Google has often been seen as a competitor to traditional newspapers, but the search giant is now teaming up with two major papers for a new experiment in presenting news online.
Google announced on Wednesday "Living Stories," an experimental new feature designed to deliver news stories, updates, editorials, and multimedia focusing on specific topics, all on one single Web page.
Each Living Story, whether it's on health care, global warming, or the war in Afghanistan, has a permanent URL that you can follow. That page displays everything from headlines to summaries to in-depth articles on that subject. By clicking on the various links on each Living Story page, you can read the articles, view photos, watch videos, and access a time line for an historical view of the topic. As new stories and updates are posted, you can read them on the same page.
The Living Story keeps track of your activity, so it alerts you to updates you haven't yet seen and grays out or collapses older news that you may have already read. You can also subscribe to e-mail updates and RSS feeds of your favorite stories, so you don't need to return to the Living Story page to grab the latest news.
Since Living Stories is a new experiment in the Google Labs sandbox, the number of topics is limited. Google is working with just two media partners to start--The New York Times and The Washington Post. The newspapers decide which topics appear on their own Living Story pages. But Google has plans to develop open-source tools so other outlets can create their own Living Stories. If the concept takes off, it might prove a money maker for other publishers, according to the Times, as they could sell ads on their own pages.
Newspapers have been hit by declining business as more people have flocked to the Web to grab their daily or hourly news fix. In some corners, Google has been seen as the enemy to traditional print outlets. Media maven and Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch has even accused the search giant of stealing his content and threatened to remove his sites from Google listings.
Responding to such concerns, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently wrote an editorial in the Journal in which he argued that his company could actually help newspapers boost their business. And in the face of lower revenues, many news outlets have started to embrace the Web rather than compete with it.
From its perspective, The New York Times seems optimistic that the Living Stories experiment could lead to bigger and better things.
"It's an experiment with a different way of telling stories," said Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, in a statement. "I think in it, you can see the germ of something quite interesting."
So many blogs, so little time. If you feel like the blogosphere is passing you by, check out Regator, a new app that culls the Web's best posts.
An offshoot of the eponymous Web service, Regator (agg-regator, get it?) differs from traditional RSS feed readers in that it doesn't rely on you to choose the blogs you want to follow.
Instead, the app employs "qualified human editors" to bring you "topical, well-written, frequently updated, and relevant" posts. In other words, the cream of the blogosphere crop, at least according to these guys.
You can browse the posts any number of ways, starting with "popular" items from the Web at large or looking within a couple dozen specific topics (from Academics to "What the?").
Regator also provides a full directory of more than 500 topics, so you can really drill into the areas that interest you most. (Beekeeping? Check. Museums? Check.)
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Facebook has partnered with liberal news outlet The Huffington Post in an officially sanctioned implementation of its Facebook Connect product.
Called HuffPost Social News, the new site aggregates Huffington Post stories that a given user's Facebook friends have recommended or commented on, and shares the user's Huffington Post activity on their Facebook profiles in turn.
It's a concept fairly similar to TimesPeople, the sharing service that The New York Times launched last year.
"Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news--both the stories they love and the stories they hate--with friends," Eric Hippeau, Huffington Post's still-new CEO, said in a release. "It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends."
This use of Facebook Connect is unusual because Facebook typically does not undertake many official partnerships with third-party sites when it comes to its developer APIs. And this particular partnership may come under some scrutiny: The Huffington Post, which began as a political news site and has since expanded into many other areas of coverage, is controversial--not only in terms of its partisan leanings (it was co-founded by left-of-center pundit Arianna Huffington) but because the majority of its bloggers are unpaid and because some critics have argued it relies too heavily on third-party content that it doesn't always pay for.
But the social network's executives appear to have given The Huffington Post their stamp of approval, at least when it comes to the site's model for news consumption.
"The Huffington Post has led a revolution in how people discover and consume news," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, herself a veteran of the political world, said in a release. "With the integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News is now leading the way to make news even more of a social experience, giving people new ways to share and filter news and current events through their networks of friends on Facebook."
