Why the newspaper still beats the Amazon Kindle

Why the newspaper still beats the Amazon Kindle

Sadly: “But both versions of the Kindle are missing what makes print newspapers such a perfect delivery vehicle for news: graphic design.” Hopefully they can improve on this in time.

Kindle Content Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Kindle Content Design

As I’ve argued before, I think newspapers could go far on the Kindle (and other such devices). There are some good guidelines here for design, but I wonder how they’d change between the Kindle and the DX? With the DX you can more closely copy the print layout. Would that be better?

"Daily Show" comics venture to Iraq - Yahoo! News

“Daily Show” comics venture to Iraq - Yahoo! News

The palpable unease in reporting this story is interesting. It's okay for the Daily Show to make fun of the news at home, but everyone's a little too nervous that they're going to upset anyone over there. The troops are real people with senses of humor, t

Google News Blog: Perspectives about the news from people in the news

Google News Blog: Perspectives about the news from people in the news

Intriguing idea. It occurs to me that Google could use OpenID to make sure the people are who they say they are.

CNN to Release Presidential Debate Footage without Copyright Restrictions

CNN to release presidential debate footage without copyright restrictions

Great news. Allows the public to use footage of debates without having to get permission from CNN.

Summary of Findings: Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions

Summary of Findings: Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions

People today are about as aware of current affairs as they were 20 years ago. Viewers of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were the most knowledgeable.

AP: We Ignored Paris Hilton

AP: We ignored Paris Hilton

A few weeks ago the Associated Press decided to simply not run any stories about Paris Hilton for a week and see if anyone would notice her absence.

A Short Note About Newsvine

I got into the beta for Newsvine last night. I haven’t played with it too much, but if nothing else it does present a nicer layout than most other wire-service news portals. I’ll leave the full Web 2.0 rant to Zeldman, but I find their use of RSS a little redundant. Sure, I can subscribe to all my news using their feeds, but isn’t Newsvine itself an aggregator? Isn’t it a bit like subscribing to a feed of a feed? Don’t get me wrong, I love my feeds, but I think they have their place. Lately, if it’s a site I’m just going to visit every day anyway, I’ve started unsubscribing to its feed and putting it into my “dailies” folder.

Anyway, I’ll be playing around with Newsvine over the next week or so. If you want an invitation, comment here and I’ll toss you one. If you want to read a preview of it, there’s a good write-up here.

Breaking News?

While I’m on the topic of the news, I’d like to point out the lax editorial standard for what constitutes “breaking news” on CNN’s homepage. Today, a bright red banner reads, President Bush’s policy in Iraq is not working, the Iraq Study Group said in releasing its long-awaited report. Important? Yes. Breaking? No. Over Thanksgiving my dad said a friend of his had been in the gym on the treadmill, when the news flashed a “breaking news” bulletin. A few people gathered around the TV, fearing there had been a major disaster somewhere. Instead, the “news” was about a celebrity’s divorce filings.

See also:

1. The Boy Who Cried Wolf
2. Breaking News is Broken

Weblogs and the News

I’ve been following the story of James Kim and his family over the past week. CNN has a nice little box at the top of their developing stories that gives you the newest bullet points on a story, which made me remember something I had started thinking about when I was waiting to see if Jim Webb would beat George Allen last month: the use of reverse chronological posts, i.e., the weblog format.

When I know nothing about a given topic, which is most of the time regarding breaking news, I want a well-written article that tells me what’s going on. But when I’m following a developing story, I just want to be able to log in and read the latest, since I already know all the backstory that makes up the bulk of the article. News sites could easily include a sidebar in every story with time-stamped information, so that I could tell at a glance if anything new had happened since the last time I checked in on a story. From there, it wouldn’t be hard to offer individual RSS feeds for that category of stories, with links to the full articles for further reading.

See also: A fundamental way news sites need to change.

What would CNN's website look like if you removed everything but the real news?

What would CNN’s website look like if you removed everything but the real news?

I don’t totally agree here. Entertainment news is pretty important to our culture, as are sports, but yeah, I’d love to see real stories.

A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change

A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change

Great ideas here. It’d be neat to be able to, say, search a map for my address and see all the news happening near home.

Google Finance

Google Finance

Very nice stock quotes with news integration, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Newsvine Launches

Newsvine Launches

I’ve been using Newsvine for a few weeks. It’s a good wire service with lots of features I don’t really use.

Newsvine - Vatican Paper Hits 'Intelligent Design'

Newsvine - Vatican Paper Hits ‘Intelligent Design’

Newsvine - Seeding the Vine. First Look!

Newsvine - Seeding the Vine. First Look!

Looks neat, and could be a good way to make money if you really want to do some reporting, or want to write a column.

Jon Stewart Slated to Host Academy Awards

Jon Stewart Slated to Host Academy Awards

D.C. Council Approves Smoking Ban

D.C. Council Approves Smoking Ban

Okay, so I just have to avoid going out for another year, and then I’ll be able to do it without second-hand smoking.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 100 things we didn't know this time last year

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 100 things we didn’t know this time last year

Lots of good stuff here.

CNN.com - Court rejects 'intelligent design' in class - Dec 20, 2005

CNN.com - Court rejects ‘intelligent design’ in class - Dec 20, 2005

Man, all sorts of good news to round out an otherwise messy year.