Google Inc.

Benjamin G Darnell

Justin Christopher Haugh

Gaurav Jain

Christopher Jason Wetherell

Chrix Erik Finne

Jason H Shellen

Carl Laurence Gonsalves

Carl L Gonsalves

A method of providing content, performed by a client system is provided in which execution of a mark-all-read command associated with a specified stream to which a user of the client system has subscribed is detected. The specified stream comprises two or more content feeds, and wherein each content feed comprises a set of content items published by a respective publication source. A time of execution of the mark-all-read command is recorded. There is displayed content items associated with the specified stream in accordance with a criterion that content items having associated timestamps dated prior to the recorded time of execution are displayed in a visually distinctive format from content items having associated timestamps dated after the recorded time of execution. The displaying includes determining which content items associated with the specified stream have associated timestamps dated prior to the recorded time of execution.

Setting and displaying a read status for items in content feeds

Systems and methods for determining and displaying a count of unread items in content feeds are provided. In some implementations, a method includes determining a count of unread content items available from a media content source and causing the count to be displayed to the user. In some implementations, the determining includes excluding, from the count, regardless of actual read status, content items available from the media content source in accordance with a subscription timestamp. The subscription timestamp specifies a time when the user subscribed to the media content source.

Determining and displaying a count of unread items in content feeds

A method of providing content includes detecting execution of a mark-all-read command associated with a specified stream. The specified stream includes two or more content feeds, wherein each content feed includes a set of content items published by a respective publication source. The method also includes recording a time of execution of the mark-all-read command and displaying content items associated with the specified stream. The displayed content items have associated timestamps, and content items having associated timestamps dated prior to the recorded time of execution are displayed in a visually distinctive format from content items having associated timestamps dated after the recorded time of execution.

A method quantifies unread content items for a stream subscribed to by a user. The stream includes a time-ordered list of content items from two or more content feeds. Each content feed includes a set of content items published by a respective publication source. The method includes determining a count of content items having an unread status in accordance with read state information stored for the user with respect to the stream, and transmitting the count to a client system for display.

At a client device, a user subscribes to a specified stream, where the specified stream includes one or more other streams. A respective stream of the one or more other streams includes two or more content feeds, and each content feed includes a set of content items published by a respective publication source. The client devices presents to the user (e.g., on a display of the client device) content items associated with the specified stream. In some embodiments, streams can be recursively defined to include combinations of other streams, and users who subscribe to a recursively defined stream receive content items from the content feeds associated with that stream.

Recursive subscriptions to content feeds

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for distributing and presenting of electronic content. One method provides an enhanced ordering of ranked documents, in which one or more lists of documents that have been published in a web feed, a time that each document was published in the web feed, and a content-based ranking of a ranked subset of the documents are obtained, the documents collectively including ranked documents which are members of the ranked subset of the documents, and unranked documents which are not members of the ranked subset of the documents. Furthermore, a user interface is provided which displays links to a plurality of the ranked documents, ordered according to the content-based ranking, and which simultaneously displays links to a plurality of the unranked documents, ordered chronologically based on the time that each respective document was published in the web feed.

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Benjamin G Darnell