Now this is exciting. gReactions, a new extension for Firefox from uberVU, allows you to read the comments on blog posts from right within Google Reader. But it doesn’t only fetch blog comments: it can search FriendFeed, Twitter, Digg, Hacker News and Reddit to pull in commentary from other sources and display it directly underneath the post.
gReactions is a Greasemonkey plugin. Once it’s up and running, just visit Google Reader and you’ll see a “Show Comments” button under each post. Click it, and gReactions will pull in the comments. Because gReactions is built on uberVU’s Context Voice API, it’s searching in near-real time.
Pretty cool, huh? This takes the social context stuff that Google has been doing in Reader and blows it clean out of the water. As the uberVU blog notes, “context” about and reactions to blog posts happen all over the web. It’s helpful to know that a particular friend of yours likes a post (and Google Reader lets you know that), but wouldn’t you like to know how many other people liked it too? Or how many people bookmarked or tweeted it?
gReactions is a great way to work out what’s worth reading if you, like us, have a huge clutch of RSS feeds that you’re always struggling to keep a hold on. Try it out and let us know what you think in the comments below.