Facebook likely hopes that this partnership will be a sort of example to the news industry--which is obviously looking for some new ideas right now--and that other media outlets will, in turn, build similar products.
The newspaper industry has been hit hard by the weak economy. Advertising revenue is down. Layoffs are frequent. And even the most-trusted papers are facing possible closure. So, the industry has tried to find unique ways to help improve business.
Perhaps that's why it shouldn't surprise us that The New York Post announced Monday that it has inked a deal with SpectrumDNA to bring the company's Addictionary software-as-a-service platform to the newspaper's Web site.
Addictionary allows Web site visitors to create words and assign definitions to those words. People can rate and comment on words created by others.
According to a statement, both SpectrumDNA and the Post believe the Addictionary engine will help the newspaper achieve more "viral and word-of-mouth distribution." They also said they believe it could increase advertising revenue.
A definition made possible by Addictionary.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)The Addictionary platform has enjoyed some success. Its SaaS platform is currently being used by "The Office" Web page, Comedy Central, and Dictionary.com.
Once The New York Post's Addictionary gets going, the companies plan to release a variety of derivative products, including greeting cards, calendars, games, and books featuring the top-rated words created by the Post's community.
Is Addictionary the Trojan horse the newspaper industry has needed? We'll find out in August when the Post deploys the new feature.
After watching other photo hosts create simple tools for Twitter users to post pictures, Flickr has finally wised up and pushed out its own solution. By divining the popular photo service with access to your Twitter stream, you can now post individual shots there right from Flickr, complete with a fancy Flic.kr shortened URL.
Instead of adding a new button to do this, Flickr users simply set up Twitter as if they were adding another blog to post photos to. Clicking the "blog this" button takes you to a page where you can type in the remaining 116 characters, and see the shortened Flickr URL which is added to the end of the Tweet. You also get a special variation of your Flickr posting e-mail address that directs e-mailed shots directly to your Twitter stream at the same time they're hosted on Flickr.
Flickr users can now Twitter straight from Flickr without any hacks or third-party add-ons.
(Credit: CNET)Flickr still has a ways to go before its a part of third-party Twitter apps. Part of the problem is that most competing services, like YFrog, and TwitPic, don't require users to create accounts. In many cases they simply create them automatically based on Twitter credentials. Flickr, on the other hand, is a service you have to sign up for in order to use. I'm not so sure it would be willing to lift that restriction just for Twitter users, but it would certainly be a great way to woo new ones.
See also:
TwitPickr cross-posts TwitPic images to Flickr
Tweet your favorite Flickr shots with Autopostr
You might be using Expedia or Orbitz to plan your vacation (if you're taking one) this year, but there are some lesser-known travel search sites that could help you plan a better and less expensive trip. These sites will still help you plan your vacation, but they do it in a slightly different way that should help you save some cash.
Fly.com
Fly.com was recently acquired by travel media firm, TravelZoo. Since then, the site has become a great place to find cheap flights across the U.S.
Unlike Expedia, Orbitz, Cheaptickets, and countless other popular travel search sites, Fly.com doesn't require you to buy airline tickets on its pages. Once you input where you're leaving from and where you're going, the site finds flights from the airlines themselves. After you pick your flight, Fly.com redirects you to the airline's site where the fares might be a little cheaper. You can buy the flight directly from the airline.
Fly.com adds another layer to flight search by redirecting you to a different site. But by simultaneously searching through all the airlines and eliminating any hidden fees imposed by travel search sites, you should be able to save money with each trip by using Fly.com. I have.
Hotelicopter
Hotelicopter searches and aggregates results from sites like Hotels.com and Priceline to find you the best deals on both domestic and international hotels.
Hotelicopter should save you some money, since it finds results from over 30 different travel planning sites across the Web. Once you input a destination city, the site returns a list of hotels in that area. You can get information about the hotels and pick which place is best for you. Like Fly.com, Hotelicopter doesn't handle the booking itself, so it will redirect you to the site with the best deal.
