B. Mann Consulting

Hot Off Your News Clicking Service

By Leslie Walker, Washington Post, Thursday, March 6 2003

News junkies like me are constantly on the prowl for an electronic Einstein to sniff out the nuggets we crave online, sparing us the daily hassle of clicking to so many Web sites.

I wish I could report I've found my electronic Einstein. As near as I can tell, such a digital prodigy is still just a glimmer in the brains of inventors.

But I have been testing a promising new breed of software that is helping me on the daily news hunt. Called "news readers," these programs fetch headlines and site summaries from hundreds of Web sites I preselect and present all the information in one spot on my computer desktop. They are a more dynamic, powerful version of the digital newspapers that first appeared online in the mid-1990s and eventually took hold at portals, allowing you to create your own personal Web page.

These are more like a souped-up table of contents to all your favorite Web sites, with long lists of headlines that are automatically updated at regular intervals. You scan the headlines and click for more information on those that interest you.

While still young and raw, the technology behind news-reader software represents another way to navigate the Web besides search engines, portals and bookmarks -- the dominant ways we get around today. Most news readers have been created by tiny companies or lone programmers. While some are free, others cost $25 to $40.

One I've been testing and like is NewzCrawler, which charges $25 after a free trial. NewzCrawler strips each Web site to a list of headlines (bye-bye, flashy ads) and displays them in a box at the upper right of a screen resembling Outlook, the e-mail program. Click on any headline and the full story or a summary appears in the panel below.

In a vertical box on the left is a customizable "channel" guide listing all the news sources you've preselected. Your choices include mainstream news outlets like the BBC-TV and Christian Science Monitor along with thousands of niche publications and Web logs written by individuals.

There are dozens of similar products -- FeedReader, Headline Viewer and Radio UserLand are three I tested -- but the thing to understand is they are all made possible by a special data format allowing them to automatically "read" content summaries at participating Web sites. Sites that conform to this standard often display special icons or buttons to let visitors know their content can be scanned by news-readers (also known as news aggregators). The actual technology isn't complicated; it merely involves adding a small file to a Web site summarizing its contents.

You might be wondering, if news-readers are so great, why doesn't Microsoft Corp. or America Online build one directly into its Internet software? The answer involves money. After all, the mission of big portals like AOL, Yahoo and MSN is to aggregate content and charge users -- either through subscriptions or advertising -- for the convenience of getting loads of material in one spot. Portals typically negotiate business relationships with content providers and share revenue.

By contrast, news-readers let you build your own portal for free, without AOL or Yahoo getting in the middle and deciding which Web sources you can view. They let you choose from many more news sources than portals do. Some will also "scrape" content from Web sites that aren't formatted for easy scanning.

It's worth noting, though, that news-reader software was born at Netscape, the company that created the first commercial Web browser and eventually was bought by AOL. In 1999 Netscape programmers wrote the XML code for news-readers (they called it RSS for "rich site summary") as part of a plan to offer users a personalized portal called "My Netscape." Netscape's business plan zigged and zagged, and the company never wound up using the format to create open content channels as originally planned.

But after Netscape publicly released its RSS code, other programmers tweaked it and incorporated it into their own publishing tools. As a result, the format gradually evolved into an open, ad-hoc standard for distributing content online. Any Web site can elect to use it for distribution and any person can choose to receive content through it provided they have the right tools. While most content sent through RSS is free, some premium channels also are popping up.

The system appeals particularly to folks who write Web logs, because it gives them a way to attract readers. All they have to do is get their Web site listed in the RSS directories that most news-reader programs display to their users. Examples are www.newsisfree.com, www.syndic8.com and www.Moreover.com.

Syndic8.com creator Jeff Barr, an ex-Microsoft employee who now works as a software developer for Amazon.com, contends this open method of distributing content online is "at the leading edge of a very slow, steady revolution." The technology will become ubiquitous, he says, once more people realize that the reading mode "is less distracting than the traditional method of browsing through Web site after Web site."

I agree, though it's far from clear how or when the tools will reach the mass market. For now, most of them are still too crude and complicated for the average computer user.

And as useful as they are, I see news-readers as adjuncts, not replacements, for Web browsers. The idea isn't to divert you from Web sites as much as to let you scan more sites. I suspect we will always want to take the time to visit our favorite Web sites.

For one thing, stripping the graphics and layout from sites and extracting just headlines means you lose important visual cues about what the site creators deemed most important. For that reason alone, I'm not ready to give up my bookmarks. I still visit more than a dozen sites daily, then let news-readers scan another 100 to 200 and present me with headlines.

On the other hand, these automated news tools are still in their infancy and are getting smarter every year. AmphetaDesk creator Kevin Hemenway says he has a long list of improvements he wants to make, starting with letting his users rate and recommend sites. I expect the next generation of automated news-readers will allow far more sophisticated filtering to present headlines that match our personal information cravings.

Maybe then I'll find my electronic Einstein.

Leslie Walker's e-mail address is walkerl@washpost.com.

On The Web:
These are examples of "news reader" software programs, which collect headlines and site summaries from Web sites you pre-select and display them in one convenient location on your computer desktop.

Free Readers:-