Google Does the News
rizen was among the countless readers who submitted that google does the news. They've added a new tab to their interface, and a CNNish sorta web page that indexes thousands of online news sites. Their technology section is showing some Slashdot stories too (sweet!). I like that they combine related stories on the same subject.
Nifty setup.
technology section is showing some Slashdot stories too (sweet!).
I don't see why they would. They probably already posted the article Slashdot is linking to before slashdot posts the story.
Slashdot isn't a news site as much as a community site. Most articles are just pointing to real news sites. Its the comments that gives this site the edge.
New news makes the news. *snicker*
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I can load relevant headlines without waiting for my browser to time out on CNN's AOL/Netscape banner every time.
Still, I wonder how the other news sources are going to react. They make their revenue on advertisting and if Google is skimming off the top of their viewership, I have to wonder if they're not going to start kvetching pretty quickly.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
That dup detection code would do wonders to help slashdot. Any chance that Google will license it to /. ?
At the moment it has World and U.S. sections. I think what it could really do with is different regional sections, which would be default to different regions URLs. (eg. news.google.co.uk having a UK section). It really doesn't interest me that much that South Dakota is to vote on extending jury rights!
I know lots of news pages exist, but this is nice and clean. Plus, they seem to have a good amount of international news. I can see using this every day. Plus, it's nice not to be beaten over the head with layers, flash and such. Imagine that... just the news!
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
As long as it's better* than msn, excite, yahoo or the like, yes.
*bett er - adj Does not have insanely annoying banner ads everywhere, nor advertisements disguised as headlines, or random flash popups or interstitial ads.
I thought Google's indexing/spidering system was innovative because it ranked pages in terms of how popular and prevalent they are on OTHER pages. I would think that it takes a small amount of time for this kind of "popularity" to build up. Are they changing their methods for the news section? Using their traditional methods, it wouldn't be "news" anymore. Is it just taking the headlines from the most popular websites and posting them there? Don't get me wrong, Google's the best at what it does, so this will probably end up being a good thing, I'm just curious about the methodologies employed.
the best part of it is that Cricket is the headlining sport.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
maybe time for slashdot to get a google topic
They already have one. It's called "Ask Slashdot"
GoogleNews does GoogleNews.
This is a long overdue feature....its automatic, robust, and I've often wanted to read another take on the same issue when I've read a news article. I hope that they have it set up to filter out all the repeated AP articles that are on 2 zillion different websites. But I'm guessing they did, it would just be similar to filering out similar results in general searches.
Their technology section is showing some Slashdot stories too (sweet!).
What if Google links to this story? Then you get the Slashdot slashdotting Google, who will slashdot Slashdot, who will bounce it to Google, who will bounce it back to Slashdot, who will retur*Runtime error: Endless recursive loop encountered, stack overflow. Brain dump follows.*
Heh. Bandwidth firefights - this oughta be cool. Nifty setup indeed!
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
.. it's just linked to the main page now. For something extra-schweet though, try their experimental keyboard-navigable search interface - found it from Mycroft, the Mozilla search bar plugin project.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
They have a partner agreement with NY Times at least that bypasses the registration requirement.
Maybe since slashdot's stories are being picked up by a big news site, this would be a good time to implement some spelling/grammar/fact checkers.
I am worried that google will loose focus on the primary reason that people go there, and the search service will suffer because of it. Fair enough that the service will be usefull, but when you're on top you need to work twice as hard on your primary product to stay there.
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omg it's wallpaper australia!
Google searches for the news
ZDNet- 1hourago
Google unveiled on Monday an expanded test version of its search engine for current events and news, the latest step in the company's move into new markets.
Google Launches News ServicePCWorld
Google launches news search siteTelecomPaper(subscription)
CNET- and5related
" This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors. No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page."
I was just saying to my girlfriend that if there's any one company that I have more respect for than any other company in the world, it would be Google.
And then this came out. I got to point and say, "See, this is why!" Then I ran around the room in my underwear laughing maniacally. I think I'm sleeping on the couch tonight.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
From Google's "About Google News" link:
This is an interesting development for Google. Ruling out the possibility of paid placement (for now), it seems as though PageRank doesn't apply to the news aggregator. (And how would it? Stories are updated continuously.) It's not likely to be completely random, either, although such an approach could lead to some very interesting story angles.
