news
Communicate
How Do You Get Your News?
6:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | With the multitude of competing mediums these days, it’s easy to pick and choose your information inputs. Newspapers, television, RSS, Twitter—how do you mix and pick your news sources? More »
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Feedmil Digs Deep To Find Interesting Content
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Feedmil is a topic-focused feed search engine that includes news, blogs, microblogs, audio and video casts, and discussion forums in its search to bring new and different material to your daily RSS diet. More »
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FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Syncs To Google Reader
10:37PM Kevin Purdy | Windows: The Big Showdown between Google Reader’s web-based convenience and FeedDemon’s speedy, customisable client may become moot. The latest FeedDemon beta now supports synchronising with Google Reader, giving RSS addicts the best of both worlds. More »
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Google News Timeline Is A Slick Headline Skimmer
11:05PM Kevin Purdy | Want to track a topic across the web’s news sources from the last few years, the last few months, or since yesterday morning? A new Google Labs tool provides an easy-to-navigate headline timeline. More »
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | A brief follow-up to our report last week that Australians are multi-media gluttons and we spend more time using the Internet than watching TV. Not surprisingly, that kind of news isn’t very welcome if you run a TV channel, so perhaps it’s no surprise that rival research firm Roy Morgan quickly followed up with a study suggesting the opposite. The Australian’s Amanda Meade reports the study found the average Australian watches 21.5 hours of TV a week, but only spends 10.7 hours using the Internet. Again, though, those figures haven’t been broken down usefully — do those 21.5 hours include some time watching Channel BT? (We were going to illustrate this piece with the much-discussed Freeview sendup video, but it’s been pulled, possibly because of the legal action hinted at in the Australian article. Bah humbug!)
TV or the net: whose research do you believe? [The Australian]
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What Wins: TV Or The Internet?
9:00AM Angus Kidman | A brief follow-up to our report last week that Australians are multi-media gluttons and we spend more time using the Internet than watching TV. Not surprisingly, that kind of news isn’t very welcome if you run a TV channel, so perhaps it’s no surprise that rival research firm Roy Morgan quickly followed up with a study suggesting the opposite. The Australian’s Amanda Meade reports the study found the average Australian watches 21.5 hours of TV a week, but only spends 10.7 hours using the Internet. Again, though, those figures haven’t been broken down usefully — do those 21.5 hours include some time watching Channel BT? (We were going to illustrate this piece with the much-discussed Freeview sendup video, but it’s been pulled, possibly because of the legal action hinted at in the Australian article. Bah humbug!)
TV or the net: whose research do you believe? [The Australian]
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Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | It’s no surprise that Australians are consuming more media in the Internet age: after all, there’s so much more to choose from. Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson at the Courier Mail reports that a Nielsen Online study found the average Australian now spends a total of 89.2 hours a week consuming media in all forms. The Internet leads the charge, accounting for 16.1 hours. If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot of waking hours, you’d be right. I suspect that’s partly because people will often multitask (the study found almost half of us listen to the radio while surfing the Web), but also because trying to divide these activities up is a bit pointless. If you’re watching TV or reading a newspaper online, does that count as Internet hours, TV hours or newspaper hours? And who really has time to count anyway?
Australians now spend much more time online [Courier Mail]
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Aussies Are Multi-Tasking Media Gluttons
9:00AM Angus Kidman | It’s no surprise that Australians are consuming more media in the Internet age: after all, there’s so much more to choose from. Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson at the Courier Mail reports that a Nielsen Online study found the average Australian now spends a total of 89.2 hours a week consuming media in all forms. The Internet leads the charge, accounting for 16.1 hours. If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot of waking hours, you’d be right. I suspect that’s partly because people will often multitask (the study found almost half of us listen to the radio while surfing the Web), but also because trying to divide these activities up is a bit pointless. If you’re watching TV or reading a newspaper online, does that count as Internet hours, TV hours or newspaper hours? And who really has time to count anyway?
