News

Google News Timeline is an interesting tool where you can browse historical events, current news, movie releases and other kinds of information in a graphical timeline.For instance, you can search for TIME magazine on Google News Timeline and it will display a list of all issues of the magazine in chronological order (arranged by date). Click any of the TIME covers to open the corresponding issue on the TIME website.For researching current events, you can select News from the drop-down, type in some topic (e.g. india-pakistan) and hit go to read what the mainstream media has published about the topics in all these years. The Google News Timeline format is pretty handy for navigating blog archives but the problem is that it is a search based service.For instance, you have to search for something like "labnol" or "digital inspiration" to add this blog to the Google timeline but if the blog’s RSS feed is not available in Google’s index or if Google has trouble locating a feed … [Read more...] about How to Use Google News Timeline as an RSS Reader

The BBC News website at news.bbc.co.uk sports a very elegant design, the choice of colors and typefaces makes the text very readable and you don’t have to register to read a news story on the BBC website.There’s however another reason why I love the BBC website – it actively links to external websites so readers can explore the viewpoints of other publications who have covered the same story.*See the regions highlighted in yellow and red below: For instance, the recent Moscow Subway story on BBC News carries links to the official website of Moscow Metro plus there are links to the news websites of Reuters, Guardian, and other sites who have also covered the same story.These are little things but just make the story a lot more useful for readers. And while most news websites shy away from linking to external sites, BBC is setting up a good example here for others to imitate. … [Read more...] about Why I Love the BBC News Website

This is a current snapshot of the Techmeme home page. Stories highlighted in red are about Apple (iPad, iPad Apps  and  iPhone OS 4.0) , green color is for Google (Buzz privacy) while stories about Microsoft (‘Pink’ event and Zune HD) are in blue.There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the iPad but too much Apple news can cause iFatigue.Also see: Techmeme Time-Lapse Movie … [Read more...] about Techmeme = 70% Apple News

Let’s say a company is about to launch a new product and, as is the standard practice, they have pre-briefed a select group of media outlets and bloggers about the news under an embargo.The launch date is close and writers have already prepared their news stories so that they can push them as soon as embargo is lifted. And then something strange happens – one media outlet publishes the story ahead of time thus breaking the embargo – intentionally or unintentionally.Broken embargoes can be frustrating for journalists and bloggers as the limelight (and page views) often shifts to the news publication who did not honor the embargo.If a news embargo gets broken, here’s a simple way that may help you determine the name of the publication that broke it in the first place.Step 1. Go to google.com/realtime and type a few words from the story headline.Step 2. In the timeline, click an area where you have minimal number of tweets around that story. That’s when the … [Read more...] about Find Who Broke the News (or the Embargo) First?

The English language edition of Google News aggregates stories from 5,000+ sources and this list includes both traditional news sites as well as blogs. Some of press release distribution websites, PRWeb for example, is also indexed in Google News as as a source.Would you like to filter out blogs and press releases from Google News and limit yourself to seeing news that’s written by ‘real’ journalists of the mainstream media? Well now you can. Google News has added a new setting to let you set your preferences for Blogs and Press Releases. You may either hide these categories completely from Google News or limit their overall visibility so that you see more news from traditional news sites and less from blogs.Google News also makes it possible for you to remove one or more news sources from your Google News page. Under the “No news from” text box, type the source name and it will show you a drop-down with a list of matching name. Select the one you want to … [Read more...] about Hide Blogs and Press Releases from Google News

The English language edition of Google News tracks stories from over 4,500 sites – which includes both news websites and blogs – but that is all we know. Google has never published a full list of their news sources and the only way to determine if a website is indexed in Google News or not is through the source operator.The names of Google News sources are however no longer a secret now.Krishna Bharat, who is the brain behind Google News, recently released a massive list of 150,000+ news articles around Osama Bin Laden that were published on news web sites around the world after the Abbottabad operation was over.Since almost every publisher had covered the bin Laden story around that time, it is extremely likely that Bharat’s list contains the URLs of more or less every news source that is crawled by Google News.Thus, here’s a complete list of Google News Sources as available in Bharat’s list.You may download this data as a text file for offline parsing … [Read more...] about Which Sites and Blogs are Indexed by Google News?

Want to know when any of your friends, family members and business contacts are quoted in newspapers or get mentioned on one of the popular blogs?You are probably aware of email alerting services called Google Alerts that will send an update as soon as Google discovers a news story or blog post that mentions your friend. You just have to create an “as-it-happens” email alert with your friend’s name and Google will help you keep a tab on him or her.That’s one of the ways but wouldn’t it be nice if you could setup this kind of news monitoring for a bigger group of people – like your entire friends list? Meet newsly, an online tool that will automatically discover news articles and blogs that mention any of your friends. It gets you friends list from Facebook and LinkedIn and lets you know when they’re mentioned in news article or blog posts.Newsly create a Pinterest style grid with all the mentions but you can also choose to receive alerts by … [Read more...] about Get Alerts When People You Know Appear in News Stories

Here are some of the best photos blogs and websites where you can view pictures related to current events captured by professional photo journalists. Not all news sites in this list provide photo feeds so make sure you bookmark them. The Big Picture – This is a photo blog of Boston Globe that highlights current events and lesser-known news stories through some awesome high-resolution pictures that are sourced from AP, Reuters Pictures, Getty Images, NASA, and others private photographers.Check some breathtaking pictures from Ramadan, India,  Soldiers in Afghanistan or the Brazilian tribes that were discovered by the outside world only recently. Time Photo Essays – Each photo essay includes a collection of 10-12 pictures that narrate (in text and sometimes audio) a story related to current news events. The pictures are also published in the TIME magazine.Check these photo essays about floods in India, Olympic Games, Georgia conflict or learn how to make your own photo … [Read more...] about The Best Photo Websites for News in Pictures

Twitter is the best source of news on the Internet but there’s no denying the fact that Twitter is both complex and confusing for most people. Unlike a newspaper website where you just open the homepage and read the news, you need to follow the right set of people before understanding the true potential of Twitter.Twitter realises this problem and they are now trying to capture the audience that stumble upon Twitter just for catching up with news but may not be inclined to traverse the complex universe of Likes and RTs. Now when you open the Twitter homepage, they will show you to the top tweets across various categories without requiring you to sign up. The tweets are grouped in categories like Sports, Music, Food, etc. so it is easier than ever before to follow your interests. The Twitter news feeds surface the top tweets for any category but, for some unknown reason, they have made these available only to users who are not logged into Twitter.Not a problem as here are direct … [Read more...] about The Directory of Twitter News Feeds