

Google introduces "Fast Flip" - henning
http://flipper.googlelabs.com/

======
dfranke
I was hoping it was an API for selling your startup to Google.

~~~
adamhowell
That was supposed to be App Engine.

~~~
nearestneighbor
I'd love to learn more about this. Is your company more likely to be acquired
by Google if it uses the app engine?

Edit: what's with the downmodding without explanation? Is this reddit now?

~~~
johnnybgoode
When App Engine was released, many people speculated that apps built on it
could easily be acquired by Google since they would already be designed for
and running on Google infrastructure.

------
thaumaturgy
Aaargh. This uses one of the principle UI ideas we're integrating into our
wanna-be YCW10 app.

EDIT: Hah. Plus "like" and the mobile UI -- that pretty much is 80% of our
client interface.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Try to stay positive - this demonstrates that you're onto a good thing.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yeah, we've still got some tricks up our sleeve. OTOH, we were really counting
on surprising a lot of people with the UI, and that's out the window at this
point.

...And, this isn't just an idea on paper -- we've written a huge chunk of both
the server-side and mobile client code already.

~~~
wmeredith
Yikes! If your _UI_ is what's surprising people, then I would generally
consider that a bad thing. By their definition, a surprising UI is bad.
(Obviously there are exceptions but they're very very rare.)

~~~
smokinn
It depends. There's surprising as in what is this software doing!? and there
surprising as in the wow, this is so much better.

The pinch zoom is a perfect example of a surprising UI that most people love.
When someone sees a two fingered pinch zoom for the first time they go wow,
that's awesome. Surprising isn't always bad.

~~~
jonnytran
I wouldn't necessarily call "pinch zoom" surprising, though, b/c the first
thing I thought after seeing it was, _this is so intuitive -- i.e.
unsurprising -- you never have to show anyone twice_. The wow-factor is less
surprise, and more delight.

------
bjclark
I actually think this is pretty cool. I know I tend to jump from cnn.com to
bbc.co.uk to espn.com to velonews.com so it would be cool to have a quick way
to do this.

------
mshafrir
On a related note, what are recommended techniques of taking a screenshot of a
web page from the server?

~~~
sjs
They probably use WebKit to render the HTML to a buffer and then compress it,
save to disk.

If you were asking more generally, see this discussion[1] on the WebKit
mailing list, and these Qt links[2, 3] that I found in that thread.

[1] [http://www.nabble.com/Webkit-capture-web-page-content-API-
td...](http://www.nabble.com/Webkit-capture-web-page-content-API-
td23516755.html)

[2] [http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/11/03/thumbnail-
preview...](http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/11/03/thumbnail-preview-of-
web-page/)

[3] [http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/01/15/capturing-web-
pag...](http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/01/15/capturing-web-pages/)

------
mcantelon
How is this useful (honest question)?

~~~
txxxxd
It's much much faster than loading and rendering the html, images, and ads on
the actual sites.

I can zoom through articles pressing the left/right arrows with no perceptible
latency.

~~~
jsz0
Unless I am totally missing something you can't actually read the content
without clicking on it. Is there much value in seeing an unreadably small
thumbnail of a site before you choose to click on it? I suppose on mobile
devices it might work. Loading a small blurry thumbnail could save you the
time it takes to load the full page. If it indexed all of Google's searches it
would be pretty neat. Previewing thumbnails could save a lot of time wasted on
obviously bad results. Maybe that's where this is heading in the future. If
not it's really pointless on anything other than a mobile device IMO.

~~~
mmelin
A lot of people seem to be missing this: clicking on a thumbnail gets you a
full-size image of the article in Fast Flip, it does not send you to the
original site. You're not expected to read the content from the thumbnails,
you select your first article from the list of thumbnails and then fast flip
between the full screen versions.

~~~
jsz0
That makes a lot more sense but it unfortunately is not working on my browser.
Clicking on a thumbnail does nothing. Probably a bug with WebKit nightlies I
guess.

------
adamhowell
Wow. They're shamelessly wrapping ads around other people's content.

~~~
axod
AFAIK with the consent of the content producers, and giving them a cut.

~~~
adamhowell
Ah, I do believe you're right:

<http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/sources>

Surprising they did it here b/f News and Reader.

------
Eliezer
Because attention spans aren't short enough.

------
slig
I don't get it. What's the advantage on reading a image rather than normal
rich text?

edit: nevermind. Now I see the left scroll pane.

------
Pistos2
In summary: I can barely read even the important text (titles, headlines),
therefore this is of little use to me. I agree with others: I'd get a lot more
out of being presented just clickable titles and headlines in a legible font
size; and we already have that in several forms. Showing thumbnails of full-
page screenshots is just a waste of screen real estate.

------
chaosmachine
Pre-rendering websites in the cloud, and sending them as images is an
interesting concept.

If there was some way to keep them interactive, it'd be even more interesting.

~~~
jrbedard
That used to be the concept behind searchme.com

------
ssn
Crashes with accented chars. <http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/search?q=á>

------
petercooper
A few years ago I was playing with Web page screenshots and thinking it'd be a
big deal. Some sites like DZone even got in on the action pretty quick and..
after all that time, I just can't see it having added value. It _looks_ good
but in terms of usability, I've found it adds little for me over time. Any
studies been done into this usability wise?

------
cpr
Can't they render the page images on a decent system like a Mac, with anti-
aliased fonts and decent kerning? Horridly ugly images.

~~~
riobard
same feeling, esp. after get used to Apple's font rendering engine ...

------
mattparcher
As a Mac user, I can’t help but feel a bit thrown-off by the aliased text,
even if it’s the right decision on their end :/

------
budwin
it's almost as if google is waiting to launch stuff until _right after_ a new
feature comes out on bing

------
cmars232
Hey, that's cuil!

------
JBiserkov
Looks like Google's reply to Bing's Visual Search
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822206>)

------
joez
Mobile version also available! Same site.

"Swipe left and right to move between articles. Stretch & pinch or rotate the
phone to zoom in and out."

------
jongraehl
RSS skimming is better for me, but I can see the appeal.

------
omarish
I don't think this is a product intended for hackers who are connected via RSS
and the such, but it's a fun product nonetheless.

------
johnnybgoode
This is not impressive at all. From the way Marissa Mayer introduced this at
TC50, you'd expect much more.

------
Keyframe
It has potential... I'm having trouble with readability of headlines though :|

------
bbsabelli
Isn't Google "Flip" enough? Why would they add "Fast" to the name?

------
jonmc12
When I can import OPML, do I need Google Reader?

------
DavidSJ
Why does it say "Google confidential"?

------
zeynel1
I think the logo doesn't go well with the concept. Their other logos are
pretty good in my opinion

<http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/>

~~~
wmeredith
Not to nitpick, but I think you're talking about their icons.

~~~
zeynel1
yes, and I have a design background I should know. I just saw MG Siegler too
writes "the smiley face is built into the logo."
[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/a-new-way-to-
visually-s...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/a-new-way-to-visually-
search-google-news-they-call-it-flipper/)

------
lucifer
Safari 4, ctl-t. No ads.