Hotelicopter might not be as convenient as services where you can find and book hotels without leaving the site, but in this economy, saving every last dime counts. And based on my experience with the service, Hotelicopter will help you find you a great deal. It's a fine alternative to more popular travel search sites.
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Travel search site Kayak.com announced Tuesday that it has launched what it calls the "most comprehensive hotel information site on the Web": TravelPost.com. The site provides reviews, content, and rates on more than 140,000 hotels from 200 travel sites. Its content includes descriptions, photos, maps, and reviews from travelers and professionals, as well as integration with Kayak.com's rate search.
Beyond that, TravelPost features Google Maps integration to allow users to search for geographic details about possible vacation spots and its filtering and sorting tools let users narrow their preferences by star rating, property type, brand, and location.
Perhaps most compelling, users will also be able to filter their results based on the reviewer, so they can find similar people to get the most relevant review. Reviewers can be searched for by age, gender, budget, purpose of stay, and which sites they reviewed a hotel on. The site is live now.
Zemanta, a tool that allows users to add relevant content to blog posts and e-mails, announced Tuesday that it has added Last.fm content to its platform. According to the company, bloggers who use the Zemanta tool will be able to add contextual links relevant to Last.fm's tracks, videos, and artist pages. Bloggers using the Zemanta application will start writing about a song, album, or artist, and the tool will instantly pull in the relevant information from Last.fm. (Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET News.) The new feature is available now.
Online advertising firm Linkstorm announced recently that it has raised $2.8 million from a variety of angel investors. According to the company, it plans to use the funding to expand its sales and improve its platform.
Online casual game provider Three Melons has raised $600,000 in funding from Santander Bank, the company announced Tuesday. According to the firm, it will use the capital to pay for its expenses and invest in growth. No further details of the funding round were disclosed.
(Credit:
Vayyoo)
vPost, which launched this week for BlackBerrys running version 4.5 and 4.6*, is a free-to-try application that aggregates your multimedia into one interface and makes it easier to share and post online. (*A version for the Storm is due later this month.) You'll be able to attach up to five separate media files--up to 1.5 MB--including audio and video clips, photos, text notes, and files stored on your internal memory or SD card.
At a lifetime purchase of about $10, the application seems a bit steep for something that can be accomplished, albeit slower, using the regular BlackBerry functions. Still, for serious sharing and social networking junkies, the app offers more than a modicum of convenience. For instance, you can set up one "Favorite" e-mail address to turn into a one-click routing destination (including the CC and BCC lines, you can squeeze out three.) You'll also be able to e-mail your media and notes to any number of recipients, including the pals in your address book and the upload e-mail addresses for social networks such as Facebook, Picasa, Blogger, Utterli, Wordpress, and so on.
vPost shows promise, but we'd like easier ways to post to social networks than adding them into the address book.
(Credit: Vayyoo)If it seems a little ridiculous to pay for the privilege of e-mailing your own multimedia to your own social networks instead of uploading them through a convenient widget, you're not alone, but vPost's publisher Vayyoo tells us that customizable widgets are on the agenda for a future release. However, even without them, vPost isn't devoid of helpful tools. Its integration with the BlackBerry's calendar and e-mail make it possible to open a vPost to respond to a meeting or reply to an e-mail in your in-box using a voice note or images. In addition, if your BlackBerry has GPS capabilities, you'll be able to let others chart and map your location--potentially useful if you're posting from a party.
While the integration, hot keys, and convenience of being able to create and share multimedia clips in one place speak well of the new app, vPost's drawbacks make me hesitant to recommend it for all but the most hardcore media-sharers and bloggers. Still, this is one app we'll keep an eye on as it develops.
Download vPost's two-week trial over-the-air.
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The Washington Post and job search engine Simply Hired announced Friday that they have inked a deal that will allow Washingtonpost.com users to access Simply Hired's database of listings on the publication's site. According to the companies, Simply Hired's listings will be placed in widgets on news story pages. Most of the listings will be in Washington, D.C., but there will be some national listings, too.
