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Posts Tagged ‘News Aggregator’

Why No Love for the Universal Inbox?

A couple of years ago, the new launch from Webwalks, a universal inbox, news aggregator, password manager and kitchen sink-type application would have caught my eye. I’d rush out to try it, merging my multiple accounts under its one roof then wait to see how well my life improved, how much time I saved. But today, I’m more ambivalent about these sorts of applications. The concept of a universal inbox for tracking everything under the sun now leaves me cold.

That’s not to say that merging of social networks with the inbox in and of itself is a bad idea – Google Buzz, Xobni, and Outlook’s new social connector all offer innovative ways to augment the inbox experience. But there’s a key difference between these apps and those promising a “universal inbox” – they come to you, in the inbox you already know and love.

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The Sad State of the Universal Inbox

The idea of a universal inbox is smart. On paper, that is. In our “information overloaded” modern age, messages come at us left and right from multiple email accounts, instant messaging programs, SMS on our mobile phones and from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And yet, none of the “universal inbox” applications have ever really taken off.

We’ve seen some worthy contenders though. Fuser, NutshellMail and Inbox2, for example, all merge messages from multiple platforms into one unified service. The more clever of these programs provide a way to make Facebook the interface you use to check your mail instead of forcing you into some new web service. However, even that option hasn’t attracted a large following.

Inbox2’s Facebook app “emailstream” only has 245 active users. NutshellMail’s does a little better with just over 5400 users. But when you think of the hundreds of millions of registered users on Facebook (400 million at the last count), these numbers aren’t even a drop in a bucket – they’re more like a grain of sand on a long stretch of beach.

The sites’ web destinations do a little better, but only a service called OtherInbox is doing well, with 67,000+ visitors last month. NutshellMail seems to be hanging in there, too – even growing its traffic a bit lately – and yet it attracted just under 24,000 uniques last month (according to Compete – not always the best source of statistics but good enough for this quick glance). An article on Digg’s homepage often get more hits than that! And it’s an understatement to say these numbers fall short of the millions who routinely log into online email accounts from Gmail, Hotmail and the like.

So what’s wrong? Why aren’t these services more popular?

People Want to Use Their Own Inbox, Not Some 3rd-Party Service

The answer to that question has its roots in what people expect from an email application. Email services from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and yes, even AOL, among others are designed from the ground-up to provide that company’s vision of the best messaging experience. The applications are feature-rich with advanced options like POP3 and IMAP support, forwarding, filters, labels, auto-replies, vacation responders, spam filters and more.

Third-party aggregation-type applications don’t always have the same feature set. Plus, they typically have their own very un-email like interface – the applications tend to treat your email like activity streams on a social network, not critical messages that need to be filed, forwarded, replied to, or turned into tasks and calendar appointments. The exception here seems to be OtherInbox – they offer a real inbox complete with calendar tie-ins, stars for saving messages, spam filters and other typical email features. Not surprisingly, they’re the one doing the best out of all the other inbox applications listed here. However, they’re not actually a “universal” inbox. They don’t claim to merge all your messaging services into one – they simply help you better sort and organize your mail. So, really, they don’t count.

Socializing as an Inbox Layer

A better solution to the merging of messaging and social is, interestingly enough, exactly what Google has just launched with Buzz. Sure, that service has gotten off to a rough start with bugs, missing features and of course, the privacy issues, but the concept is solid. In Buzz, social networking becomes an additional layer to your inbox – one click and the display changes to a stream of social activity; click again and you’re back to your email. Important “social” messages (those you created, commented on or liked in Buzz) grab your attention by re-appearing in your inbox proper.

Other companies have similar ideas about socializing email. Xobni, for example, offers a plugin for Outlook that extracts social information about your contacts (among many other things). Microsoft, too, is just now launching its social layer for Outlook – the Social Connector which optionally lets you integrate LinkedIn and soon Facebook and MySpace into your inbox.