Australians now spend much more time online [Courier Mail]
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Money
10:00AM Angus Kidman | We’re constantly being told that newspaper audiences are shifting from print to online, so it’s no surprise that publishers are trying to hook university students — who may be as poor as church mice now but who are likely to earn a decent sum in the future — as early as possible. Both Fairfax (which publishes The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) and News Limited (which publishes The Australian) are offering ludicrous on-campus discounts for newspapers ($30 or $40 respectively for the academic year). You have to be willing to pick up the weekday papers on campus, but at these prices, that’s not much of a sacrifice.
Both deals via OzBargain
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Score Cheap Newspapers (If You’re A Student)
10:00AM Angus Kidman | We’re constantly being told that newspaper audiences are shifting from print to online, so it’s no surprise that publishers are trying to hook university students — who may be as poor as church mice now but who are likely to earn a decent sum in the future — as early as possible. Both Fairfax (which publishes The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) and News Limited (which publishes The Australian) are offering ludicrous on-campus discounts for newspapers ($30 or $40 respectively for the academic year). You have to be willing to pick up the weekday papers on campus, but at these prices, that’s not much of a sacrifice.
Both deals via OzBargain
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Communicate
TweetNews Ranks News Stories By Twitter Links
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Noting that breaking news stories move a lot faster through Twitter than aggregation sites like Google/Yahoo News and Digg, a Yahoo BOSS engineer created a news search tool that ranks based on Twitter links. TweetNews keeps an eye on Yahoo News and compares its headlines with which news stories are culling links on Twitter updates. A story’s popularity amongst the tweeting masses will push it up farther on TweetNews. There’s no landing page full of links, though, just search functionality. You can see the Twitter updates each result is pulling from in a drop-down box, and the absolutely minimal site loads seriously fast. TweetNews is free, no sign-up required, and a decent addition to any news-watcher’s arsenal—especially those who like to be really, really up-to-date on what’s happening. TweetNews [via TG Daily] More »
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IceRocket Big Buzz Puts Web’s Reaction On One Page
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Search site IceRocket gives near-real-time results from the web, blogs, Twitter, news sites, images, and videos (phew), but its Big Buzz feature conveniently mashes it all onto one page. For those “What’s going on?” moments—such as when, say, a plane crashes into the Hudson River—it’s a great spot to get a quick scan of what’s going on, and what’s being said, on one page. IceRocket’s advanced preferences open up some results-cropping tools. For those looking for a serious bathing in information, you can also grab an RSS feed from your search results. IceRocket is free to use. IceRocket Big Buzz [via Micro Persuasion] More »
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12:00PM Angus Kidman | The resolute failure of 3D experiments like Google Lively doesn’t seem to dissuade people from trying to force a 3D interface onto a 2D screen. Telstra has just joined the ranks by offering a “3D video wall” option for its BigPond News service. To access the 3D service, you need the Cooliris plug-in (which works with Firefox, IE and Safari, but no Linux options), after which you can scroll round a wall of news stories and choose what you want to read. Beyond the headline, however, you still get returned to the existing page, which makes for a jarring navigational experience. Existing Telstra customers (who won’t have it counted against their cap) might find it an interesting diversion, but beyond that, a standard news site still seems more useful (and less bandwidth-greedy) to me.
BigPond News
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Telstra Experiments With 3D News Site
12:00PM Angus Kidman | The resolute failure of 3D experiments like Google Lively doesn’t seem to dissuade people from trying to force a 3D interface onto a 2D screen. Telstra has just joined the ranks by offering a “3D video wall” option for its BigPond News service. To access the 3D service, you need the Cooliris plug-in (which works with Firefox, IE and Safari, but no Linux options), after which you can scroll round a wall of news stories and choose what you want to read. Beyond the headline, however, you still get returned to the existing page, which makes for a jarring navigational experience. Existing Telstra customers (who won’t have it counted against their cap) might find it an interesting diversion, but beyond that, a standard news site still seems more useful (and less bandwidth-greedy) to me.
BigPond News
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