RocketNews Adds Personalization Features

News search engine RocketNews ( http://www.rocketnews.com ) has added some personalization features to their search. It doesn't appear that these require registration to work; it appears everything is cookiefied. The features appear when you're looking at the My RocketNews Portal ( http://www.rocketnews.com/web/personal.jsp ).

The features:

* Saved Searches -- Each of your searches is saved and included in the left nav. Click on it and the search will be run again. Handy. Wish there was a way to tank searches you didn't want.

* Personal News Portal -- The portal is made of a series of panels which you can use to view specific types of news (kinda like what you get in My Yahoo.) You are not limited to their list of panels; any set of search words can be its own panel.

* Relevance Tracking -- RocketNews monitors which articles you click and uses that relevance to rank the search results you get.

The portal ran a little slowly when I tried it, and of course if you're not using cookies this won't work at all for you. But I liked how well it was put together, and I especially liked those panels.

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