These programs all have a better shot at unifying the inbox to create a truly universal email application. They provide you with your “real” inbox and all its features while layering it with a social element. You don’t have to migrate to a new service entirely. Meanwhile the standalone universal inbox applications available today probably won’t last. They would be better off developing their service into a plugin or add-on for the webmail and desktop programs that people use now instead of trying to convince people to start checking their email elsewhere.

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Topicfire Creates Solid Breaking News Twitter Feeds For All Topics

A lot of people use Twitter as a primary way of getting information quickly these days. Accounts such as BreakingNews are hugely popular because they offer up stories to their 1.6 million followers (and even more through retweets) instantaneously. Topicfire, a realtime news aggregator we covered in December is now trying to extend that concept to all different topics.

While there are no shortage of services attempting to leverage Twitter to distill information for different topics, Topicfire’s streams seem pretty solid thanks to the use of their HeatRank technology, which is the same thing that powers Topicfire itself. While there are a few factors that go into HeatRank, the main driving force behind it are comments on stories. If they’re coming in fast enough, the HeatRank will get pushed to 10.

If a story hits 10, it will then get tweeted out automatically to its specific Twitter account with a link to the original story as well as the story’s page on Topicfire. This method of curation ensures that followers won’t get overwhelmed by stories that perhaps aren’t that important.

You can see the full list of the 24 Topicfire accounts here. As you can see, they range from Apple news, to design news, to skiing news, to surfing news (though ski and surf don’t have a ton of news items).

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NewsCred Relaunches, Looks To Become “Ning For Newspapers”

Back in 2008, we wrote about a startup called NewsCred, which looked to help identify the most trustworthy news sources using a combination of community voting and algorithms. That didn’t really take off, so the company is now heading in a new direction: it wants to help users build their own custom online newspapers in a matter of minutes, offering a professional-looking site tailored to include the content you’re interested in. And using NewsCred premium features, you could potentially create a combination news aggregator/opinion site in the same vein as The Huffington Post.

Using the site is simple: you choose the title of your new virtual paper, then specify which topics you’re interested in following. The site includes a number of categories to choose from, including tech and politics, but you can also generate one based on a keyword if you’d like. Once you’ve chosen your topics, NewsCred will generate a virtual newspaper containing the latest stories from each area. Stories are drawn from popular relevant news sites and blogs, and you can specify a RSS feed if it isn’t in the NewsCred directory. Along the left side of the screen is a list of sections that you can jump through, much as you would in a physical paper. There are a handful of sample sites you can test for yourself, like this one on Mobile News, Celebrity Gossip, and Manchester United.

We’ve seen news aggregators before, but NewsCred has a few options that are less common. For one, the site allows you to write editorials, which can be incorporated into the front page (or the topic specific sections). And the site will soon offer a premium version called NewsCred Pro, which is designed to help you further customize and even monetize the papers you’ve built. With NewsCred Pro, you can host your paper at a personal domain, run your own advertising on the page, eliminate NewsCred branding, and further customize the layout and newspaper template. Together, these features could allow you to build a Huffington Post-style news hub, complete with your own opinion pieces, focused on whatever topic you wanted.

NewsCred has done a nice job putting their custom papers together, and most of the site looks very well done (though I did find some poor results as I searched for topics to add). But the new space it is entering is going to be competitive. For one, homepage sites like iGoogle allow users to include news feed widgets. And there are sites that are more directly competitive, like Meehive, the Kosmix-powered custom news site (covered here). That said, NewsCred may be able to build a business helping users build their own niche news portals, the same way Ning appeals to users building custom social networks.

NewsCred closed a seed round of funding last year from private investors in the US, UK, and Switzerland, as well as “one of the large Silicon Valley VC firms” (the company won’t disclose the names of their investors).

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2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day

It’s time for my annual list of technology products that I love and use every day. This is the (wow) fifth year I’ve done this. Here are my previous lists: 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006. The scope of the list has changed over time. In 2006 it was just about websites. Now the list includes other web services, some desktop software and even a few gadgets.

