Microsoft Plans News Aggregator

wyldeone writes "ZDNet says Microsoft is planning on creating a news aggregation service similar to Google's Google News. It will draw headlines from over 4,800 sites. It will also provide customized feeds, similar to Googles News alerts. Here is the beta version of the site."

Comments

What's new?

[BWJones]

So, what is new here? Seriously.........Is this another case of Microsoft coming late to the game and saying "Oh, well, we have one too", or is this another case of Microsoft publicizing they have something in the works that will come out any time now to keep other folks from entering into the fray? Come on, if you are going to get into the game, offer something new. For instance, take a page from the Apple playbook when Apple realized a little late that mp3s and online music was the way to go, Apple put some thought and effort into things and came up with not only the iTunes music store, but also the iPod. Both of which were nice innovations and spurred other companies to improve their products.

From the looks of Microsoft's news bot site here it appears that ther innovations are links to Hotmail, shopping, other proprietary properties and news programs of either Microsoft and NBC, and notably in the Science/Health categories, we have business news about companies such as Boston Scientific rather than real Science news. It's also more bandwidth intensive than the Google news site.

Re:What's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, from the FAQ, it looks like MSN is using generalized clickthru and your personal history to customize the results. I don't think Google does either of those.

Re:What's new?

[phrasebook]

"Oh, well, we have one too"

Every person/company who has ever made a website has said this.

Re:What's new?

[carnivore302]

Actually, Microsoft coming late to the game is part of its success. They take a concept that has proved to be a success and extend it with their own additions. The (in)famous "embrace and extend strategy".

Sure, sometimes it backfires or fails miserably. But then again, if you don't risk now and then, you will not make significant gains either. Microsoft knows this all too well.


Click here for the Mystery Futures Link!

Re:What's new?

[costas]

Well, at least one thing that MSN Newsbot dows that Google News doesn't, is that MSN attempts to personalize the news page based on passed clicks. Now, my newsbot has been doing that for almost 3 years now (plus a lot more, like customized XML and PDA feeds, peer networks, etc) with a more varied selection of sources (end of shameless plug :-)

Re:What's new?

[teal]

Jeez! Does Microsoft come up with anything new anymore? Their entire business plan seems to be to find something someone else is making money on and to copy it.

I have a feeling that this is the behavior pattern of a dinosaur as it goes off to die. In this industry it really is innovate or die, which gets harder and hardeer as a corporation gets large and lethargic. Again, I think Microsft rewally is their own worst enemy.

Re:What's new?

[antic]

So, there's beta, and then there's *beta*. One headline is duplicated. Another few link to the wrong articles.

Sorting that out is pretty basic stuff and should be done before any kind of public beta.

I like the layout though.

Funny excerpt from the article about Bush on his mountain bike:

---
"I'm gonna show you a hill that would choke a mule," he says.

He hits the brakes and is steadily advancing downhill when his front tire loses its grip amid the loose rocks. His foot gets stuck in a strap that keeps it on the pedal.

In the blink of an eye, his rear wheel is in the air, and Bush is flying high over the handlebars, landing on his back with the bike on top of him.

He lies motionless for a few moments. The reporter hoists the bike off him just as his medics arrive to attend to him.
---

Humour transcends political bias! ;)

Re:What's new?

[AstroDrabb]

Oh, just what I want. MS trying to "guess" what news I want to see. Just as they do with their OS, always trying to make a choice for us dumb end-users. I will take Google, just give me _all_ the news and let me pick and choose, or like Yahoo! where I can pick different news feeds. The last thing I want is some corporation like MS making a chioce for me.

I can see this state-of-the-art algorithm used by MSN News.

if(_newsTopic == LINUX_TOPIC)
showMoreMSNewsArticles();
else if (_newsTopic == ANTI_MS)
showMoreMSNewsArticles();
else
showMor eMSNewsArticles();

Re:What's new?

[killjoe]

There was a rumor going on at WWDC that Bill Gates was in the audience and he didn't look happy. I didn't give this much credence at the time but seing as how MS has recently made an annoucement about RSS agregators and HD-DVD I think the rumor might be true. Expect MS to make announcements about all the features of Tiger also being implemented by MS RealSoonNow (TM).

Re:What's new?

[glinden]

MSN Newsbot does look a lot like Google News, but it does have something unusual, personalized news. The site watches which articles you read and attempts to find other interesting articles. Microsoft certainly isn't the first here, but they are the biggest.

If done right, personalized news can work very well. Of course, trust is a big issue. If you don't trust Microsoft, give Findory News or Memigo a try.

Re:What's new?

[glinden]

Memigo is very cool with a ton of power user features. It's a fantastic site.

If you're looking for something simple and easy to use, Findory News is another good choice.

Re:What's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've done that for what? Over a decade?

How much money have they made in that time, again?

Not that I think it's good, or innovative, or anything, but it's clearly a good strategy to rake in cash, given their past history.

Re:What's new?

[rpdillon]

That's interesting, because the idea of a program trying to guess what I want does not strike me as a feature. In fact, I have two main problems:

1) It seems it would require YET ANOTHER login and password and links that to all my news habits

2) The history of algorithms trying to guess what I'm interested has been exceedingly poor.

Maybe the reason I'm not interested is because of point #2, and that said, I'll go visit memigo.com and see what I think. Somehow I like the purity of Google News - its anonymous, clean (I like text only mode on my Zaurus), and puts all its engine power to scouring the web for interesting news stories, rather than trying to guess which ones I want to see.

Re:What's new?

[costas]

Well, a login/password on memigo is needed only if you want the more advanced features. At any rate, memigo and sites like it are essentially serendipity agents, they are not meant to be your only source of web news.

But you mentioned the Zaurus, so you will probably like the PDA version of memigo, which was actually the original reason I built the site (not just PDA-formatted, but linking to PDA-formatted articles as well, and customized for you)...

Re:What's new?

[scmason]

"Every person/company who has ever made a website has said this."

Except those with enough foresite and originality to be the first.

hmm..

Re:What's new?

[drawfour]

If you bothered to actually LOOK at the site, you would see that not only does it have regular news like google news but also a personalized news section. This is in the upper-right and called "The Daily Me". If you don't want personalized news, don't look at that area. Maybe there will be a way to disable it. But c'mon, Microsoft is not going to slant their entire page just on the off-chance that someone will switch from Linux to Windows. God, the consiracy theories here are just lame. Oh, wait, this is Slashdot. My bad.

Re:What's new?

[AstroDrabb]

But c'mon, Microsoft is not going to slant their entire page

Why not? MS use to mess with MSN searches for Linux, etc. For a while, any Linux search would return content from MS's site about switching, or studies about how MS Windows has a better TCO. It was actaully on /., and after a while, MSN finally changed whatever they were doing and the Linux searches seem better, though not near the level of Google.

Re:What's new?

[drawfour]

I definitely remember the slashdot article about that, but it wasn't "MSN", it was a beta search engine. When they go live, MS will be hard-pressed to do anything so blatant.

Re:What's new?

[glinden]

Might check out Findory News. Findory doesn't require a login; you're anonymous when you use the site. The design is simple and clean, all text. And the personalization quickly and effectively learns your interests. Try it out and see what you think.

