I’m getting a lot out of Prismatic, yet another in a venerable line of personalized “Daily Me” news services. I’m a sucker for these things but the technology landscape is literally strewn with their corporate wreckage. I would like to love it, but there are some issues:
- Using short links in e-mail sent from the site
- Putting links to Python documentation in my stream
- No help, or way to get to my profile while reading my stream
- Too much space allocated to “Share this story with your friends…”
- Occasionally crashes Mobile Safari on my iPad
The biggest downside is that Prismatic is Yet Another Place To Read News (YAPTRN), and right now it’s last on my list of stops. We’ll see how long it can survive there.
The big upside is that I typically run across at least a few items of interest whenever I have a Prismatic session. It’s much better than predecessors of its ilk. The good bits:
- Clever trick to heavily use facial images, social outlinks, and embedded Tweets. Feels more human and engaging.
- Although completely opaque, the big images nicely break up all the text.
- Inertial scrolling on the iPad fits the Prismatic style well, or they’ve really optimized for the device.