These aren’t necessarily newly launched products (see Daniel Raffel’s post yesterday for a solid list of great new products). This is a simple list of the tech products that are an integral part of my day – work or play. Some have withstood the test of time and I just can’t live without. Others are newcomers that have captured my imagination.

I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them. There are now 24 products on the list.

Just three of these products have been on the list all five years: TechMeme, Skype and Wordpress. As I said last year, TechMeme continues to be the news aggregator I check multiple times per day to keep up on tech news (although Google News is becoming more important over time). Skype is the instant messaging and VoIP platform that I use most often at work and with friends. And Wordpress software powers all of our blogs.

I’ve added 13 new products to last year’s list: Android, Apple Magic Mouse, Dropbox, Evernote, Foursquare/Loopt/Gowalla, Google Docs, Google Voice, Kodak Zi8, MOG, Skitch and Spotify.

I’ve removed seven products from the 2009 list: 1-800-Free-411, Digg, Friendfeed, Google Reader, iPhone, MySpace Music and Zoho.

There are lot of products that I use daily that aren’t on the list for various reasons. My iMac and MacBook Pro and Droid phone, for example, aren’t on the list specifically even though all three products are exceptional. I don’t really have a browser preference, although I suspect Chrome will be on the list next year. And there are lots of websites and services, like Posterous and Amie Street, that I use regularly but just didn’t make my arbitrary cut. We also use Bit.ly extensively on the site for URL shortening, and EventBrite and Amiando for event ticketing.

Here’s my 2010 list of tech products that I love and use every day:

Android

I gave up the iPhone this year and switched to Android mobile phones. First the MyTouch, then the Droid. I’ll soon be upgrading again. What I like best about Android is the deep integration with Google Voice, which I talk about below. These two products go hand in hand.

Animoto

I first put Animoto on the list last year. The service makes beautiful slide shows of photos, and this year they added videos (here’s one I made). Their iPhone application continues to impress. This company is now profitable and my guess is someone like Apple will acquire them in the next year.

Apple Magic Mouse

The Apple Magic Mouse is the best computer pointing device ever made. It functions as a normal mouse but also has multitouch on top. Once you use it you’ll never be happy with an old mouse or touchpad again.

Delicious

Delicious, the social bookmarking workhorse, has been on my list every year except 2007. It’s not perfect but it’s better than anything else out there.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a new addition to the list this year. It’s just dead simple file syncing across all your computers, mobile devices and the cloud. It’s also a great way to privately share big files. Dropbox is now one of my must-have productivity tools. I just wish Google offered something similar so that I could have an integrated dashboard for my Google Docs files and Dropbox stuff.

Evernote

Evernote is also a new addition this year. Like Dropbox it is an amazing productivity tool that lets you capture, organize, and find information across multiple platforms. You can take notes, clip webpages, snap photos using their mobile phones, create to-dos, and record audio. All data is synchronized with the Evernote web service and made available to clients on Windows, Mac, Web, and mobile devices. Additionally, the Evernote web service performs image recognition on all incoming notes, making printed or handwritten text found within images searchable.

Facebook

This is the third year in a row that Facebook has been on the list. Facebook has won the social wars, and even the biggest companies are now surrendering to them. Facebook Connect is turning into the defacto online identity solution for tens of millions of people.

Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla

These three startups (Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla), among others, are battling to control mobile social networking. They all have variations of the check-in model, where users are encouraged to note where they are for their friends to see. Foursquare has all the early adopter momentum, But Loopt has millions of users and Gowalla has a compelling product. All three are likely to win.

Gmail

This is the fourth year in a row for Gmail. It’s the best webmail out there, and I appreciate the free imap support and forwarding. Enough said.