Deja-vu

[peterprior]

Ahh.. the good old "rip off something another companies done" move. Good to see they are still as innovative as ever. Doesn't google own any patents on this?

Re:Deja-vu

[nomadic]

Patents on a news aggregation service? Google came really late to that game, if any patents exist google sure wouldn't have them.

Re:Deja-vu

[Cereal Box]

You must be kidding. A patent on Google News? Do you think Google News was the first website to collect a bunch of news stories from various sources and post them on a page? Do you even know what site you're reading right now?

Microsoft isn't ripping anyone off any more than Google is.

Re:Deja-vu

[Donny Smith]

He's (as well as the bozos who modded him Insightful) is obviously not kidding.

What has this world come to?

Re:Deja-vu

[glinden]

Microsoft does excel at imitation. MSN Newsbot appears to be a combination of Google News and personalization technology like Amazon.com or Findory News.

Re:Deja-vu

[CoughDropAddict]

There's a pretty big difference between a site with human submitters and editors and one that uses data mining to automatically aggregate the top stories from hundreds of different news outlets.

It's like trying to compare the "links" page on Joe Blow's homepage to Google's search engine.

Re:Deja-vu

[SphericalCrusher]

Yeah, just another thing for Microsoft to stick their fingers into. First the search engine, then the e-mail storage (which they were not the first to follow, but still), and now the news system. What's next? Microsoft's version of Froogle? It'll never stop.

Re:Deja-vu

[Skevin]

Of course it's brand-spanking new! Even as we speak, Microsoft is gearing up to release its revolutionarily innovatively original news site, Dashslot! Dashslot, whose slogan is "FUD for Nerds, Truth in Tatters", will allow members of the ever growing anti-OSS movement to coelesce into a coherent online community, by conglomerating news stories about events and/or legislation that threaten the blessed Utopia Microsoft has promised to us, the Faithful. Members, once logged in with a Microsoft Passport ID, may leave comments on an electronic bulletin board via the relative ease of Outlook, or simply respond to them, whether or not they relate to the original news stories to which they are tied. Flaming is kept to a minimum, because no one is Anonymous on Dashslot! Everyone is your Komrade! As such, it is in everyone's best interest to report any suspicious behavior to the site's moderators: Admiral Octopus-Sashimi, Bloody, and Indian On Your Knees, who outsources our polls.

Unlike other news conglomeration sites, Dashslot will allow you to use any HTML tags in your comments whatsover, including the famous tag, <script language="vbscript">. You thus are even allowed to embed unsigned ActiveX Controls and DLLs into your comments for the convenience of your komrades, but they will need to run Internet Explorer 6 or higher (on minimum security settings) to fully appreciate your efforts. But wait, there's more! You have limited ability to moderate the scores of comments left by other komrades, which ultimately affects their karma. This is where Dashslot derives its famous logo: -1

Since there are many news sites hostile our ideology, Dashslot includes a new feature called "One Click Denial of Service". This feature, also called the Dashslot effect, allows a Komrade to crash an offending IIS webserver in the course of a single visit! (Rumors of this feature already occurring spontaneously are treasonous and subject to execution without trial by firing squad, who will then in turn be executed by gas, lethal injection, and the electric chair all at once. Please consult your MS Passport Terms of Service for details regarding mandatory Firing Squad Duty.)

Dashslot will bring together the programmers and techies of the world, and bind them to a single unifiying vision, without the corrupting influence of other opinions! We will help everyone on all corporate levels communicate on the same level with eachother, because we will have already told you what to think beforehand! We will rally the faithful masses to the glorious banner of proprietary software, defining the dawn of our New World Order! Dashslot's presence shall herald the coming of a new age of hope for those who remained faithful to Microsoft. Everyone else is just a freaking heretic and will be litigated to hell. See you in court.

Solomon Chang

Great....

[Roskolnikov]

One OS
One People
One Nexus

I can't wait to see how they 're-write' links and searches
to 'enhance' your experience.

Re:Great....

[millahtime]

One OS
One People
One Nexus


Oh, they do sound more and more like the borg every day.

Re:Great....

[WormholeFiend]

you mean the Nazis?

Ein Volk
Ein Reich
Ein Fuhrer

It's about time

[foistboinder]

Finally a news service uncluttered with
anti-Microsoft stories. :)

Re:It's about time

[optimus2861]

This is modded funny, but Microsoft (or at least, any MS chuckleheads who monitor Usenet) has been known to yank posts from the microsoft.public.* newsgroups (at least from their own NNTP servers) that are overly critical of Microsoft policies -- do a Google on a chap named "kurttrail" in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general. He's a very outspoken critic of product activation and Microsoft EULA policies, and MS has attempted to censor his opinions on more than one occasion under flimsy pretexts (i.e. "this topic is not for a general newsgroup").

Usenet being what it is, the censorship is pretty ineffective (generally, most news servers won't honour third-party cancel requests in unmoderated newsgroups) but it is quite petty. Especially since kurttrail is a damn good debater and tends to come out on top in any real debate the MS-defenders get into with him, which only makes MS's positions look worse.

Why is it...

[scifience]

Why is it that Microsoft feels the need to do everything Google does? Microsoft is not exactly losing money.

I'm waiting for the day that Microsoft announces that they are buying back all their stock just so they can do another IPO to be like Google!

Re:Why is it...

[peterprior]

"I'm waiting for the day that Microsoft announces that they are buying back all their stock just so they can do another IPO to be like Google!"

Hmm.. I wonder how much Google stock Microsoft will buy...

Re:Why is it...

[illusioned]

Actually according to some recent articles I've been reading lately, they may not be losing money, but they aren't gaining money like they used to either, thus they have to search for more markets.

Re:Why is it...

[illusioned]

Here you go

Re:Why is it...

[illusioned]

More Want to keep playing? Actually, just google for microsoft growth slowing and save me the time.

Re:Why is it...

[tbannist]

It's simple, really, Google is one of the next round of targets. Microsoft has realized that if they want to win the search war, they're going to have to cut off every avenue of revenue for Google. I'd expect a Froogle imitation to be announced soon.

Microsoft's goal isn't to beat Google by offering the best software. Instead they will try to simply drown Google by flooding the field of competition until everyone is loosing money. They'll do it with the power of Windows and pre-installed IE. So since Microsoft is propped up by very profitable monopolies, they can afford to loose money longer than anyone else. In the end it's classic Microsoft.

Re:Why is it...

[jilles]

MS stock value is based on the concept of their revenue growing exponentially. It stopped doing that a few years ago (it still grows though) and the stockvalue has not been corrected yet to reflect that new reality. As soon as investors figure out that the stock price is too high in relation to the actual marketvalue of the company, the stockprice will go down (because investors buy stock with the hope to sell it at a higher price later on).

By opening new markets and thus growing revenue and perhaps even profit margins, MS hopes to delay this as long as they can. For the past few years the perspective on these yet to realize profits has kept investors happy. However, so far their efforts to acually grow profit have not been very succesful and investors have started to take note of that. Some of their 'new' products barely break even, some are not breaking even and some bring in a (modest) profit. Basically all of the new productlines pale in comparison to their traditional moneymakers (office & windows) MS has compensated this by increasing the margins on their products (to the point where these are actually losing marketshare). Predictably this strategy runs out of steam quickly when it comes to increasing revenue. Also OSS has put an enormous pressure on their prices and has eroded their traditionally very strong developers community.

