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Ex-Google News, Bing Engineers Set Out To Build ‘Newspaper Of The Future’

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Re: Ex-Google News, Bing Engineers Set Out To Build ‘Newspaper Of The Future’

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say I understand why some people would consider RSS feeds to be too complex. There really are only two operations that you have to know how to do: 1) subscribe to a feed you like (so you like this web page? click the rss button in the url bar.) 2) Read their feeds, which basically consists of just scrolling down a page full of articles. Sure, there are lots of other things you can do with RSS, but when it com…

RSS readers suck. I've signed up for a abandoned Google Reader at least three times. Here's why: 1. I have maybe 20 or so sites I like to follow. 2. Adding all these into Google reader takes me 20-25 minutes or so. It's annoying. 3. Once I add them in, Google reader starts filling itself up with all their posts. 4. Suddenly I'm faced with two things: a. A rapidly growing number of unread posts I'm supposed to deal wi…

I share this sentiment towards RSS readers to some extent. I've done a similar signup-giveup dance with Google Reader several times. It is all the work it adds to my day that I dislike. I've tried desktop RSS readers too, with the same result. It gets harder to go back after a while too - I can almost feel the stress increase when I am trying to use an RSS reader again.

I've often felt that something like the "River of News"[1] notion that Dave Winer likes to talk about would work really well, I wonder if there are any public services that behave in that manner.

The basic idea is:

1) No read/unread counts. 2) No bold-ing/un-bolding of stuff I have or have not read. 3) No emphasis on grouping by site - should work out of the box as a single stream of posts to any of the sites I am interested in. 4) Subscribe via single-click bookmarklet, ala Instapaper's Read Later bookmarklet.

1: http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/riverOfNews

Re: Ex-Google News, Bing Engineers Set Out To Build ‘Newspaper Of The Future’

#42
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS readers suck. I've signed up for a abandoned Google Reader at least three times. Here's why: 1. I have maybe 20 or so sites I like to follow. 2. Adding all these into Google reader takes me 20-25 minutes or so. It's annoying. 3. Once I add them in, Google reader starts filling itself up with all their posts. 4. Suddenly I'm faced with two things: a. A rapidly growing number of unread posts I'm supposed to deal wi…

I share this sentiment towards RSS readers to some extent. I've done a similar signup-giveup dance with Google Reader several times. It is all the work it adds to my day that I dislike. I've tried desktop RSS readers too, with the same result. It gets harder to go back after a while too - I can almost feel the stress increase when I am trying to use an RSS reader again. I've often felt that something like the "River…

I do admit, having high unread counts ticks me off. I wouldn't mind seeing that go. but I try to keep my feeds small so I only get a small stream of content that is all important to me, instead of a firehose of worthless stuff.

Re: Ex-Google News, Bing Engineers Set Out To Build ‘Newspaper Of The Future’

#43
There has never been and never will be a computer algorithm that can take the place of a good editor. Period, cannot be done but it won't stop the clueless from trying.

For example I may not wish to ever see stories about say Britnney Spears but I guarantee if she dies from an overdose tomorrow I will want to know it.

Re: Ex-Google News, Bing Engineers Set Out To Build ‘Newspaper Of The Future’

#44
post #8

The thing about technological progress is that the replacement is never just "the old thing, only on computers". When people in the 90s wrote about the Internet and the Digital Library, quite a lot of them were envisioning something like Google Books, which is just a collection of books, only online! What actually happened was Wikipedia. (And a lot of other stuff, all of which further proves my point, but Wikipedia i…

"... Nobody in the 90s but the wildest visionaries saw Wikipedia coming ..."

I bet Ward Cunningham did ~ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ward_Cunningh... It's reported he even toyed with patenting the idea behind the Wiki in '96 ~ http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3648131

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