Google Docs

This is a new addition for me this year. I never bothered installing Office on my new laptop, and find that Google Docs has all the functionality I need, plus easy sharing with others and storage in the cloud. I may never install Office again. I previously had Zoho on the list, a competitor, and removed it only because I find that centralizing as many services as possible at Google makes things easier for me as a user.

Google Voice

This has been a big year for Google Voice, previously called Grand Central. The mobile apps let Google Voice completely take over Android phones. I’ve ported my mobile number to Google Voice and now any time someone calls that number I can direct it to any phone I like based on where I am, who’s calling and when. It has changed my life, and I will never use a mobile phone that doesn’t have deep integration with the service.

Hulu

This is the second year in a row for Hulu. I’d love for them to add a paid model and let me watch HBO shows or pay per view new release movies. And I wish they could secure rights to archived libraries of shows, but even as it currently exists, Hulu is a great entertainment service.

Kodak Zi8

This digital video camera beats the pants off the current Flip models. The best feature is the ability to add a microphone. Flip doesn’t have this, and the audio quality is often terrible. The Zi8 is a full generation ahead.

MOG, Pandora and Spotify

MOG and Spotify are new this year. Pandora has been on every year except 2008, and with hindsight I should have added them that year, too. These are three streaming music services that are awesome. MOG, which is $5/month, is the best music experience on the Internet. Spotify, a desktop streaming service that hasn’t launched in the U.S. yet, lacks the radio and social features of MOG but is currently free. And we hear it will launch on a limited basis in the U.S. very shortly. Pandora is still a very cool place to just sign in and listen to music that I love quickly and easily.

Scribd and Docstoc

Scribd and Docstoc, two services that let you upload office files like PDFs and Word documents and then embed them on sites, are very useful to bloggers like us. When we have a document that we want to share with readers, we use one of these services and embed it into the post. Both services were also on the list last year.

Skitch

I’ve been using Skitch for years. It’s Mac software that makes basic image manipulation a breeze – sort of a very light version of Photoshop. For 90% of our images, Skitch works just fine. It’s easy to add text, resize and crop images, etc. And it automatically uploads them to the website for you, too.

Skype

Skype is on the list every year and will probably stay there, even under new management. I’d give up email before I gave up Skype. I use it almost exclusively for instant messaging, and a big percentage of my voice calls are over the service. I love doing video chat with friends oversees, too.

TechMeme

TechMeme is another service that has been on the list all five years. It is the definitely news aggregator for technology news, and a huge asset to our community.

TripIt

TripIt is a simple travel service that is absolutely awesome, and returns to the list this year. You forward confirmation emails from flights, hotels, etc. to the service and it creates an itinerary automatically. You can then access it via a mobile device.

Twitter

Twitter is fast becoming as essential marketing tool for TechCrunch, and I’m addicted to it personally. This is the third year I’ve added Twitter. For mobile use, I love the Seesmic Android application.

Wordpress

All our blogs run on Wordpress’ open source software, and we use other services of the company, Automattic, that runs the project (Akismet for spam, polldaddy for polls). It has been on the list all five years, and we are thankful for such cool, and free, software.

Yammer

Yammer, a Twitter-like service for companies to use internally, won TechCrunch50 in 2008 and is an essential productivity tool at TechCrunch. We long ago moved to the paid version of the service, and we’ve never looked back.

YouTube

This is the fourth year in a row for YouTube. It’s always good for a two minute entertainment diversion from work, and we use it exclusively to host our own video content.

Let me know what services you’d add to your list, or leave off. Each year in the comments I hear about someone’s passion for a new product that I overlooked before, and sometimes they make the list in the following year.

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Thoora Launches Real-Time News Aggregator

News aggregation startup Thoora is celebrating its public release just one day after ReadWriteWeb’s Real-Time Summit. In June, we wrote about the fact that CNN was hours behind Twitter in reporting news from Tehran. As real-time services continue to trump traditional media outlets, companies like Thoora have jumped on the chance to build a better news source. Since Thoora’s recent demo at TC50, reviewers are already questioning whether the company can survive in what is proving to be a crowded space.

