Webware

The algorithmically generated tech news aggregator Techmeme now has a human editor, Techmeme founder and developer Gabe Rivera revealed in a blog post today. The new overload to the Techmeme robots: Megan McCarthy, formerly of Valleywag and Wired.com.

I talked with McCarthy about her new role. She describes her job as, "really, just to see all the things coming in, to make sure everything is current and relevant." The site posts about 140 to 150 items a day, she said. Her role is to make sure that erroneous items that the Techmeme algorithm flags aren't posted, that items are grouped appropriately, and that the most important items receive the highest billing on the site. The service still uses algorithms and link analysis to cluster stories, but McCarthy now has the final say and can modify the site's default story lineup and clustering.

Techmeme also runs the sites WeSmirch, Memeorandum, and BallBug. McCarthy will focus on Techmeme, but said she may also work on the other sites from time to time.

Although Techmeme is a 24-hour-a-day site, McCarthy can't, of course, work 24-7. "I don't think they'll be able to tell when I'm working or not," she said, modestly. "It should be pretty seamless. I started a few weeks ago and a lot of people haven't noticed."

To be fair to McCarthy, however, people have noticed. Here in the CNET newsroom, one writer told me recently she's seen that Techmeme story clusters now more frequently have the story that first covered a new item at the top of the group--not just the most-linked-to item.

In his post announcing the new hire, Rivera said, "Writers and publicists unhappy with the headlines on Techmeme are encouraged to transfer the bulk of their resentment to Megan." For this, McCarthy's experience at Valleywag will serve her well: "I have a very good background in people being dissatisfied with my work. I got a lot more complaints at Valleywag than commendations." Regarding her new role, she says, "I want to hear feedback. Any feedback helps."

In addition to the complaints, McCarthy will also be on the receiving end of entreaties from bloggers who want their stories placed well on the site. "It will be a welcome change," McCarthy says, "to the running and hiding that I used to do at Valleywag. I'm looking forward to when people have breaking stories that they shoot me an e-mail."

Asked if McCarthy has a mission to promote certain blogs or types of blogs (for example, up-and-coming blogs over mainstream sources), she said, "I'll take things on a post-by-post basis. If someone has something unique and special that adds to the story that's being told, you can make a case of wanting to expose that to more people."

Although McCarthy may be an open book when it comes to motivations and editorial perspective, Techmeme's algorithms remain proprietary. Asked if there was a move to make the code that places stories on the site more open, McCarthy demurred. "That would be something for Gabe," she said.

Early Wednesday, Google updated its blog search tool to track news stories as they pop up on various blogs. Like Google News, the company is taking a product that began as something for search and making it a destination of its own.

What's different in blog search compared with news is that the front page shows how many outlets wrote about a story and how old in a very different manner. In blog search's case the number of sources is given a far higher prominence, and instead of tracking how fresh a story is, Google has chosen to display how long it's had the limelight.

Competing services like Techmeme, Blogrunner, and Tailrank (currently down) have offered a similar bird's eye view of the news, however, none of those have had the benefit of being tied into a company that maintains such a large search index and proprietary crawling system. While Google Blog search will largely remain a place for people to search for subjects as they appear on blogs, this new system will make it far easier to pick up on how newsy an item is when searching for it.

In addition to this basic clustering page, when users dig in deeper to see all the coverage they can now see by time how a story has been picked up. Each meme is tracked in 16-hour stints, with a chart to match. The stories will also be reordered as they gain prominence or interest--a system that Google has not disclosed the inner workings of.

For now the new blog search home page is limited to English, although a post on the Official Google Blog says other languages will be pushed out in the next few months.

If you don't have content to populate your site, OneSpot has some for you. The Austin-based start-up joins a host of other companies in the business of delivering contextual links for publishers. OneSpot CEO Matt Cohen makes the claim that OneSpot "democratizes vertical or affinity publishing, helping anyone find, select, and deliver links to the best content on the Web."

OneSpot sifts through more than 200,000 RSS feeds to make content selections. Users provide the system with a set of sample sites, and OneSpot identifies related feeds, looking at link overlaps, Cohen told me. The selected content can be delivered via Web pages, widgets or through e-mail newsletters. For example, OneSpot can supply a retailer with relevant content links for a newsletter to customers.

In addition, OneSpot offers its customers Digg-style ratings and discussion pages. Fees are based on the number of topics, page views, or e-mails, Cohen said.

OneSpot currently has less than 20 customers. For example,TheRoot, a Washington Post site for African-Americans, uses OneSpot to fill out the site with a relevant content feed.

OneSpot has many competitors that offer some form of contextual content aggregation. They include memetrackers, such Techmeme, Reddit, and Blogrunner; keyword-oriented and linguistic analysis-based services that provide related content such as Sphere, Inform, and Smartbrief; and feed aggregators such as NewsGator and Netvibes.