So MS sees that google is worth billions and MS feels that they are in a position where they can effectively compete with google and add some billions to their company value. Whether this is true remains to be seen but they certainly have the resources to invest in the necessary technology. Making their technology attractive for businesses is easy (just go below whatever google charges). However, the service is free for endusers so they will (also) need to compete on quality rather than price to actually gain marketshare over google.

Even if MS succeeds in pushing google out of the market, it is debatable whether MS will be able to delay the inevitable downgrade of their stockvalue much longer. Googles profits are very modest when compared to MS and the (expected) market value is based on yet to be realized revenue streams.

Next - Embedded in Longhorn

[grunt107]

I would wager that this news service will get embedded in the Longhorn desktop presentation layer. This would hide the IE browser from view (although its underlying tech would be the content server), allowing MS to further embed its applications further into the OS offering.

Re:Next - Embedded in Longhorn

[DarkGreenNight]

This could be the next logical step. And if correctly filtered information comes to your desktop there'll be not much incentive to go to other information services.

You'll be able to see the headlines of selected (in the bad sense) newspapers, and the newsfeeds of your favourite webpages. No incentive to go to the webpages, no incentive to go similar services (news.google.com), everybody plummeting (no ads revenue), but microsoft and friends. And then their friends will start to require subscription, after all you'll be already registered with passport.

Of course it can also be good, but we are trained to distrust monopolies. So, if bad times come, we'll be able to say "I told ya!". Or at best we can fight to avoid the nastier effects.

Any ideas?

Re:Next - Embedded in Longhorn

[DrCash]

And then Micro$oft will rule the world!

HA! HA! HA!

Will we see a bias?

[digitalgimpus]

Considering MS owns MSNBC, I wouldn't be suprised if it's a bit bias towards it's own property.

I like Google partly for neutrality.

Re:Will we see a bias?

[Tumbleweed]

Actually, I've often seen stories impartial about MS on MSNBC - it always surprises me. *shrug*

You want the biased news, you go with the FOX. Woof.

It's ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like everything else MS makes.. It will not compete with G-news very well because they are -

- way too late

- poor at copying

- have more conflicts of interest

- made it ugly

Odoyle Rules

Re:It's ugly

[Ploum]

You forgot :

- make everyone use it

- make a lot of money

- kill competition and innovation as much as possible

- make a lot more of money

Well, MS people aren't doing charity or anything. They are making money and it works so, why change ?

Re:It's ugly

[BattleTroll]

Yeah, just like how Internet Explorer could never hold a candle to Netscape. Just like Word could never compete with WordPerfect. Yeah, just like that.

How this ever got modded "Insightful" is beyond me.

Old Hat

[kermit6306]

Why does Microsoft copy so many ideas? With all their resources, shouldn't they be coming up with this stuff before everyone else?

Google MSN

[BinaryWolf]

Google's news site is much better I believe. Upon entering the MSN site I had a hard time figuring out what articles they actually had. The site is littered with ads. Way to go Google for keeping your site clean.

4800?

[isdfnmo]

Who needs 4800 news sources?

I have BBC, NYTimes, a few industry-specific, a few 'for interest' (e.g. Economist, New Scientist, Reason.com), a few for sport and one for UK TV Listings. Maybe a dozen tops and I am one of the most well-informed people I know.

Too much information = too easy to lose the salient stuff.

Re:4800?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it is to actually get news without spin? A lot of those news sources are actually foreign papers (including Al-Jazeera on Google's site). It is nice sometimes to get a different point of view. Of course, on the other side, a lot of times 90% of those sources are just pulling the same exact AP or Reuters release verbatim.

Re:4800?

[tehcyder]

Who needs 4800 news sources?

It should have been 640,000 that really would have been enough for anyone.

Re:4800?

[Bearpaw]

Maybe a dozen tops and I am one of the most well-informed people I know.

Did you read that in a Jayson Blair article?

Seriously, though, I like Google partly because I'm exposed to more spin variety than I would if I stuck to my favorites. Sometimes I'll even hold my nose and follow a link to Faux News, just to see what I'm not missing.

Re:4800?

[poot_rootbeer]

I am one of the most well-informed people I know.

Suuure you are.

Re:4800?

[jrumney]

a lot of times 90% of those sources are just pulling the same exact AP or Reuters release verbatim.

All the more reason to have Xinhua and Al Jazeera in there, since those guys usually do offer a different slant on the news than the AP and Reuters feeds that everyone else is printing. CNN and BBC also have big enough news teams to cover most things themselves so they're worth looking at too.

Re:4800?

[wtarle]

Holy crap I hope you don't mean that al-jazeera has no spin.

Re:4800?

[glinden]

• Who needs 4800 news sources? Too much information = too easy to lose the salient stuff.

If you don't read those 4800 sources, how do you know what you're missing?

Of course, no one can read 4800 news sources. That's why sites like Findory News exist. Findory learns from the news you read, searches thousands of sources, and helps you discover news that you otherwise would have missed.

After all, isn't that what computers are for? Sorting through the piles of too much information and making it easy for you to find the salient stuff?

Re:4800?

[cloudless.net]

Because we need local news? Don't forget there are many countries and languages in the world.

Re:It's..... TROLL TUESDAY!

[91degrees]

Troll tuesday?

Come on, man. That's sooo 1999!

Re:horrible

[hedge_death_shootout]

yet more "innovation" from Microsoft - have the EVER thought of ANYTHING original.

Let's see...
An MS-bashing post.
On Slashdot.
Castigating MS for stealing ideas.
How original!

That interface sucks.

[snero3]

I thought googles news interface was busy until I saw this

talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees

Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link...

[rixster]

and you're in for a surprise.

Re:Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link...

[Jareeedo]

Classic..lol!

Re:Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link...

[ggvaidya]

In case they manage to fix it, the text went:

'Bourne' Slays Box Office Competition
AP via Daily Press - 20 hours ago &#9642; Popularity Rank: 10 &#9642; Similar Stories: 34
Actor Matt Damon and actress Franka Potente in scene from new film The Bourne Supremacy
Reuters/ HO
AP Movie Writer July 26, 2004, 12:13 PM EDT LOS ANGELES -- Matt Damon's 'The Bourne Supremacy,' the sequel about the amnesiac assassin he played in 'The Bourne Identity,' debuted as the...
Also covered by: AP via Seattle Post Intelligencer &#9642; Houston Chronicle &#9642; San Francisco Chronicle &#9642; AP via The Ledger &#9642; Boston Globe &#9642; Reuters
More photos & full coverage

and it linked to this article.

Re:Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link...

[fireduck]

Is that the story you got? I got a link to Bush Pedals New Program: Mountain Biking. Likewise, the showgirls link immediately adjacent to the Bourne story goes to a story about a guy selling a restaurant.

cleary still in beta...

Re:Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link...

[Refrag]

Yes, the first time I clicked on that link I saw Bush Pedals New Program: Mountain Biking. When I clicked on it again later I did get the proper The Bourne Supremacy page.

Aren't all of Trek's frames made in China? Shouldn't The POTUSA be riding something domestic?

Re:Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link...