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Based out of Toronto, Thoora indexes stories from across the web and categorizes them under 25 verticals including science, technology, video games, mobile, world politics and television. Similar to Techmeme, Thoora aggregates real-time news stories; however, in addition the company also provides an open analysis of real-time trackbacks.

Thoora aggregates interesting posts from a variety of different verticals in what resembles a Digg-like news dashboard. However, instead of displaying the number of in-community “diggs”, Thoora displays “reactions”. Reactions entail the number of news stories, blog posts, tweets and comments that can be linked to a particular story. Stories with the most reactions rise to the top of the list, whereas less popular stories remain lost in the news river ether.

ReadWriteWeb recently recognized Thoora on our top 100 real-time web companies. To check out the service, visit thoora.com.

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Find out if Thoora is the news aggregator you’ve been waiting for (invites)

A newsgathering startup called Thoora unveiled its new news aggregation site at the TechCrunch50 conference yesterday. Boasting that it “tears down the silos between social and traditional media” (a mixed metaphor that gets the idea across), Thoora is taking on Google News and similar sites by collecting traditional news articles, blog posts and tweets on Twitter all on one site.

The Toronto, Canada company is conducting an invite-only beta test right now, but we’ve got 500 invites for VentureBeat readers. Just visit the site, click on “sign up for beta,” and enter the code, “vb4thoora.”

Thoora’s founders say they’ve created a site that gives readers the broadest picture of the news, and of commentary surrounding that news. Stories are clustered and ranked based on the reaction they received, a reaction that’s measured in related posts, comments, and updates. Thoora says that means it’s a more accurate measure of the wisdom of the crowd, compared to Google News’ link analysis (which favors traditional media), or to Techmeme’s combination of links and human editing.

I played with the site this afternoon, and there are some cool features — arrows showing whether a story is becoming more or less popular, a status bar measuring the number of responses and a box where you can see related tweets. Unfortunately for Thoora, I’m pretty satisfied with both Google News and Techmeme, and I didn’t discover any hidden gems of news coverage today that would convince me otherwise. But check it out for yourself.

Thoora has raised $4.1 million from Rogers New Ventures.

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Think You Have a Great News Idea? Knight Foundation Wants to Fund It

The Knight Foundation has announced the launch of its 2009 Knight News Challenge, a contest that will award people with the best ideas for building the future of news media a total $5 million in support. The Challenge is riding high this year on news that a past winner, hyper-local news aggregator Everyblock, was just acquired by MSNBC.

Now in its 4th year, the Knight News Challenge has funded 35 news projects so far. The rules of the contest have changed this year in response to one of the biggest complaints of the past: projects can now be submitted privately to Knight judges and not be exposed to the public at large.

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The way we learn about the world around us is changing fast and radically. We’re sure many of our readers have fantasized about a new type of online news project and we hope you’ll take a shot at the Knight prize.

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SkyGrid Now Appearing On StockTwits For A Real-Time Financial Frenzy

It’s a match made in real-time heaven. StockTwits, a popular site that lets you track real-time discussions about stock information on Twitter, is now featuring a live feed of real-time news provided compliments of SkyGrid, the powerful real-time financial news aggregator.

SkyGrid will now embed a widget on StockTwits pages, showing a stream of incoming news for whatever company you’re currently looking at (you can also see a broader stream of news if you haven’t visited an individual company page). In effect, the site will now let you monitor both the news and the conversation around it in real-time, making the site even more useful for investors. And if you’re only on the lookout for good news (or bad news), you can filter by that too: SkyGrid uses semantic text analysis to determine if each incoming article is deemed positive, negative, or neutral about a given company.

At this point the SkyGrid widget is only available on StockTwits. However, I’d be very surprised if we don’t start seeing it pop up on more publisher sites soon, though it may be some time before anyone is able to grab the widget.

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