Cohen believes that the link structure approach, similar to what Google does for search, to selecting sources and content provides the best results. But the choice of content aggregation service will depend on what a publisher wants to accomplish. Other services could be better at finding timely content related to a particular article, rather than for a topic area. OneSpot is currently angel funded, and plans to raise an A series round this summer, Cohen said.

If you're familiar with Techmeme, Tailrank, and other services that track content trends on the Web, you should bookmark a new service called Twitlinks. It uses a hand-picked selection of technology personalities on Twitter and compiles their tweets into a news feed. If there are news links or stories that come out of those tweets, they'll end up on the front page, in a reverse chronological view mere minutes after they're posted.

The list of tweet sources is made public, and currently comes in at just fewer than 100 bloggers, entrepreneurs, and personalities including my boss Rafe, as well as the Webware and CNET News.com RSS Twitterbots. There will be more added in the future, as decided by creator Gary Brewer, whose other works include WebsiteValued and Global Surfari--a mash-up that helps you find good surf spots.

Beside the core site there's also a mobile version of Twitlinks and a Google gadget. Power users can also add the RSS feed to be kept up-to-date with the latest items--although as a word to the wise, new items come in every five minutes, so you'd be wise to set up a filter or special folder in your RSS reader.

I expect to see other similar spinoff sites make their way if Twitlinks evolves into a network. The same technique could be used to emulate the experience for entertainment and celebrity gossip, as well as world and local news depending on the community of focused Twitterers out there. Essentially the site is just rebranding the experience of creating a Twitter account and befriending a group of people, but part of the reason for visiting is the curatorship--something you don't always get from other Twitter popularity services such as Twitterholic or Tweetmeme, which is far less focused.

Related: Crowdstatus lets you micromanage your Twitter buddies

[via ReadWriteWeb]

In baseball, everyone loves to complain about the Yankees. Unless they're from New York. Here in San Francisco, everyone complains about the cost of living and the bad schools. These are safe complaints, and it's fun to preach to the choir.

The blogosphere also has its approved pinatas. Beef about patent trolls, Vista, or the RIAA, and the current in the Techmeme river will pull you along. Me-too posts will pop up and link to you. You'll feel good. You'll be important.

So in the spirit of sharing (and Techmeme baiting), Webware.com has compiled a list of fail-proof topics that will get the punditocracy buzzing along with you:

Blogosphere pinatas

• Patents, Patent trolls, and the Patent office: The unholy cabal of anti-innovation. They're all bad, very bad. (And very good for raising the ire of readers.)
• Vista: For the damage it's done to Microsoft and the PC industry in general, and for being a generally lame OS. Be sure to add that the Mac OS is better.
• ValleyWag: Mean-spirited, not safe for work, obsessive. Give them back what they give out, why don't you? They have it coming.
• The MPAA and the RIAA: For locking down your media and hauling your dead grandma off to jail.
• Comcast: Because it's great at blocking the BitTorrent traffic that would otherwise feed a steady stream of ripped-off content to you, and for delivering multiple installation trucks to your house all at once, each with a tech who can't fix your connection. Update: Wait, they listen? Great! Complain some more!
• The Cellular carriers: For walling in the garden and then planting only dwarf persimmon trees in it.
• Mainstream media: For its cluelessness. Also, with envy, for the salaries it pays real journalists, and for not working its reporters to death.
• Facebook: Spam spam spam spam. Zuck, what were you thinking with that Beacon stuff? And all those obnoxious spammy apps?
• Guy Kawasaki: His teeth are too white and he builds cheap Web 2.0 apps (Truemors, Alltop) and then brags about it. Plus, now he has to buy his Macs at the store like the rest of us. Let's poke him until he cries.
• CNET: The new media company that became old media. Our investors hate us, and Michael Arrington is going to carve us up with a spoon. We clearly don't get it. Everyone join in the fun!

So there you go. Get that comment river running. And before you tackle our list of safe targets, as a public service to you, we present this even-more-useful list of topics you must avoid:

Blogosphere sacred cows

• Apple: Ooh, so pretty. And innovative, and Steve Jobs is a god. You do not say something bad about Apple, especially not about Apple's closed ecosystem, and most especially not in front of the open-source wonks who love Apple anyway.
• Google: Possibly the most useful resource on the Web. Also the scariest company there is. Do not criticize or the Google bot (or its PR machine) will stomp you. They know where you live.
• Linux: Cheap, open, and everywhere. And too damn hard to use for anyone with a life. But never, ever point this out. Linux = great. Microsoft = bad. No need for details.
• TechCrunch: The Engadget of Web 2.0. While I'm at it, might as well add that you should avoid criticizing Engadget. Both sites have rabid followings, are edited by inexplicably angry men, and will cease linking to you if look at them funny.
• Firefox: All hail the open-source browser! Those crashes and general slowness? That's the price of progress, son.

