Google Labs are always busy, so it is well worth keeping a regular eye on the new developments that pop up, one in particular Google Fast Flip is really interesting, and has moved on quite a bit since it first appeared in September. When looking for news stories how much time is wasted typing searches, browsing, waiting for pages to load, and so on?

Image Credit: Google

What if you could keep tabs on all the key news stories in one, easy to navigate place with “at a glance” views of the websites and news stories? You need Fast Flip.

Fast Flip, as Google Labs describes, is a “web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to "flip" through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine". News topics are automatically selected, using clever algorithms, from upcoming news stories found on the Internet and split into three main sections of Popular stories, Sections (Politics, Business, Sci/Tech, etc) and upcoming news topics, each with thumbnail views of the site and a link to the headline article. Clicking on an article brings up the web page in a scrollable window, together with a list of selectable thumbnail list of other stories. News stories can be Emailed, Rated, or Shared on Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Delicious. Since it’s launch on the web, a mobile version has become available.

Fast Flip feels, in purpose, similar to the Our Signal project which takes news from social news sites, and mashes them together with the size of each article indicated its rated importance, and the Newsmap project which analyses news found in the Google News Aggregator and display it onscreen in a similar way to Our Signal but with geographical and topic related colour indicators and filters.

Visit Google Fast Flip, or read more about it on the Official Google Blog, More great news sources to discover in Fast Flip.