[tracer-bullet]

I have a Trek 6700 that claims to be "Handbuilt in the USA". It even mentions Wisconsin as the place of origin.

Re:Already there are bugs

[dragonp12]

=> beta version of site.

Very Strange

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

I couldn't access the site

Something about a conflict, dumping physical memory, and then the browser went all blue and restarted. Strange, I've never seen anything like it.

Microsoft News...The name you trust.

[SatanicPuppy]

Ummmmm, yea, Microsoft as a news provider. Just the job for a convicted monopoly. And don't say, "They're just getting news from other sites" because what you choose to cover is the biggest bias in the news industry.

I wish they would get over this illusion that they are a content provider. They are SUPPOSED to be a software company, and hell, I'll even throw the X-Box in that category. Maybe if they stopped trying to own one of everything and just concentrated on their damn OS, it would be worth buying.

Re:Microsoft News...The name you trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that they can set a Firefox favourite or homepage just as easily as they can set an IE homepage, right?

Re:Microsoft News...The name you trust.

[bertboerland]

You do realize that they can set a Firefox favourite or homepage just as easily as they can set an IE homepage, right?

Yes, but do you realise that you could set both in Firefox as you home(s)page(s)?

Re:Microsoft News...The name you trust.

[rpdillon]

I think the point was that Microsoft's news site would be set as the default...amazing as it may seem to the readers of slashdot (and I don't mean to be sarcastic), most people who use computers actually don't change the defaults (as we do so often). I'm not sure why, but I'm constantly amazed at how pervasive the "default" is.

Case and point: IE comes with windows, it's icon is put on the desktop. It has, what, 90% market share? It was considered big inroads for Firefox the other week when Firefox gained 1%. I bet MS could ship Firefox with windows and bury it in a menu somewhere and people would STILL use IE, so long as it was the icon that appeared on the desktop.

Re:Microsoft News...The name you trust.

[Idarubicin]

Ummmmm, yea, Microsoft as a news provider. Just the job for a convicted monopoly. And don't say, "They're just getting news from other sites" because what you choose to cover is the biggest bias in the news industry.

I wish they would get over this illusion that they are a content provider.

What did the MS in MSNBC stand for, again? Microsoft is a content provider, and with respect to MSNBC's offerings not appreciably more or less trustworthy than most others. They seem to cover Microsoft's latest worms and holes with the same thoroughness, accuracy, and detail as the rest of the mainstream media. (That is, their coverage isn't very good--but neither is anybody else's, so I give MS the benefit of the doubt here.)

Re:Microsoft News...The name you trust.

[eugene ts wong]

I'm not sure why, but I'm constantly amazed at how pervasive the "default" is.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean, but just in case: I think that a lot of the people don't understand what defaults are customizable because they don't have the time to configure things & try to fix them. We did/do have time therefore we tried to fiddle around with them. Just as our parents didn't spend a lot of extra time making that extra meal for us, we don't spend a lot of time configuring browsers, because we are already in front of the computer anyways. I could be all wrong about it, but it seems to be about economics of time. I definitely am not being very judgemental about them.

I think that what we need is a browser configuration web site that tells people how to configure their language preferences, their style sheets, & their home pages. This will kind of give people an independence which will give them free choice. When that happens people will start flocking to other browsers without a 2nd thought.

Dupe?

[KJE]

hello?

"Most Popular Articles"...

[southpolesammy]

Ok, Slashdotters, here's your chance to googlebomb (hmmm, ok, guess we need a new catchphrase here) the MSN Newsbot. Go to the site and use the "Find Your News" search field to look for things like FOSS, SCO-MS interplay, RIAA, or get really nasty and search for things like goatse and other wrteched sites.

Let's give MSN's newest beta a warm sendoff...

Re:"Most Popular Articles"...

[jbfaninmo]

Wait, you have to remember that this is the same company that had a search engine that returned like 20 results for the term "Linux"

So how could they do this...

[gillbates]

Without breaking copyright law? Are they really going to license content from every single site? Or will the Feds bust them like Adam McGaughey?

Re:So how could they do this...

[RazzleFrog]

Have you never seen how these sites work? They don't copy the entire article onto their site. They provide a link to the original site with a short blurb. This doesn't infringe on any copyrights and, if anything, the sites are getting free advertising. In the case you link he had the information on his site. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he was infringing but you can't compare the two.

Imagine the precedent if they did. It would totally destroy the search engine industry (which is basically all this is).

Re:So how could they do this...

[RazzleFrog]

Those suits were over 3 years ago (started by KPMG I believe) and nothing ever came out of them. Either way they were for deep-linking and are not at all similar to this case. There are dozens of sites that have been doing this for years now and none of them have been sued. Do you really think any site is going to take on Microsoft now?

Don't defend the original post. It was a crappy ass attempt to karma-whore by linking to the previous article. It is as old as the hills and it never works.

Google news isn't entirely original either

[acomj]

newshub been doing news gathering for a long time..

google came and did it better..

Now MSN is throwing its hat in the ring. AOL will provide a web page with news/ other stuff based on what you want to see which is oddly good (It shows movies playing at the closest movie theaters..)

There a probably lots of others I'm missing.

Competetion is good. Hopefully everyone competes and makes theses sites better.

Win Win Win...

Re:Google news isn't entirely original either

[Patik]

Even MyWay and the My Yahoo! pages have done this. The articles are from a variety of sources (mostly AP, Reuters, and a few big newspapers). But you can choose what headlines you want to see, how many of each, which sports scores to show, tv listings, your weather, local movie listings, etc. I prefer MyWay because they don't have banners or popups and it's much more customizable.

Not AGAIN... another COPIED innovation!

[Seraphnote]

Come on Microsoft! Geez. With that whole RESEARCH department you have and $50 Billion, you'd think we'd see MORE than this tripe innovation from you! Oh wait that's right, you put all your time in the AESTHETICs, mouse cursors, icons, freaking large graphical interfaces that treat the user like a child and use up half the screen's space...

uhhh,

[dirvish]

that has been up for months...

Fark

[dostert]

This is silly. Anyone who knows anything can tell you that there is only one source, http://fark.com/, for all the important news in the world.

I can imagine the programming...

[Xshare]

IF newsarticle CONTAINS microsoft + internet explorer + bug THEN SEND TO null ELSE SHOW on page ...don't kill me because I can't program.

Re:I can imagine the programming...

[illusioned]

Don't fret, you almost had some valid visual basic there.

Re:I can imagine the programming...

[ggvaidya]

IF newsarticle CONTAINS microsoft + internet explorer + bug THEN SEND TO null ELSE SHOW on page ...don't kill me because I can't program.

D00D, TH4T 15 50M3 733T VI5U4L B4S1X H4X0R1NG!!!!!!

Make it light

[runen]

What google gets which many of its competitors don't is that people want 'light' sites, uncluttered from ads and large logos - and black writing on white background. It's not the major thing that google 'gets', but it's just one of many.

Saw That Coming

[nathanh]

Microsoft "innovates" again.

Google News is beta too...

[Artega VH]

at least the australian version says Beta..

The MS one is too busy, hard to follow. Whereas the Google one is as clean as can be expected for a screen with so much information and so many links.

So let me get this straight. Which beta is better? Do we really need a slashdot poll to know that answer? Didn't think so...

The more things change...

