newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Thursday, April 25, 2013
It's hard to take Vū seriously
Yes, it’s another app — à la Zite and Prismatic — that “gets to know you” so it can bring news stories you like but might have missed. This one is called Vū. That’s right: there’s a line above the “u” so you know how to pronounce it. Or maybe it’s just decoration.
This app stands out from the others with its unabashed eye candy. The headline for every story has a picture in the background. And if no picture is available then there is a nice colour gradient. Now, I like gorgeous design just as much as the next guy, but with a news app you have to walk a fine line. After all, the content is the star of the show and too much glitz can be distracting. Vū comes ever so close to crossing that line.
The app is divided into three sections — My Topics, Trending on Vū and Recommended Reading. I found the stories presented in all three sections to be for the most part quite interesting. There are always at least a few that are worth reading, which is about consistent with my experience with Zite and Prismatic.
Where Vū falls behind is with the limited selection of topics. While Zite and Prismatic are pretty much unlimited in their variety, Vū only has nine. With the others, you can get quite specialized — drilling down to, say, Online Journalism, which is always a popular topic here at newsonaut.
I can kinda overlook that limitation, but what I really can’t tolerate is the Share Your Reaction feature. Choices are Cool, Whoa, Nice, LOL, Sweet and Yikes. Yikes, indeed. The articles and their presentation are worthy of a thinking, intelligent reader — so why the dippy-teen reaction choices? Let’s hope a future upgrade allows users to customize their reactions to something more suitable.
Anyhoo, since Zite, Prismatic and Vū are all free there’s no reason you can’t have all three and switch between them as they strike your fancy. Personally, Zite remains my favorite, with Prismatic a close second. I have a feeling I’ll soon tire of Vū and give it the boot.
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Monday, April 15, 2013
Oh! Newsana, do not wait for me
Apps like Zite and Prismatic offer up a menu of articles based on algorithms that use your reading habits to figure out your interests. As far as I’m concerned, they work great.
But what if it were human beings making the recommendations instead? That’s where Newsana comes in — a recently launched website that promises to “elevate the conversation.”
The site works by having members pitch stories. Other members discuss the stories and vote on them. Those with the most votes are placed in a list of five essential stories, or they win places of honour in categories such as Big Ideas, Human Rights and Social Media. I was pleasantly surprised to find a category for Future of Journalism. These categories, known as topics, are determined by Newsana members.
In addition to ranking stories, members also rank each other. The more successful pitches you have, the more highly you rank. Votes from members with high ranks count for more when determining the success of a pitch. A vote also counts for more if it comes from a member who has joined the topic where the pitch is being made.
It takes a bit a learning curve to figure out how Newsana works, but that might help the site in its quest for elevation. After all, the lazy and the stupid are not likely to apply.
I have not asked to join mainly because I feel that taking part would be more than just a casual commitment. I would feel obligated to pitch stories on a fairly regular basis and to participate in the discussion and voting that follows. Obviously, this is not a passive form of news consumption. Even smart people might find themselves having to overcome a tendency to inertia.
What might convince me, or indeed anyone, to request an invitation is the ability to make a difference in the selection of stories. I was immediately drawn to the Future of Journalism section, but was a little disappointed to discover that I had already discovered and read two of the five top stories elsewhere. The other three look interesting, but it’s possible I could best them with my own pitches.
As far as the reading experience goes, I wish there were a way to put the articles in Pocket or some other read-it-later service. That way I could come back to them when I have more time.
Another letdown is the lack of a mobile version. Newsana on an iPhone looks just like it does on the desktop, except much tinier. There isn’t an app either.
Despite these hesitations, I’m still rooting for Newsana. That’s because it has a value that goes beyond the mere aggregation and curation of articles. The discussion brings a social aspect that can’t be duplicated by an algorithm.
I fear, though, that a certain amount of elitism might creep in after awhile if it hasn’t already. Will Newsana members wind up being a collection of like-minded individuals with a narrow focus on what they deem to be of interest? Or will the scope be broad enough to include a diversity of points of view that would be more likely to create lively debate?
The only way to know for sure would be to seek out an invitation. But I’m not quite there yet.
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Monday, January 7, 2013
Some of these news apps really are disruptive
MediaShift has a list of the most (caution: buzzword ahead) disruptive news apps of 2012.
These apps represent improvements in bulk aggregation, the evolution of the app ecosystem that has produced “companion” apps, as well as some potentially disruptive concepts.
Of the 10, I’m most in love with Zite. Along with Tweetbot and Reeder, it is one of my main sources of news. Zite aggregrates news from subjects and sources that you choose, then learns from your reading habits to bring more of what you like. It’s almost scary the way Zite gives you what you want before you know you want it.
A similar app that I intend to give a try is called News360. At first glance, it seems quite similar in both concept and design to Zite. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing.
Also on the list is Prismatic. I’ve been using this app on and off for several months, but I’ve never really been able to warm up to it. The app seems awkward compared with Zite — almost as if it isn’t all the confident about constitutes a good story.
Summly suffers from the same flaw. Sure, you can create whatever category you want, but the quality of the content is not always good. For example, the top story in the Journalism category (as I write this) is “Student newspaper earns top journalism award for Hunterdon Central High School”. And it goes downhill from there.
Apps like Summly and Prismatic will either catch up with the competition or die off. Still, it’s good to see developers out there trying to outdo one another for the attention of news junkies.
Of the other six items on the MediaShift list, only Circa counts as a true news app in my mind. This one has real-live editors compiling stories in bite-sized pieces. You can tag the ones you want to keep up to date with. It seems a bit old-fashioned to have editors choose your stories, but you might like it if you find yourself overwhelmed by the chaos of news sources.
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Wednesday, October 3, 2012
News360 fails the Kamloops test
Is it fair to judge News360 by its ability to present “local” news? Well, it is considered a feature for the news aggregator, so why not plug in Kamloops (HQ for newsonaut) and see what happens.
As you can see from the screenshot above, News360 pulled in three press releases out of Toronto for its top hits and nothing about Kamloops at all — no matter how far you scroll down.
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