google Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting stuff on the web. Give it a try!

In short, Google Reader Play is still an RSS reader, but it goes beyond the text-only approach in Google Reader to make Reader more accessible for everyone. It is a new way to view your feeds, and it didn’t take long for me to be hooked – it really is fun. Best of all, there’s no set-up required: visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try.

One of the big differences is that it presents a full-screen view of each item.  You have arrows to move to the next or previous article in sort of a filmstrip metaphor.  Clicking the title of an article will take you to the original site and posting. The images are large and videos autoplay full-screen.

Reader Play adapts to your tastes — as you browse, you can click the “like” button, and Google will use that info to show you more items they think you’ll like. It is kind of like listening to a Pandora music station. It uses the same technology as the Recommended Items feed in Reader to identify and aggregate the most interesting items on the web. You can also choose categories to personalize your stream.

While you don’t even need a Google account to use Reader Play, if you want to star, like, or share items, you will be asked to sign in to your Google account. Since Reader and Reader Play share the same infrastructure, any actions you take in one will be reflected in the other. If you sign in, Reader Play will also be personalized with items that people you’re following have shared in Google Reader, and items similar to ones you’ve previously liked, starred, or shared.

Since Reader Play is an experiment, it’s launching in Google Labs for now. To be clear, Reader Play isn’t intended to replace Google Reader: both Google Reader and Reader Play are about finding and reading interesting stuff online. In essense, Reader Play is a different view of Reader. It’s designed to be a fun and easy way to browse interesting items, while Reader is a highly customizable way to organize your feeds, keep track of what you’ve read, and much more. In Reader, you can switch to this view by clicking “View in Reader Play” from the feed settings menu.