Of course, if you really want people to read your stuff, do the exact opposite of what we're suggesting here: Poke at the sacred cows. Sing the praises of demons. Everyone will hate you. And isn't it better to be hated by everyone than loved by just a very few?

Web news aggregator Naubo might be one of the unholiest unions I've ever seen. It could also be one of the best places for news junkies to get their fix. The service is an unabashed visual copycat of Google News, serving up the latest stories from around the Web. The difference is that it has a technology slant, covering news on big companies like Apple and Microsoft, along with gadgets, Linux, and hardware.

What makes Naubo interesting is that it uses this same spidering technology for blog chatter as it does for regular news, so like Techmeme you get big stories coupled together with other blogs that have chimed in. The listing of blogs is put together by humans, who maintain the collective. However that doesn't mean they're the ones to pick out the stories--that's done entirely through an automated system.

To go along with these two news trackers is a user-maintained news service called Buzz (not to be confused with Yahoo's Buzz), that lets users submit and vote stories up and down in an identical fashion to Reddit. The stories are seeded by users just like any other social news service, and the highest ranking stories get promoted to the top of the page and in each of their respective categories a little bit like social news service Mixx. Users of Digg won't be too enamored with the submission process though, you have to fill in each field manually--including the image that goes with it. In comparison, submitting a story to Digg will crawl the story link you give it and fill in all that information for you.

I found a lot of overlap between Naubo, Google News, and Techmeme. The one thing that wasn't getting a lot of play on Naubo is the buzz site. Most stories only had three or four votes before being promoted, so I'd be interested to see how its algorithm scales up with more users. I'm also a little worried about the service getting sued for its design choice, which I assume will get a new coat of paint at the first sign of Google's legal department.

Update: I got a ping from Paul Almeida who runs Naubo. Almeida says the site is getting a new look in two weeks based on user feedback.

Mashable is writing about a new news site called Newspond. Their "about" page boasts that the site is "the most advanced news site on the planet." That's certainly a big statement to make, given the competition that already exists. Its main function is similar to that of Techmeme, with some of the social features of Digg thrown in for good measure.

At first glance, it appears that the content that is floating to the top of Newspond is very different to what is atop Techmeme right now. It's not clear whether this is due to the sources that Newspond is drawing on, or due to differences in their algorithms. I tend to think that it is a result of the algorithm, since many of the sources for popular articles are comparable on both sites. I think that the content needs to be tweaked, although it may improve as the site matures.

As far as functionality and look goes, Newspond is at the top of the heap. Everything on the site moves so smoothly, and there are beautiful gradients and rounded corners as far as the eye can see. Comments slide out and boxes light up all over the site. The design of Newspond should be the poster child for Web 2.0.

I don't think that Newspond will dethrone Techmeme or Digg anytime soon, but they are definitely a start-up to keep your eye on. If any of their claims end up coming to fruition, we will be hearing from them a lot.

One thing Pownce is still missing after opening up earlier this week is a public feed. While the creators have hand-picked a selection of mostly San Francisco socialites for everyone to view on its main page, there's not a simple way to pull together some of the hottest activity on the site short of tapping into the API. An enterprising developer Bryan Pearson has done just that, creating Powncememe, a site that rates people's Pownce messages based on various characteristics including user ratings, the number of recipients, and replies from other users. When combined it's a fun way to see what's interesting on the service as a whole, including pictures and links.

Compared to TechMeme, it's certainly not as advanced, as it won't clump together similar stories or show which Powncer has the most clout, but it's not a bad place to find new people to befriend. Pearson is still fine-tuning the algorithm, and Version 2.0, which is due out later this year, is being written entirely in Ruby on Rails.

See also: RandomPownce

A lot of folks would like a memetracker for Google Reader (myself included), and if the big G's not going to provide one, it's up to third-party developers to attempt to build their own. One of the results has been ReadBurner, a service that tries to determine what items (not just feeds) are gaining in popularity at any given time based on the number of people sharing them on Google Reader.

Think of it like Del.icio.us, but instead of browser plug-ins or voting from the content originator's site, the system picks up on items automatically--that is, assuming people are clicking the little share button underneath a story in Reader. There's even an upcoming section for the items that aren't quite "front page" material but are picking up steam. The hope is that you'll be able to find some great, read-worthy content and keep an eye on the "pulse" of what people are sharing.

It's something Google could do a whole lot better if it harnessed every single publicly shared item and put them on a page. ReadBurner's solution it to gather its shared items from several hundred (hand-picked) influential Google Reader users in order to show what they think is noteworthy, similar to what TechMeme does with news stories.

In a chat with Mashable, developer Alexander Marktl noted that the site's in its very beginnings and open to change. If I could suggest anything it would be community inclusion--the option to add your own shared feed into the mix. Right now ReadBurner's working off its own list (which is currently down), that leans towards technology aficionados. It would be nice to be able to add your own to feel as if you're a part of it.

[via Mashable]