:wq
we slashdot the site, here's a link to the google cache. :)
Anyone else having problems with Mozilla (1.1) on the Google News site? Twice now I have had to reboot my Win98 machine after Mozilla crashed hard while I was scrolling down the Sci/Tech page. It has me a little gun-shy about revisiting the site, at least with Mozilla.
It has been mentioned that Google has covered news stories for quite some time. The best place to get info on Google's current projects is Google Labs...
No regristration if you go to a nytimes story from google's news page! Why can't we do that? Here's google's link, for example:
N IN T.html?ex=1033444800&en=c4f426ba46654ccb&ei=5062&p artner=GOOGLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/21/technology/21
I assume it's the partner=google part that bypasses the registration
I'm guessing Google still respects this, so it's pretty simple to stop it from deep linking...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Slashdot is a site for commenting on the news, news.google.com finds the news. What about combining them to make a fully automated news discussion site? All the server would have to do is pick off the top n stories from Google news and feed them into the slash engine (or one of the slash cones). For bonus points, it could divide the news into different areas of interest. Anyone care to lend me some nice fast servers on with a fast Internet connection?
In case you didn't know, you can see all the latest stuff Google is working on here.
Check it out.
slashdot!=valid HTML
The most it says about the technology is this: I'm guessing that the sources themselves are ranked in the usual manner. The same story from different sources are grouped and finally the placement of the story is determined by how many sources (weighted by their rank) ran it and how those sources positioned it themselves.
I just want to see a google archive of this:
http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Would it be possible to localize it more? Right now it is -1, Too US-Centric. This could be my startup page. :)
I've been aware of the Beta for some time. The search feature has been great, but the portal left much to be desired. It was basically a cluttered list of five sources for each news story. This new layout seems better, though it still leaves me wondering which stories are supposed to be the most newsworthy. And I see a fundamental problem with Google's approach.
Taking a cross section of all the news that's out there is not going to result in good coverage. One of the big differences between a good newspaper, like The New York Times, and a poor one, like The New York Daily News, is the collection of stories the editors choose. The Daily News needs to get its readers fired up to sell papers, so it covers the most provocative stories it can find and sensationalizes them. The Times has the luxury of knowing its readers trust it to inform them of the most important news.
I know it sounds like an elitist position -- "we know what's best for you." I was once accosted at a party by a USA Today employee who began ranting about how arrogant it was of my paper to assume people wanted to read about human rights abuses in Africa. I asked him what we should be featuring and he detailed a series of articles his paper ran on business travellers who get laid by stewardesses at 30,000 feet. I didn't argue with him, but I felt somewhat more confident that we were choosing the right stories.
If Google covers the news based on what's out there (which is primarily of the USA Today variety), as opposed to applying news values, its offering won't be very informative. It may appeal to the largest number of people who confuse entertainment with news, but I think most Slashdotters will find it very shallow.
There's also the question of Google's "partnerships" with news sites and how that will affect the rankings.
While I still like the news search feature, I prefer the collection of shell scripts I just released. They grab the top headlines and blurbs from a number of major newspapers and put them together on one page, organized by newspaper, so you can browse "trusted" news sites quickly without having to wade through cumbersome javascript navigations, flash ads, registration. You still visit the newspapers' Web sites to read the stories that interest you, but this way you get to check out the merchandise before you commit to jumping through the content owner's hoops.
My aggregator also provides updated lists of all the headlines that have appeared on the wire services in the last several hours. The editors at the news sites are watching these same lists for updates when breaking news occurs... even the major sites that have a large number of reporters. They can't cover everything themselves, and they need to have some coverage until their reporter can get to the story.
It also covers computer news sites like Slashdot (note: the list is currently very Mac-centric because the shell scripts require Curl to trick servers into thinking the download program is a Web browser... I'll try to do the same with wget for Linux, but that's not ready yet), grabs sports scores, the weather report, comic strips, and fetches slippers.
If you're using Mac OS X, or you're willing to install Curl on your Linux box, give it a try. It's free and it's open source.