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CNET News.com Turns 7

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the late-night-filler-blah-blah dept.

dmehus writes "Just as Google celebrated its 5th birthday last week, which was covered by Slashdot, I thought it would be equally appropriate to point out that tech news darling CNET News.com celebrated its 7th birthday this past week. To mark that occasion, its Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh wrote an article, in which he reflects on their founding slogan of 'Tech News First' and their commitment to that going forward. He also announces a brand new redesign that was unveiled yesterday. To that I'd add, here's to another seven more! Thoughts or opinions, anyone?"

20 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Congrats! by stev3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've learned to take CNets news with a grain of salt, since many times they just seem to editorialize stories and add in useless comments etc.

    To be in business 7 years is a great accomplishment though, and my congratulations go out to them.

  2. I, also updated my design yesterday. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    But I actually know how to write Valid XHTML strict, unlike the bozos at cnet.

    Validation

    It looks like ass in konqueror.

  3. They're 10? I thought they died long ago! by MoThugz · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I mean seriously, most of their stuff are Windows-centric (or MS-centric, depending on how u see it). Don't take my word on it, just click any of their sections and you're guaranteed to see "Windows" or "Microsoft".

    I personally stopped reading anything with a double dot com url. And I don't think I'm the only one.

    --
    Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
    1. Re:They're 10? I thought they died long ago! by leifm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While I agree that CNET isn't particularly good, I don't think they are overly MS biased. You see a lot of Linux and Apple articles on there as well, and MS is the biggest player in software at the moment. And as far as quality goes, they're sort of the AP of the tech news world, you see it there early on, and then find a better article a few hours later.

      And slashdot would have significantly less links/stories if cnet were to die.

      --

      "Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
  4. Early Bias by BWJones · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I found CNET News.com to be rather biased towards Microsoft early on by running stories favorable towards the company. (often ignoring news critical of Microsoft) Given that they were really sorta a pop news internet publication (and still kinda are), I suppose that label would be appropriate. I assumed that Microsoft was underwriting them at the time. However, recently they appear to have moved more towards an unbiased coverage. They are still kinda superficial in their news coverage, but I have found the editorial changes and news changes in the last couple of years to be more palatable.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Early Bias by __aafkqj3628 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They seem to have gone at MS a bit lately over their security problems though and several of their editors (well, ZDNet editors, but it's all the same company) seem to be pretty-much anti-microsoft in some of their columns.

  5. zd net by minus_273 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    also got swallowed up by them... used to be bitter riavals

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
    1. Re:zd net by MonTemplar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, ZDNet is still around, but as the majority of its content has been assimilated by CNet, I have to wonder why they don't just redirect people to the CNet front pages. Comments?

      MT.

      --
      -MT.
  6. Re:Yay for tableless design. by Juanvaldes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder how much longer the page takes to load on dialup with all the whitespace in the source.

  7. Let's face it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    CNet is the USA Today of web news. Huge circulation, mediocre journalism at best.

  8. cnet & microsoft expired pages by Sonnenschein · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've always enjoyed a particular quirk in cnet/news.com that expires vulnerability stories about microsoft/windows products prematurely.

    (Notice that the original page in each of the stories below can be seen, you've gotta keep your eye on it though.)

    Worm dupes with fake Microsoft address - May 19, 2003
    have allowed a good hacker both to read files stored on the Windows NT-based Internet

    descriptions were taken from google, search for more keywords associated with worms/viruses/etc + windows and you'll end up with expired pages on news.com

    Blame me for being paranoid, fuck it.

  9. Remember way back when? by macmouse · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember there used to be an CNET TV Show. Not their own network, but an show that was on Sunday mornings. I wonder what happened? As I remember the web-site was made to *supplement* the tv show - not the other way around.

    Anyone remember the answer guys? I wonder what has happened to them. It was certianly my favorite segment of the show.

    1. Re:Remember way back when? by minesweeper · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I remember that as well. It was fairly informative and timely with news and a few product reviews as well. They started reviewing interesting websites as well... but then it started changing.

      Eventually they'd starting doing 30-45 super-quick segments with no depth and maybe flash a website for half a second at the end and then say, "If you missed any of that, head on over to our website, CNET.com..."

      The show became very light on substance and was soon just a nonstop plug for its website.

      On another note, CNET launched an actual broadcast radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area a few years ago at 910 AM. It mysteriously disappeared from the air at the beginning of this year and turned into a news-talk station.

  10. Re:Yay for tableless design. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Dialup modems use compression. Whitespace is not a (real) issue

  11. I remember when CNET was on Sci-Fi.. by Praedon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was rather interesting... It had a lot of cool things thrown into it.. Wonder why it was cancled...

    --
    Just me
  12. Fixed-width layouts are good for text-heavy sites by starvingartist12 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A static/fixed width layout isn't a bad thing, depending on when it's used. And I'm sure the people at CNet thought about the pros and cons of a liquid layout in their design process.

    For a text-heavy site such as News.com, a fixed-width layout is very ideal. If you happen to have a very high resolution, the text in a liquid/expanding design would run past the optimum line length of about 60 characters or so. Sure, you can have the browser sized to a reasonable size, but it's an added hassle. With a fixed-width website, however, the line length is much shorter. Your eyes won't get as tired from traversing the whole width of a page in a liquid layout.

    It's also the same reason why newspapers run multiple narrow columns, rather than having it go across the whole page.

    As a side note, Simon Willison has a nice Narrow Bookmarklet that lets you convert a website's liquid design to a fixed 500 pixel width page with one click.

  13. Re:Domain name.. by quigonn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In fact, there's a guy owning atat.at who has an email address at@atat.at. And his initials are AT.

    --
    A monkey is doing the real work for me.
  14. Not even /. is HTML valid by bazik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://slashdot. org

    Not that I care about as it displays fine :)

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    --
    One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
  15. Re:Redesign by sporktoast · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think the most useful redesign that CNET has done in the past was to stop insisting that everyone spell their name c|net, using the pipe character. Too many of the more common fonts on various platforms lacked that particular glyph.

    Of course, they were born in the era of TAFKAP (pronounced "Squiggle"), interCapitals, emoticons, and the widespread discovery of <SHIFT>-2, so you can at least understand their impulse to acquire an exoteric punctuation mark all their own.

    But of course, after backing down about the pipe, they tried to one-up Sun: CNET, we're ".com" in ".com.com", so maybe they haven't really learned...

    --
    In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
  16. What's the deal with com.com? by Experiment+626 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, so we all know that C/NET owns news.com, but rather than run their site as that (which is a pretty good domain name), they point it to "news.com.com" which is just plain silly. Is there any kind of interesting story or reason behind this, or did the C/NET editors just wake up one day and decide they wanted their domain name to look more like a typographical error?