Yahoo! Acquires SearchFox

We are pleased to tell you that Yahoo! has purchased the SearchFox technology. Some of us have joined Yahoo! to work on cool things related to our experience with SearchFox technology.

Your support of SearchFox was and is very important to us and to Yahoo!. We deeply appreciate the excellent feedback we received that helped us make the site better.

Thanks for your patience, and please let us know if you have any questions.

SearchFox will shut down on January 25, 2006

Thanks for all your help in making SearchFox what it is. We have enjoyed providing this service, and hope that you have enjoyed using it. Please export all of your links and an OPML file with your RSS sources before the site shuts down. In accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all personal information on January 25 after we shut down the services.

Update: New Aging Policy for Posts

We optimized the search engine index this weekend. In order to make more room for new customers and make the service faster for current customers, we implemented a new aging policy. We are aging documents older than 30 days from the "all" view. The optimization does not affect documents that have been marked "favorites".

Here is a quick description of the new "show" options:

Last Day: Unarchived posts for the last 24 hours
Last Week: Unarchived posts for the last 7 days
Last Month: Unarchived posts for the last 30 days
All: Unarchived and archived posts for the last 30 days

Our commitment to "search" will continue and we expect to release more "search" features moving forward. Stay tuned.

SearchFox RSS Makes It To The Top

SearchFox RSS has been selected one of the top six RSS readers among the best 33 offerings in the market. Jdey Aref compiled a great report and selected the top six RSS readers based on the following criteria: subscription model, workflow and ease of use.

It's very exciting to see SearchFox making it to the top. However, I would like to see a similar report with emphasis on how good RSS readers are at helping people be more productive processing information, isn't that the bottom line?

First generation RSS readers were very good at allowing users access several sources form one place. Unfortunately, the model breaks rather quickly and makes the information overload problem even bigger.

The key feature of the next generation RSS readers is "intelligence". We need systems that learn what we like and don't, and rank incoming posts based on what's most important to the user. SearchFox is the first RSS reader to offer this technology, and users are reporting reading time cut in half. Again, I am happy to see SearchFox on top but I am expecting to see it ahead of the curve, as "intelligence" becomes essential in the RSS world.

SearchFox RSS Hotkeys

We've implemented quick keyboard shortcuts to access most of the batch actions. You will find the hotkeys combinations on the "batch" menu next to the batch actions.


Here is a description of all the keyboard shortcuts:

alt+r : Mark Page Read
alt+f : Save Page to Favorites
alt+c : Collapse Summaries
alt+o : Expand Summaries
alt+p : Archive This Page
alt+a : Archive All Pages
alt+n : Next Page

Batch actions only affect your current view. Please tell me what you think and what other actions you would like to access through hotkeys.

Service Update : 10/24 11:00 AM

SearchFox RSS is temporarily down. We are currently working on optimizing the index in order to provide with a faster and more reliable service. Please check back in one hour.

UPDATE 10/24 5:00 PM - We expect to be back online around 9:00 PM.

New! Bookmarklet & Chicklet

We are happy to announce the release of a subscribe boormarklet for your browser and a subscribe chicklet for your blog.

The bookmarklet is a button installed in your browser's "bookmarks toolbar" that allows you to subscribe directly to the blog or site you're currently viewing. Click HERE to install the SearchFox RSS bookmarklet in your browser.

The chicklet is a image that you can add to your website or blog, and link it to an auto-subscribe link. By adding this chicklet to your website or blog, your readers will be able to easily add your feed to their SearchFox RSS account. In addition, you'll be helping us spread the word and get others to enjoy the benefits of a personalized RSS reader. Click HERE to get more information on how to add the chicklet to you website or blog.