In what may be a strategy Hulu might pursue with more shows going forward, the company announced Friday that it has posted answers from Joss Wheldon, the creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Firefly," "Dr. Horrible," and "Dollhouse" to questions posed by fans of the shows. According to Hulu, more than 200 people asked Wheldon questions and he chose from the bunch and answered some on the company's blog.
Conversation tracking service BackType announced Friday that it closed a seed round of funding that netted the company $300,000. The round was led by True Ventures. Along with its funding announcement, the company also launched two new services Friday. The first, BackType Connect, will allow users to enter a blog post URL and the service will find all conversations about that post from across the Web. The company also launched a new site called BackTweets, which lets users search for Twitter conversations concerning a particular keyword or online article. Both features are free and available now.
In a turn of events unlike anything you've seen, Delfina Pizza, a restaurant in San Francisco, Calif., has printed T-shirts for their employees to wear with comments made on Yelp about how bad the restaurant is. Each shirt features a different review by patrons who helped give Delfina its one-star review on the popular local reviews site.
TongXue, a rapidly-growing Chinese social network, has raised $6 million in a round of funding that was led by Tano Capital. TongXue, which means "classmates," was originally founded in 2006 by a Harvard Ph.D. student as a community for Chinese students studying in the U.S. According to the company, it now has over 10 million registered users and it will use the funding to invest in "product innovation and brand promotion."
This past weekend's announcement by Facebook that the company would be opening up its APIs to allow for posting of notes, videos, and more has left some companies scrambling to add new functionality to existing applications. Below we've highlighted a handful of the ones that let you post to Facebook from a desktop client, be it standalone or something that plugs into your browser.
We've talked to the people at each one to see when you should be expecting to be able to make use of the new API in each app:
"Blogo already supports Facebook status updates through its integration with Ping.fm," says Benjamin Jackson, Blogo's technical director. "As for more robust Facebook integration, you can be absolutely certain that we'll be running to integrate this as quickly as possible. We'll be shooting to send out a beta next week."
"We are excited about the new direction Facebook is going in and strongly believe that the browser will play a critical role in providing social context by way of encouraging conversations to occur around external links (i.e., blogs, videos, articles, photographs, etc.)" says Dan Burkhart, Flock's VP of marketing and business development. "Flock is working to build functionality into the browser that will extend and enhance this ability for users to share a broad variety of sites and web services with their friends."
Friendbar creator Edo Segal says "we love the fact that facebook [is] opening up more services," and "definitely plan to include support for these API's in upcoming versions." Segal also says he wants a higher level of access to that data. "For example, to be able to post comments to users photos and status updates, and to directly send a Facebook message to a user via the API."
Posting of notes through Ping.fm is up and running. "We're still assembling some other ideas on how to use their new features," says founder and CEO Sean McCullough. Worth a mention is that many of the services on this list go through Ping.fm to re-syndicate user messages.
"Sociagami has always been committed to deep integration with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and we will definitely be taking advantage of the new API features in 2.0," says Charlie Robbins, director of social network integration for Sociagami. "Unfortunately, using an API-based implementation will mean that Sociagami 2.0 will not have the messaging and wall posting features that came with 1.0."
Working on it for an upcoming build. "The video part will be an important one!" says Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic which acquired/owns Twhirl. The latest version, which was released on Monday, added in Ping.fm support, letting you cross post messages to your Facebook profile.
"Yes, we are actively working on implementing the new Facebook API and rolling it out ASAP," says Regan Fletcher, Yoono's VP of business development. Our overall objective really is to maximize our use of the Facebook API in order to allow users who have added Facebook to Yoono to have the best possible experience and functionality."
"It does look like some of this new functionality is available via the REST API, which we use and we can run FQL queries (which we do)," says AlertThingy creator Clive Howard. "We will be revisiting this prior to the next version and if we can do, then I'm sure it will make it into 3.x." Version 3 of AlertThingy was released on Monday morning.
Apps that we pinged but have not yet responded: Feedalizr, Moodswing/blast, and Gwibber. We'll update this post if we hear back.
