Google News Badges - You Just Get Awarded For Reading Or Is There More?
From 14th July, 2011, on #-Link-Snipped-#'s U.S. edition, you can know about your news reading habits and keep track of what you like to read by earning Google News badges. The more you read about your favorite topics, you get the higher level of badges. Starting with Bronze, followed by Silver, Gold, Platinum and ultimately the Ultimate.
#-Link-Snipped-#To turn Badges on, enable #-Link-Snipped-#. Badges will appear in the Personalize column in Google News. If you still don't see the column, you can open it by clicking "personalize" at the top right corner of the screen.
When this feature rolled out 2 days back, there were mixed reactions to it. People have been commenting about why do we need to get awarded for reading news. Moreover, as mentioned in the Google News Help: This feature works only if you’re signed-in to Gmail and have web history enabled. This makes you feel that the feature is created for developing news reading habit in the young ones. "Go on kid, read the news and collect the highest level badge!"
There are also a few tips about earning the badges:
<ul>
[*]If you read a few articles a day about your favorite topics, you should earn your first badge in about a week.
[*]If you read a few relevant articles every day, the badges will level up faster.
</ul>
Following Google's simple and colorful video explains the Badges the best:
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However, if you look at the flip side, there is indeed some useful functionality related to the badges. These badges automatically collect what you read into categories. This makes it possible for you to click on that category to get that kind of news. Once you have a badge, you can click on the hover menu to turn the badge into a section. So, you can say that Badges organizes the news into categories you 'actually' read.
<div>About the sharing feature of Google Badges: By default, only you<em></em> can see your badges. Clicking one of the sharing icons let's you share a specific badge, but it will only reveal your badge’s name, level and no. of articles that you have read about the badge’s topic. It will not reveal the specific articles that you have read.</div>
<div>What do you think about this new feature? Do you think Google has taken news reading to the next level of personalization?</div>
#-Link-Snipped-#To turn Badges on, enable #-Link-Snipped-#. Badges will appear in the Personalize column in Google News. If you still don't see the column, you can open it by clicking "personalize" at the top right corner of the screen.
When this feature rolled out 2 days back, there were mixed reactions to it. People have been commenting about why do we need to get awarded for reading news. Moreover, as mentioned in the Google News Help: This feature works only if you’re signed-in to Gmail and have web history enabled. This makes you feel that the feature is created for developing news reading habit in the young ones. "Go on kid, read the news and collect the highest level badge!"
There are also a few tips about earning the badges:
<ul>
[*]If you read a few articles a day about your favorite topics, you should earn your first badge in about a week.
[*]If you read a few relevant articles every day, the badges will level up faster.
</ul>
Following Google's simple and colorful video explains the Badges the best:
<object width="640" height="390" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="https://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="https://www.youtube.com/v/QP5szEn2dxs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed width="640" height="390" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/QP5szEn2dxs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" /></object>
However, if you look at the flip side, there is indeed some useful functionality related to the badges. These badges automatically collect what you read into categories. This makes it possible for you to click on that category to get that kind of news. Once you have a badge, you can click on the hover menu to turn the badge into a section. So, you can say that Badges organizes the news into categories you 'actually' read.
<div>About the sharing feature of Google Badges: By default, only you<em></em> can see your badges. Clicking one of the sharing icons let's you share a specific badge, but it will only reveal your badge’s name, level and no. of articles that you have read about the badge’s topic. It will not reveal the specific articles that you have read.</div>
<div>What do you think about this new feature? Do you think Google has taken news reading to the next level of personalization?</div>
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