[danielrm26]

I could tell it was a Microsoft site without even looking at the URL. How? Easy, it failed to render correctly using a W3C complient browser.

Re:The more things change...

[ggvaidya]

Dude, you *NEVER* click on a link without looking at the URL. Evil things can happen.

Re:The more things change...

[Donny Smith]

>complient

Sorry, I failed to parse your post using English-compliant spellchecker.

I read it in Firefox and it looks just fine.
And as some have said, the first page might look a bit overcrowded, but the tech page is cleaner than Google's. See for yourself:
http://uk.newsbot.msn.com/s/?id=4

Not only that...

[Futurepower(R)]

Not only is Microsoft imitating success, but they are doing a bad job of it by adding several annoying elements. This works when you have a monopoly. Thank heavens for Google.

Does anyone actually use MSN Search?

Is anyone such a prisoner of Microsoft offerings that they don't have a friend who told them about Google?

Re:Not only that...

[Futurepower(R)]

I just saw the line at the bottom of MSN Search It's improved:

MSN Search is improved! Check it out."

Re:Not only that...

[DrCash]

Does anyone actually use MSN Search?

MSN Search?! What's that?! Seriously, I've never even heard of MSN's search engine until this story,... Going to their site, it looks like a total rip-off of google ... The search results look so similar it's not even funny.

Sorry Bill, no dice this game! Thank you for playing! You are the weakest link ... GOODBYE!

Better wording for story

[k4_pacific]

Microsoft has a new news site similar to Google news. To find it, type "Microsoft News" into Google.

This is a bit dubious

[techstar25]

To the casual observer that website sure looks like an MSNBC News site. It appears that what they are doing is stealing stories from all over and passing them off as MSNBC News stories. I mean, nobody is fooled into thinking Google News wrote all those stories on it's site, but if you went to this MSN page, it sure looks like it's all from MSNBC News. And we all know that the kind of people who actually visit MSN will think these are MSNBC stories. Granted, they probably aren't breaking any copyright laws here, but it is a bit dubious.

Layout

[umrgregg]

Well, it makes you want to stab your eyes out for one...

You got to get the links right!!

[lcsjk]

I jumped to the beta site and was intrigued by the "'Showgirls' Bares All in Self-Mocking DVD" I clicked and it took me to the wrong link. Yet another little bit of MS software presented to the public without being double-checked for accuracy. Following is the bad link, but don't bother, you'll just waste your time. http://g.msn.com/0PNENUS/1?http://c.moreover.com/c lick/here.pl?z180993149&z=50237909

Re:You got to get the links right!!

[16K Ram Pack]

Can I suggest www.fark.com has more of the news you are looking for? ;)

This makes me think about PointCast

[vectus]

Good ol' "push" technology.. was I the only one who truly liked PointCast? It was so convenient for me to get all of my news sources filtered individually for me, updated whenever I wanted.

Even though technology has changed around a lot, PointCast could still be relevant-- before it used to be a big deal to be able to go offline and read the stories because I was on dial-up, now it's a big deal because I use a laptop.

Re:This makes me think about PointCast

[Krafty Koder]

Boy do i miss PointCast! i loved the stock ticker news stuff - enter a stock code, and it'd grab all the news AND the graphs as well... On a laptop , commuting home from London every day , it was indispensible...

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[DavidNWelton]

Do a search for 'Linux' there and on google. The first article on the MS site is "why linux isn't ready for the desktop", along with some vulnerabilities.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'd use it...

[mverrilli]

if it supports RSS newsfeeds. I'm still annoyed that google won't do that and goes after people that do.

Current headlines...

[gad_zuki!]

Anti-Trust Legislation: Evil or just Wrong?

Macs turn people gay.

Office XP: Best Software Ever!

Internet Explorer Holes Largley Fiction

Bill Gates Lands on Moon

Dennis Miller Funniest Man Ever

An Editorial by Clippy©

Better Computing Through Crashes

Spyware Ain't So Bad

Your Computer is Old, Buy a New One with XP Now

How I Caught a Cold from Viral Open Source

Windows Saved my Life!

Jesus Uses XP

MS Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Service Pack Two Will Cure Impotence

Child Killed by Linux Installer

etc

Re:Current headlines...

[Octagon Most]

Funny, but actually there are two about Google - one about its IPO price being too high and a sign of arrogance, and one about it being hit by MyDoom. Plus one article about Real hacking the iPod. Nothing about Open Source being a security threat though. Must've read that at a less reputable source.

Openminded...

[Cytlid]

I was openminded about this, I tried that other news bot thing for a while. So I click on the link, and my Mozilla 1.7 under fluxbox in slackware linux kind a hangs... actually, the page took an extremely long time to load and not only did mozilla hang but my whole system did! Eventually it came up normally but it was as if it put the entire machine under a very heavy load ... so much so that the keyboard and mouse would not move. After a minute or two it came back... anyone else experience this?

Re:Openminded...

[Donny Smith]

As I write this I have several Newsbot tabs open on Firefox which works fine and the layout looks fine.

Don't assume your browser or OS are superior just because they're not MS-made :-)

Looking at the two sites ...

[ggvaidya]

... all I can say is "HA HA HA HA HA!"

See for your self. If you can read anything past the ugly blue-black-and-white font, you're a braver man than I.

Google news stories seem more interesting as well. MSNBC basically has a lot of US-related tabloid articles, while Google has some real news. An example:

World news according to MSNBC:

1. U.S. hands over four French suspects at Guantanamo
2. Prosecutors dissect Berkeley fishing story (about a murder in S.F. - how is this world news??)
3. Jenkins asks to see US lawyer

In contrast, Google has:

1. French Guantanamo detainees back home
2. Sudan Says US Using Darfur to Topple Government
3. Freed Egyptian Says Treated Well by Iraqi Captors

Also, Google allows you to go to country specific news feeds. I'm sorry, but MSN is going to have to do much better than this to steal my clicks. And before you argue that it's still beta, Google News had much better functionality than this before it first appeared on the Google front page.

Google?

[kc0re]

Microsoft must view Google as their biggest threat, first the webcrawler, now the news. I guess since Gmail topped hotmail, now MS has to say "My p*nis is bigger than yours"

Little experiment

[jsse]

Search for Linux in http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com(within first 20 hits):

Opinion: Why Linux isn't ready for the Desktop
Vulns: Linux Kernel Unspecified Local Denial of Service Vulnerability
Vulns: Linux Kernel Floating Point Register Contents Leak Vulnerability
Vulns: Linux VServer Project ProcFS Weak Sharing Permissions Vulnerability
Vulns: Apache mod_userdir Module Information Disclosure Vulnerability
How Microsoft Can Embrace Linux

I love biased news source. So here I'm. :)

Re:Little experiment

[amliebsch]

How Microsoft Can Embrace Linux

I love biased news source. So here I'm. :)

Just like that damn biased Slashdot.org!

Re:Little experiment

[GoofyBoy]

>I love biased news source.

Me too! Thats why I love slashdot!

