Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

What are Gmail Web Clips?

Dave, I just logged in to my Google Gmail account and am rather confused by this new Customize Clips feature that's atop my mailbox now. What's the story with that, what does it do, and how do I use it effectively?

Dave's Answer:

The feature you're talking about, a one-line summary of custom RSS feeds, is a logical outgrowth of Google's other work in the world of weblogs and RSS, so I'm not surprised to see it pop up in Gmail too. As far as I can tell, the feature is officially called Web Clips and right now, don't be surprised if it doesn't always work properly. It's still in beta, after all!

Here's how the Web Clips service looks in Gmail if you don't have anything set up:

To configure this nifty little one-line RSS reader, click on "Customize Clips" and you'll see:

If you want to use one (or more!) of the RSS information sources that Google has in its little directory, you can click on one of the category names on the lower left (e.g., News, Business, Lifestyle, Sports, Tech or Fun).

It's more interesting to enter your own RSS feeds, however, so I'm going to subscribe to the Ask Dave Taylor feed by entering the URL of the feed (which you can ascertain by clicking on the "RSS" or "XML" button on the home page). That URL turns out to be:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/index.xml

Type that into the small text box just below to "Search by topic or url" then click on "Search" and you'll see the following:

Click on "Add" and now, when you go back to your regular Gmail pages, you'll see along the top the latest news from the site or sites you've configured, including Ask Dave Taylor:

Google's written about it too, if you want to read a note about Web Clips from the original implementor: A cure for the common inbox.

Cool, eh?

Oh, and if you don't yet have a Gmail account, please read this: Can I have a free Gmail Account?

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Comments

I have no chat in my gmail, my friends all have it.
Why is it not appearing in my accunt and how can I turn it on?
Tanya

Posted by: Tanya at March 27, 2006 6:10 PM

Dear Mr. Taylor,

I have had a Gmail account for quite a while now, and I love its many features, including the customizable webclips. Therefore, I am in the process of converting my husband to Gmail (Oh, he'll do it, eventually).

I set up an account for him a while ago, and I recently thought it would be fun to customize *his* clips so when he starts using it in earnest, there will be items on Mars, robots, Italian cookery, and his wife's latest blog posts.

Now, everything works fine up to the point where I try to add the custom clips. (My blog or our friends' blogs, specifically.)

If I use the search feature, for example: "doctorlizardo", my blog feed does appear as an option to "add". But when I click "add", it says that the feed url is invalid.

I logged back into my own account and tried deleting a few of my favorite blog feeds and re-adding them. They worked fine.

But when I log back into my husband's account, I still can't get it to add those feeds, even if I search using the exact feed address (for example, http://doctorlizardo.blogspot.com/atom.xml --it just comes up nonexistent in the search.)

Posted by: Liz at May 4, 2006 1:24 PM

How do you get your own rss feed to show up in the web clips search by topic?
For example:
moms-brings up various sites, but only about a handful. How did those sites get listed? Are they sponsored?

Posted by: Patty at March 29, 2008 1:27 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!