via ajaxian. Spotback lacks focus (which is kinda the point - you determine the focus) but I think this is the direction that CNET should look to when we imagine our front doors in the future. The whole thing is just slick and easy to use. It lacks clutter because it’s smart, the interface is obvious, I get more info when I want it, I can customize a lot of things… or not. Try rating a story all the way on the positive spectrum (a 5) and watch as it slides in another story that’s similar.

Now imagine a CNET front door this smart. I don’t even have to register to start making the page “mine.” Awesome.

Spotback is a new portal that lets you get very personal with new interest Ajax features.

Once you hit the site you can start to rate stories via slider instead of typical star ratings (I personally feel like stars are more usable as you don’t need to drag you can just click). As you rate items highly, new content ‘like that’ will appear for you.

Other nicely done features are:

• Drop down categories
• Simple links to other people who like the content
• The ‘more’ link opens content up inline
• Simple settings for turning on and off animation, tooltips, high grade bringing in the new story etc

Quite nice really!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 at 11:21 am and is filed under Examples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.