Topix.net
Topix was started in 2002 by some of the people involved in the DMOZ Open Directory Project. It consists of an AI editor that categorizes breaking news, by what criteria I am not sure. They claim to have a massive data-store.The emphasis on Geo-tagging is nice. The section that searches blogs is nice as well. On the downside, their forums on the sidebar are way to prominent for the crap that is filling them, eg. “Is it OK for Women to Fart Out Loud?”, and “Should homosexuality be illegal?”

The design and readability are very good.

Newsvine.com
Newsvine is the nicest designed site of them all, and definitely had much Web 2.0 buzz surrounding its launch in 2006.

Newsvine is Digg-like in it’s efforts to build community and give people tools to create content. Stories are voted up and down to gain front-page prominence. It has a mix of user written news and stories from the Associated Press. They boast that they make it easy to “seed” articles, ie. submit breaking stories onto the vine.

A nice feature is Newsvine Live where you see all the activity being processed by the application, similair to tailing a log file.I’m not decided yet if Newsvine is more hype than a solid news source.

Newstrust.net
Finally, launched as well in 2006, Newstrust is the most straight-up, unadorned news source, and my favorite. A simple three column layout, with everything of concern in the middle column makes for an uncomplicated grazing.

Can we conclude that news is best served undesigned? I want to believe news can be beautiful and usable at once. More likely is that the correct forms for online news hasn’t fully evolved yet. After all, in comparison to the time period has had to discover its optimal forms, online news is still in its infancy.

Newstrust is the only non-profit of the crew – its stated mission being the rating of news articles from the online media universe on one principle – journalistic integrity. It’s content comes from any media outlet from The Washington Post, to Vanity Fair, to independent blogs. I imagine there is no copyright issue because all the stories link to their url of origin.

Tags: article, comparison, news

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 8:04 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

I like to consume lots tidbits of news rapidly, so my Google Reader account is always my first stop when I need a break. (You can see the news items I’ve marked for sharing from Google reader in the right column). But eventually I’ll have blown through all my new items and have to actually go to a website to find content! When I want a more general overview of the world, than the quirkier and more specialized haunts of BoingBoing and Slashdot.

My present faves are:

1. news.bbc.co.uk
2. newsvine.net
3. newstrust.org
4. topix.net

The BEEB

I’ll start in this post with my wife’s favorite site, and my fav of the establishment. Unlike BBC radio, which is grating to listen to, much less ergonomic than the fine balance of voice and music selections of of WNYC.

Not the most attractive, the site an offers an intelligible, well rounded multitude of international current events. Not as smooth as nytimes.com, the BBC’s rough cut gives you the goods quick.

Usability
You can see a lot more content at a glance, and surprise, with no ads! It’s amazing the difference of an ad-free environment. And it prefers the legibility of Verdana, to the subtleties of The Times’ typography.

Hierarchy
They also don’t bother with the artistic, large photography characteristic of The New York Times print. Their small, unscrupulously low-res photos are more informational, and less distracting than the Times.

Not Designed for Readability
Come to think of it, nytimes’ site before a recent redesign conformed to those good usabilities principles much better than the current, if more attractive site does. Non-coincidentally, I used to frequent the site much more in those days.

Not to say a site can’t be beautiful and usable at the same time. Some examples that come to mind are del.icio.us, craigslist and 37signals.com. The two former, data-centric web apps have recently gotten overhauls of their undesigned information.

Structure
Both of these sites are portals to vast media projects that include multimedia and rich archives. However the BBC’s url structures, encouraging users to browse by url instead of link, I find much more appealing than the Times’ focused, and commercially driven content, ie. Times Select (though nothing more than a quick jump to bothermenot can fix). I suppose that reflects the current state of politics and States’ relationship to public media in the UK and USA.

Conclusion
All in all, news.bbc.co.uk, is webbier than nytimes.com. :]
Next post, I’ll look at the more social, 2.0ish, sites: Newsvine & Newstrust.

Tags: article, comparison, news

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 7:01 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.