Monday, March 09, 2009

Google News, um News(?)

Like a few million other people, I use the Google news reader for a quick review of what's happening. I've noticed that it isn't real up-to-date, since the same story usually appears on it for quite a while, sometimes several days, but it's a starting point. Today there was this,
stocks fall
So when I clicked on it the link led to this,
stocks rise
I think I need a different news reader. Any suggestions?
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:02 AM

    I always look at the headlines that come up when I log on, provided by my ISP, earthlink.net. I also check out the headlines provided by yahoo.com when I check e-mail.
    But my favorite is an RSS feed of BBC headlines, I also have their news index page book-marked.

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  2. Anonymous10:02 PM

    Fascinating. Exactly how long have we been dependent on a computer to read and summarize today's headlines for us? Would this even have been an issue ten years ago? Two answers:
    1) It isn't how well the horse sings, it is the fact that the horse sings at all.
    2) We all need to hang on to our newspaper subscriptions before it is too late. It is way too easy to game Google News. What is showing up there is not necessarily news - it is the result of a set of algorithms that attempt to determine what we find important at a given point in time. If you understand those algorithms, as entirely too many have demonstrated that they already do, it is possible to make anything you want "news".

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