Re:Little experiment

[tesmako]

'Within the first 20 hits' yes, but lets see the first five headlines I got;

Linux gaining steam in China
ITV switches on to Linux
Seagate and Linspire, Inc. Exclusively Bring Linspire Linux OS to Latin America
Susquehanna International Group Selects Reuters Trader (small mention of Linux as an added technology used)
Linux-based Nitix serves the works

The Linux desktop readyness article is actually from osnews.com, which is not overly biased against Linux. The 'How Microsoft Could Embrace Linux' is very pro-Linux, being a Slashdot article suggesting the porting of Microsoft Office to Linux and all that :)

So all in all it sure seems that you are the one doing biased reporting on this news service here.

Re:Little experiment

[Idarubicin]

I love biased news source. So here I'm. :)

Hello, biased news source. A quick search for Linux gives (first five hits, in order):

An article describing the adoption of Linux in China,

News about a television station considering a switch to Linux,

A supermarket chain testing a new Linux-based point-of-sale system,

Seagate and Linspire bringing Linux to South America,

A financial company selecting a Linux-based trading solution, citing 'quality and flexibility'.

Biased indeed....

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[RWerp]

That's not true. I did a search with MSN Search on 'Linux' a minute ago and first results were traditional pro-Linux sites.

USA version is here

[TheMadPenguin]

The American version can be found here:
http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com

It's pretty much the same thing, but there it is anyway... Aren't I resourceful? ;-)

M$ has been working on this for more than a year!

[romcabrera]

I submitted this story to slashdot almost a year ago! (and it was accepted): http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/19/153124 6 It's even the same name folks, MSN Newsbot.

I don't get it

[Harmfulfreeradical]

Is it just me or does this thing not even work on Macs? I'm using IE something or the other on OSX and I get nada - newsbot.msn.com no work. Tried it on PC and it looks like MSNBC to me. What a waste of electricity.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Europeans, mod this up!!!

[petra13]

7. If that were true I doubt Bush Jr. would have made it as far as he has.

For the record (and not that I like the guy): There is no Bush Jr. W is not a Jr. because he doesn't have the same name as his father -- George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush. Different names.

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[DavidNWelton]

We were talking about the news site, not the search engine.

Done before

[m00nun1t]

http://msn.co.uk used to be a news aggregator years ago, when MSN first dumped the "lets try to be an online tv station" and went for a portal strategy, for a good few years it was a personalisable news aggregator.

So, maybe Google News is the copy...

Old Technology

[ricma]

Are people really still interested in news aggregators ? It seems the technology has been around for 5 years are so, I mean seriously. I'm much more interested in seeing people parse opinions from news sites like http://www.blabble.com will soon do. Showing me what hundreds of people wrote about are of little use to me

Quick observations.

[Jeremy Erwin]

It's slower than google news. Because it uses the left hand side MSNBC toolbar (with its less than instantaneous menus) less actual news fits on my screen.

Finally, this statement is somewhat disturbing.

"Newsbot (beta) responds to your reading preferences. Clicking on articles determines what we base your recommendations on."

MSNBC does go out of its way to label AP wire service stories as such, which is a nice touch-- I really don't need to read the same story 700 times.

However, google does print the headlines of stories from three sources for each news item, which is more useful that a simple "Also covered in Sun, Herald-Tribune, and ABC". Speaking of which, is that the Chicago Sun, International Herald Tribune, and American Broadcasting Company? Or is it The Sun, Southwest Florida Herald Tribune, and Australian Broadcasting Company?

Re:Quick observations.

[poot_rootbeer]

"Newsbot (beta) responds to your reading preferences. Clicking on articles determines what we base your recommendations on."

I find this disturbing too, though probably not for the same reasons as you do.

I could care less if the site uses my browsing history to determine what I like and don't like -- it's better for them and for me if they can target ads well enough that I don't see ads for things I wouldn't buy.

The reason I don't like the idea is that because the importance of news should not be based on what I WANT to read about, but rather what I NEED to read about. It would be very easy to establish a pattern of interest that would result in an echo-chamber situation, where I was never exposed to a viewpoint I didn't already possess or agree with. That kind of situation does not make a person any more informed; what, then, is the purpose of news?

Re:Quick observations.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Good point. I dimly recall that in David Brin's novel, Earth, a user of the World Net News was required to accept a certain amount of off-topic news-- so as not to become informationally inbred.

Re:Quick observations.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Got a cite?

Perhaps there's a way to to test this-- access google news from two or three different computers in a internet cafe or computer lab. Compare the article selections.

I've opened up google.news on both IE (which I use a few times a year) and safari-- no differences are apparent, but of course google news may be caching content for my I.P.

Re:Quick observations.

[Jeremy Erwin]

BTW, there is a personalized search feature-- but it's beta, and optional.

ewww!

[Ender Ryan]

Ewww! Seriously, anyone else find pretty much everything on MSN designed with really poor taste? Hell, half the shit on MSN doesn't even have a background color set.

It's all so... cluttered.

That's my first reaction; I was expecting better, considering the resources they have.

No opinion on the content yet.

Territories?

[pr0nbot]

I heard this is going to be an Oceania-only release. Any news when it'll be available in Eurasia?

One Feature that i'm not sure Google has..

[ironwill96]

All Microsoft bashing aside, there was one thing I noticed that I'd like to see in Google's news service.

It was a feature similar to Amazon.Com's "Other people who bought this item also bought.." idea. When you click on a news story you are taken to a page with all associated stories with that story and also a list of links to other news that people who read that article also read. I've always liked the idea of showing me things that I might be interested in as well as long as unique identifying data is not being collected.

Now, perhaps Google has this already, and if so please give me a link to an example of their news service doing it.

Thanks

Re:One Feature that i'm not sure Google has..

[Anonymous Coward]

what use could that have other than to direct people how to align themselves with the mainstream and think more alike?
</hat>

***Today on Microsoft Galactonews Feed***

[pandrijeczko]

Geek-freaks of Earth, your attention please...

This is Prostetnic Borg-o Gates of the Galactic Microsoft Planning Council.

We are about to build a Galactic Longhorn Expressway through your system and, regretably, your Open Source has been scheduled for demolition.

Plans have been on display at 1 Microsoft Way for 5 of your Earth years, locked in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the front saying "Beware of the DMCA".

The demolition will take slighly more than 2 of your Earth decades, just as soon as we've got XP Service Pack 2 working.

Prostetnic Ballmer will be passing amongst you shortly with a collection box into which you may deposit your Linux CDs and free software floppy disks as part of the amnesty.

Thank you for your time...

Need to clean my glasses

[Stephen Samuel]

When I first read it, I thought the headline was:
Microsoft plans new aggravator..

Made perfect sense to me at the time... I was just surprised that they'd put that in a press release.

If we click pro-Linux sites

[16K Ram Pack]

from the search, will we get those up the popular news list?

What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

For everyone complaining...

1. It's beta, it's gonna be ugly.. big deal.
2. It wasn't Google's innovation either.
3. Competition is good. Isn't that what you champion on this site anyways?

Re:Google MSN

[Curate]

What ads? There are no ads *at all* on the main page. Not one. When you click on an article title, it takes you to the actual article on the originating webserver, so there might be ads there; but it's beyond MSNBC's control at that point.

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[GoofyBoy]

Do a search on Microsoft on Google's news search and the first article is about MS legal battle with the EU ("Date set for Microsoft's day in EU court").

Maybe both news engines are biased. (And before you go into "But its actual news!" so is the "why linux isn't ready for the desktop".) Or maybe its the poster who is biased?

