In the never ending search for more mixes and matches of blogs, RSS and “real” news come two pretty creative (I think) entries to the tool box in Memeorandum and Newsmap.
Let me just say that Memeorandum, which takes ral headlines and displays them above blogger reactions, is especially interesting to me as it’s the first step down the road of bringing blogs and old media together in the “newfangled news tangle” format. I like having the news next to the views; I only wish there was some way that I could select which news items I’m interested in and the bloggers whose opining I’d like to follow. It’s also another step down the RSS as textbook road that David Warlick had (brought here via Jenny, who wants
David and I to do some brainstorming… another great idea!) I was thinking about how easily teachers could whip up some feeds about current events i.e. the tsunami disaster for example. Glue together a search feed or two from the traditional media, a flickr feed for pictures and some select blogger feeds, throw them onto a public Bloglines account and in no time you have the beginnings of a text that is constantly being updated. (Then have the students pull out the best info into their own Wikipedia type entry, and…)
My head hurts. (But it’s a good pain.)
Now Newsmap is “an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.” At first it seems like just a bunch of colorful headlines from around the world. But the cool thing is you can click through and get views from a variety of countries, putting them side by side, showing how different stories play in different places. It’s along the lines of 10×10 only it’s more text than pictures and it’s much more informational. You can even go back in time to see what what news when and watch how it evolved out of importance. I’m not sure I would use it regularly, but I just like the creativity, the way someone has decided to push the technology into a new area.
Have I mentioned how much fun this is?
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