Where do you go to read the news? Are you able to customize your news source and filter out the topics that interest you and the ones that don’t? More than likely you can’t filter anything, which is why Xygnal is a breath of fresh air. Many people start their day by reading the top news headlines, but often don’t care about many of the headlines. With Xygnal, you can customize the news based on topics that you’re interested in; no need to wade through all of the irrelevant topics or articles that you may have no interest in.
Xygnal is currently in an early beta stage and has just one website that works on any device or browser; there are no downloads or updates required.
This section shows you the top news headlines and the trending topics within those headlines. While you can’t view the whole story on the site, you will be able to see an excerpt and link to original source. Additionally, you can also see how long ago the story was posted (in minutes, hours, days) and you can click to see related articles.
Xygnal offers 3 options for each article: you can save it (to later view under Saved), share it (on Facebook, Twitter, Google+), and/or track topics within the article.
The tracking features gives you the option to track any topics or keywords within the article. So if you are reading an article about social media and it’s also talking about Facebook and Google, you can track Facebook and/or Google so that you can keep up with other articles that are related to those topics.
When you click on a topic to track, you can choose to track it for a day, week, month, or you can ban the topic (by clicking on the red crossed out icon show above).
When you go to the “Tracked” section, you’ll be able to see all of the topics trending in your tracked topics along with articles related to those topics. The tracking feature is a great way to filter out the topics that you’re most interested in.
This section is where all of your saved articles go. They will stay here until you remove them. As you begin to save articles, you’ll also be able to see the most popular topics within those saved articles.
The search feature does just as expected: it lets you search for any topic and then view articles based on those topics. Again, you’ll have the same options as above (view related articles, save, share, track topics).
There’s not much to offer in the settings just yet. You can edit the topics you’re tracking or banning, check your email address, and delete your account. That’s about it.
Remember, Xygnal is in early beta so there is still a lot features being added and changes being made.
I’m not very fond of the design, but I love the concept and can definitely see myself using Xygnal as my main news source on a daily basis. It’s nice that users can customize the news to their liking by tracking and banning topics. This way, you only see articles based on the topics that matter to you, instead of having to sift through it all just to find what you’re interested in.
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