Too little, too late. How about some innovation?

[iapetus]

Or isn't MS allowed to do that any more?

While we're waiting, why not try newsmap, which does some interesting things with Google's news feed.

this is particularly disturbing...

[Anonymous Coward]

after watching outFoxed I find this particularly disturbing. OutFoxed is an excellent just released documentary on the non-journalism of Fox News. Groklaw has shown how microsoft's news results skewed results from the SCO case. we need to be careful about our news sources. All of them.

Interesting Headlines...

[brunes69]

Emphasis on 3rd line added by me....

Rapper Ja Rule Charged With Assault
Kansas City Star - 12 hours ago Popularity Rank: 17 Similar Stories: 23
Register now for your chance to get passes!
TORONTO - Rapper Ja Rule appeared in a Toronto courtroom Monday on a charge of assault causing bodily harm.Authorities would say only that the...
Also covered by: CBS News BBC AP via News-Journal Kentucky.com Times Union ABC 7
More photos & full coverage

Register for passes? To what, the assault?

Thought for the day

[dr. electron]

Thought for the day:

Why does the a software developer, that happens to have nearly monopoly on the market, suddenly want to tell people whats news and what's not. ?

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[DrCash]

I don't know about linux, because I got the traditional pro-linux sites as well. But I did find it rather funny that when searching for "google" from the MSN news search engine, the second link is for http://news.google.com/ !!

Perhaps someone at Micro$oft has been $leeping ... or $lacking off! Better not tell the Bill!

News Aggravator?

[handy_vandal]

Microsoft Plans News Aggregator

Did anyone else read this as "Microsoft Plans News Aggravator" ...?

-kgj

What google needs...

[theslashdude]

...is an RSS feed URL for it's news site that accepts search parameters in the URL. That way users can create infinite customizable news feeds to meet their interests. It would be just like executing a news search on their server, but the results would be returned to my aggregate in RSS XML so it can skip stuff I already read.

New web address for newsbot

[ppz003]

http://www.msnoogle.com

We tell you what's going on, and you will believe...

Re:horrible

[burns210]

funny, but his question still stands... Microsoft is an 'evolution' company, apple is an 'innovation' company.

Micrsoft, 9/10s of the time, has crap versions of there product for the first 1 or 2 releases... They don't rewrite, they just keep selling and keep improving... Look at Office. It wasn't great(read, all that usable) in its early version, but they kept revising it and eventually it gained the critical mass... Windows, first 3(!) versions of Windows shouldn't have been released to the public, but 3.11 came around, and it was entirely horrible.

Apple, they innovate. They are more likely to have an amazing first version of what they release... (save OS X, but that project was so huge they couldn't AFFORD to have it be initially what 10.1 or 10.2 is, an OS is an evolution-based product by design). iPod, Keynote. iPod set the gold standard for mp3 players on its first version. Keynote: amazing presentation software, clean, super easy... but where is v2?

Microsoft: Find 'perfection' through revision, they may not be best first, but there product have the weight and time behind them to eventrually be feature for feature superior(security not with standing).

Apple: Determine 'perfection' prior to ever showing it to the public. They may not be the biggest, but a first version Apple product is generally equal to a second or third version third-party product in design and features(and you pay for it!).

What a surprise...

[GFLPraxis]

All the text renders a bit off in FireFox...Wow, I never would have thought Microsoft would stoop so low to make other browsers view their page incorrectly! Not...


And guess what, it's not even properly coded!
Take a look!

Positive angle

[Inda]

It found 20 stories less than a week old for my home town in the UK. 90% of the stories have been in the local papers over the weekend so they were not new to me. The other 10% made for an interesting read.

The graphical layout needs work and the front page seemed to be filled with US centric stories.

Right, I've seen enough, back to buying the local papers.

Re:Positive angle

[figleaf]

Seems like that ther are different sites for different markets

http://uk.newsbot.msn.com/ for news from UK Papers

http://newsbot.msn.com/ for news from US News
http://ch.newsbot.msn.com/ Swiss German
http://de.newsbot.msn.com/ German
http://es.newsbot.msn.com/ for Spain
http://fr.be.newsbot.msn.com/ Belgium
http://fr.ch.newsbot.msn.com/ Swiss French
http://fr.newsbot.msn.com/ French
http://id.newsbot.msn.com/ Indonesian
http://ie.newsbot.msn.com/ Irish
http://in.newsbot.msn.com/ for India.
http://it.newsbot.msn.com/ Italian News
http://latam.newsbot.msn.com/ Latin America
http://latino.newsbot.msn.com/ US Spanish
http://my.newsbot.msn.com/ Malaysian
http://ph.newsbot.msn.com/ Philippines
http://sg.newsbot.msn.com/ Singapore
http://za.newsbot.msn.com/ South African

MS announces Dotdotbackslash

[dpbsmith]

This just in. Microsoft has announced a beta version of a revolutionary new news aggregation service to be called "Dotdotbackslash." Unlike automatic services such as Google News, this one relies on the human judgements of hundreds of Microsoft MVPs to locate and make available the most relevant information needed for IT managers.

Slogan: "News for PHBs--Words that Buzz"

HTML Source

[digitalgimpus]

Anyone see that HTML source?

Doesn't look real Microsoft like.

More stylesheeting, and more XML-like than normal (though still missing a doctype).

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

Freaky.

Perhaps outsourcing is making Microsoft move like tar (rather than a rock) towards web-standards?

Re:Digester

[Stokey]

It was done, but for the life of me I can't remember a link. It was a Slashdot story as well. The software drew various coloured bars in your browser window representing the number of articles about a given topic and hence its 'importance'. Each bar was labelled and a hyperlink so it would take you to the story. It was a very clever piece of software. OK, maybe not quite what you wanted but it gave you that "what's important" view instantly.

Someone else out there got a link to it?

the beta of this has been up for some time

[jamner]

This article was posted back in Nov of '03. go figure.

For Interesting Results

[DarKnyht]

Try "Microsoft Sucks" in their beta and on the Google News search. Interesting enough, there are only two articles from MSN's search. Both are critism light, while Google News comes back with articles from Linuxworld, Slashdot, etc.

I think I will stick with Google News for now. At least it is not obviously spinning responses for the home team. I.E. the fact that the lead article today in Tech as about Google being shut down by a virus yesterday.

Re:Ahh, why not. It's Tuesday.

[gosand]

Whinging" is a totally valid word; it's just not used in America. Because, you know, English was around far, far longer than your pitiful country.

Absolutely. But for you to use a word that is not used in America (technically the United States of America - just calling it America is kind of ignorant) is sort of a faux pas on your part. It is a British word, so why would you use it when composing a post towards Americans? It doesn't show that you have a better vocabulary, just a different one. Whooptie doo.

The fact that you spent so long replying says it all, really. You just can't accept that there are major flaws in your country. You're told at school that America is great, the govt. tells you that America is great, and you want to believe that America is great.

And how would you know what they tell us in school? I can accept the flaws of my country, but it sounds like *someone* may be a little jealous. Otherwise, why would you spend the time verbally attacking the USA? Upset that you can't win a Tour de France?

Well, you need a change. Go and live in Switzerland or Sweden for five years, and take note of the high standard of living, low crime rate, intelligent people and general good quality of society. THEN make your opinion up about America.

