Gorgeous Picsick brings a taste of Flipboard to your browser

iPad app Flipboard set hearts racing recently when it introduced a whole new magazine-style way of browsing RSS feeds and links being shared by your friends.

As great as it is, Flipboard’s problem is that it’s currently iPad-only. While it would be difficult to create the same magazine-style experience in a desktop browser, a new website called Picsick comes at least some of the way to achieving that.

Put simply, Picsick is gorgeous. Using the currently en vogue ‘Never ending page’ design, the site presents news and blog content from around the web as just photographs and headlines. Simply click a link and it will take you away to each article’s original site.

Picsick was initially created as a way of providing visual designers with a quick and easy way of getting fresh inspiration. That motive is reflected in the types of categories available – architecture, fashion, graphics and the like are all included, although there is a ‘Gadgets’ category for those wanting a tech news fix. At the moment the site features 55 blogs and news sites hand-picked by the developer. Berlin-based Ingo Rauth tells us that he is adding more sources every day and plans to introduce a more advanced algorithm for finding relevant content in the future.

After a short beta period, the site has officially launched today. Unlike Flipboard, its interactivity is limited to simply browsing the categories and clicking on interesting articles. However, it’s a joy to use and if it continues to be developed, perhaps with the inclusion of Google Reader integration, Picsick could become something truly great.

The one thing that puts us off is the slightly ugly-sounding name, at odds with the site’s beauty. Rauth explains, “The name came up after end- less hours of trying to come up with a good name which involves “Pic”. Since almost all contrived names where already assigned and linked to some websites under construction, I became “sick” of searching for domain names with “pic” and used Picsick as a placeholder … the name stuck.”