Umm, that would give me a better opinion of Switzerland or Sweden, not the USA. (oops, there is your faux pas again) Perhaps you should come live here for 5 years in order to get a more accurate opinion of this country.

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[Madmonky1]

Or maybe it's because there's a lot more anti-ms news on the internet then anti-linux.

Huh

[LafinJack]

And in other similar to Google news...

i've been trying to do the same thing

[Fo0eY]

I've been building my own news aggregate too

same sort of idea, let the user see what they want, do some searching and browsing by category

i really want to do something like slashdot does and let you pick the channels that show up by default, but I just haven't gotten there yet

anyways, it's at http://fooey.net/NewsArchives/

only problem is the stupid thing is too addicting, and I end up spending WAY too much time reading the hundreds upon hundreds of articles scrolling through it every day

I see the slashbots have already affected it...

[jrumney]

The top two in the most popular list right now are dupes.

Re:Digester

[kindofblue]

Maybe Newsmap is what you mean. (See a post above)

Just a hint of bias, maybe?

[E-Sabbath]

I rather like how they have http://g.msn.com/0PNENUS/1?http://c.moreover.com/c lick/here.pl?z181268067&z=50237909 an article saying Google's IPO is too high on their anti-google newsbot.

Uh, gee...

[mcc]

Go to Google News, what do you get? A nice, spaced out, clear interface, search box clearly located, the categories clearly separated and the source for each article clearly marked.

Go to this MSN thing, what do you get..? ... A HUGE MSNBC logo, links to the rest of MSNBC scattered everywhere, a big MSNBC navbar on the left, and the actual news squeezed into the right, huddled together in a claustrophobic manner that almost hurts to look at, with the cites for each article tiny and easy to overlook at the end of each blurb.

You know what? For the moment, I don't care whose news aggregation algorithm is better. Even if I wasn't a rabid MS-boycotting "fanboy" I'd stay far away from this MSNBC thing, because (1) I find it rather unacceptable that the page layout seems almost to be presenting all of this as MSNBC content rather than what it is, news aggregation and (2) Google offers an easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to use site layout and design.

As usual, not only does MS feel compelled to do "whatever their competitors are doing", but when they do it they do it in a self-serving and shoddy manner.

www.customscoop.com

[djhertz]

This company has been doing it for a while. I have done some work for them, and have been impressed with what you get out of it.

http://www.customscoop.com

Thats 40% less than Topix.net and Yahoo News

[AltoidsSuck]

Each crawls over 7000 sources.

Topix.net also classifies all the news into 150,000 categories including 30,000 local pages with every city and town in the US.

Both Topix.net and Yahoo News have RSS/XML feeds as well.

Microsoft is using moreover.com to supply its news (As mentioned in the Mercury News Merc Article)

-AS

Re:Will we see a bias? Yes.

[drawfour]

I did. The 14th link is exactly that. Interestingly, the 8th article is about how Microsoft could embrace Linux. Meanwhile, the first link is about Linux gaining steam in China. I don't see anything slanted there. All the other articles (by title) do not seem to be pro-Microsoft.

Was I the only one....

[Door-opening Fascist]

....who read the head line as "Microsoft Plans News Aggrevator"?

Uglified by NBC

[LPetrazickis]

I checked one the international feeds -- the UK one -- and it's much less fugly. Still nowhere near as good as Google News Canada, but at least it's not eye-tearingly bad.

NBC appears to be source of the horrifying bad taste.

Bad, really bad!

[mscalora]

Oh my, that's bad. They have turned on the fire hose of DHTML/Shockwave ad-in-the-way-of-what-you-are-trying-to-read ads. Every one has a different way to turn it off so you have to hunt around for it each time. That's sad, really sad.

-Mike

Beta?

[LS]

When did Microsoft start publishing sites with "Beta" in the masthead? Come on, we know you are ripping off Google, but have a little shame and try not to make it so obvious!

LS

You know, I am just not going to support this.

[PotatoHead]

I don't care how good it is. When Microsoft actually steps up and builds something new that people really want, then maybe.

This is just a 'me too' entry that will, sadly, get some share because these kinds of things always do.

Nothing to see here, move along...

Confusion and comparisons of MSN Newsbot

[sanspeak]

People are getting more voracious for news these days. To satisfy the online news appetitie there are several sites scuh as Google News, Yahoo News, Newstrove, Moreover News Services , Topix.net and now MSN with their News Bot. Microsoft has just launched the beta test of Newsbot, a customized search-driven news . MSN News Bot offers personalization by searching on topics, and the service suggests stories based on what visitors have previously read.

But I find Google News more usefriendly and systematic, why doesn't Microsoft employ some good usability expert who can enlighten them on inetrface designing.

I compared MSN and Google News by searching for India on both MSN Newsbot & Google News and found that on Newsbot results obtained were containing mostly yesterdays Criket Match headlines, whereas the google had identified them to be same and related, And arranged the other related news links below the the first result itself instead of showing different criket headlines.

Right now I cannot see the advantage of a search history on MSN but I do see the advantage of finding the related stories covered by different news sources. Is history really so useful ? , 'cos mostly people will be using one or two words to make the searches and not some complex string and may be they would be using the same search words daily. But on the other side the collections of history links would be a sure advantage for some people who might be drilling for something more specfic or 'hard to find info / not so populated topic' and trying different combinations.

The the advantage of MSN Newsbot over Google News is that Newsbot has more sections and topics in the navigation and makes use of Java Scripts so that you can navigate the respective sections > subsections > and related headlines just over the roll of your mouse.

One thing leaves me confusing , what does Microsoft wants to become, it is confused about its own identity or doing some sourch searching.
- Is there a need for Microsoft to become the next google ?
- Is Microsoft really seeing a great opportunity in News and Search Engines market ?
- Or simply it doesn't have anything else to do ? Microsoft has started a online mag slate and is now thinking of wiping it off. Why it doesn't concentrate on Browser Wars and try to give some peace to the exisitng users of Internet Explorer who are under constant threat. Microsoft seems to be concentrating on Mass or larger share of consumer market, even its patents are also very pathetic. With the kind of cash it has, it should now support real technological inventions or innovations.

And last but not the least I hate both of them for not providing the syndication feature through RSS.

Also posted on my blog http://sanspeak.blogspot.com/2004/07/msn-news-bot- google-news-comparison.html

But why stop there?

[secbrid]

Microsoft has already shown they are the kings of user interfaces and windows slickness. They could not only build office applications that run on windows they could completely overtake the windows side of linux. Its no sweat for microsoft to abandon their shoddy kernel, no one cares about it anyway, people just want a familiar bunch of windows to click on and their application to work. By doing realtively little microsoft can open up an entire new market using their competition as another medium to plug their product. KDE and Gnome are the only real competition that windows has and for a relatively cheap price microsoft could sell just the windows enviroment that would be running on a stable, secure linux kernel and charge enough to make it worth it for them and their customers. Whats more with the size of the company and the amount of developers that they have to throw at the open source code they could have major implications towards the general direction that it goes. Just think in the future you could find yourself running a windows for linux hybrid envoriment and playing games on a directX for linux port!

Re:Digester

[Stokey]

Tidy!

Cheers man.