Results matching “google launches 1”

Last week the Chicago Tribune Co. revealed a new blog aggregation site aiming to "connect Chicagoans." ChicagoNow is a network of blogs featuring passionate experts on a wide range of uniquely Chicago topics such as real estate, public transportation, sports and the city's police. The current beta version of ChicagoNow features blogs from over 30 local personalities and specialized experts, but it hopes to reach 80 by the end of the year.

Spanish daily ABC.es has become the country's first media network to launch an application compatible with Google's Android phone. Recently unveiled in Spain through mobile operators Telefónica and Vodafone, Android is aiming to be seen as a cost-effective alternative to Apple's iPhone.

Starting in June 29, two U.S. papers in central Pennsylvania will start publishing together. The Intelligencer Journal is a morning paper and the Lancaster New Era is an afternoon paper. They will join to publish a single morning edition from Mondays through Saturday.

"We know of no other market in the United States where the same ownership publishes morning and evening newspapers with separate editorial staffs," said John M. Buckwalter, chairman of the board of Lancaster Newspapers. The arrangement is unusual, with the New Era's staff using the building in the mornings and the Intelligencer Journal in the afternoon. Completely separate staffs under the same ownership competing for stories.

The Huffington Post has announced that it is to launch an Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million, in collaboration with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors. Founder Arianna Huffington told the AP that she believes that "All of us increasingly have to look at different ways to save investigative journalism."

The funding should be enough to support 10 staff investigative reporters, and Huffington hopes to use laid-off journalists, who will work with freelancers to look at stories about the US economy. Although the site generally has a liberal leaning, Huffington was adamant that the investigative journalists' work will be non-partisan, and the fund's executive director Nick Penniman pointed out that the group would be quickly discredited if it puts out faulty information.

In an interesting development, AOL has announced that it is launching a politics site entitled Politics Daily, staffed by well-respected political journalists and edited by Melinda Henneberger who has previously worked for Slate and the New York Times. Moving away from the short sharp news breaking style so commonly found on the web, the site will focus on analytics and commentary. "People have thought there's one way to do it on the web and that's to dominate the ten-second news cycle. We are gambling there's another audience that wants you to step back, for maybe a day, and do thoughtful analysis pieces that are heavily reported," explains Henneberger.

The move prompts speculation over whether or not other portals could follow suit, and begin to produce more original content as opposed to aggregation. Such a trend would undoubtedly leave its mark on newspapers that are trying to make a smooth transition into being both print and online news providers. Already struggling with online aggregation of their content by companies such as Google, these companies providing their own content would cause further problems, and introduce new competition, to newspapers and their online counterparts.

Source: The Wrap

Another day, another innovation from Google.  The Google Blog this week announced the launch of a "Google News-based element for webmasters and developers".  It allows the integration of Google News headlines in any website, and can be set to only stream relevant stories for readers by selecting keywords.

Google says that the application is helpful "for newspapers to reach new audiences across the web" - but surely as news producing organizations themselves, newspapers could be producing their own such tool instead of contributing to the traffic world dominating Google?

Source: Google Blog via EJC

Search Wiki is the newest feature to Google, allowing users to customize search results, and is available only to users with Google accounts.

The feature will allow users to rearrange search results, tailored to what they frequently use, according to Brand Republic.  

Users will also be able to add and remove URLs relevant to their own searches.  They can make notes on sites that will be "available for future searches."

Search Wiki allows users to "share insights with other searchers," said an engineer behind the project.

Source:  Brand Republic

Topix has announced plans to partner with four other companies including lat49, ServiceMagic, Marchex and Mapquest.   According to Topix, they are "the largest news community on the web." 

Lat49 is an online adverstising network that delivers targeted display ads depending on a users location.  ServiceMagic is a home improvement service provider and Marchex is a company that provides local business listings, similar to the yellow pages. 

Google announced that it will launch a new feature to help business that use its Site Search service to instantly incorporate and update new web pages, according to Reuters.

Website owners will now be able to add new web pages immediately so that the most recent information shows up when searching. 

Telegraph Media Group has launched an application specifically for the Google Android phone.  According to Journalism.co.uk, they are the first publishers in the UK to do so.  

The new application was launched by Telegraph Labs, which was launched in May in order to develop new products for the TMG.

An aide of Irans's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is launching a newspaper, named the "Khorshid" or "Sun." It is due to hit the newsstands on Saturday.

The newspaper, which will be published by Mohammad Paryab, will cover everything from political issues to soap operas. Initial circulation is expected to be around 200,000. The timing of the launch is crucial, being eight months before the presidential elections, resulting in speculation that the newspaper will be used to push Ahmadinejad's re-election.

Paryab denied the talk. "No, the government has other platforms and as you can see there is only one page about political news in Khorshid, so it is not useful for that purpose," he told AFP.

"If we wanted to do that, we would have allocated 10 to 12 pages of the 24-page newspaper for political news," said Paryab, who used to be deputy government spokesman and secretary of the presidency information council.

The price is 1,000 rials, approximately a dollar. Khorshid is financed by the state-run social security organisation.

Under Ahmadinejad's Presidency, Iranian media has been hit by a raft of closures.

Source: EJC Media and AFP

Search engine giant Google reports that it is launching technology that will let users search for news content on blog posts. The optimized Google Blog Search will find and arrange the 900,000 blog entries that are added each day. Previously the service only let users to type keywords into the search engine.

Google announced Wednesday that is has launched a new audio indexing service, the GAudi.

The service, designed to work with YouTube, will catalog all words used in audio and video clips.  The words will then be added to a searchable database that can be accessed the same way text-base sites are.

In addition, the user will have the option of either watching the entire video, or starting from the exact point where the key word is mentioned.  

According to Google, GAudi is only in beta, so at this point it will only index audio and video from political sources.    

Source:  European Journalism Centre

The relaxed rules that permeated during the Olympics are to be allowed to expire next month, according to the Foreign Ministry. There had been hopes that the Olympics would mark a general relaxation of the rules following hints from a Chinese official last December.

China did loosen its controls on foreign journalists -- which include requiring government permission for all interviews and travel -- at the beginning of 2007. During the Olympics, journalists were allowed to interview Chinese citizens without seeking government approval.

It is not clear at this stage what will follow after the Olympic rules expire; Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said "I think when the time comes, we will tell everyone what the arrangement will be."

The relaxed regulations did not apply to Chinese journalists; the government has maintained its control over domestic operations throughout the sporting event.

Source: The Associated Press

See also:

China: Officials allegedly released guidelines for local Olympic coverage
Media companies reporting the Olympics, Google launches online tool
China: Lifts some Internet restrictions after IOC negotiations
Thousands Protest China's Press Freedom Violations
China: Internet restrictions for journalists at Beijing

Google Inc plans to partner with newspaper publishers in order to make millions of news archives be available digitally. The company announced on Monday that it will make "dozens" of historical newspapers and the images featured accessible online.

"Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all," says Punit Soni, Google product manager.

US papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post would work alongside Google to index their content in Google's News Archive. Papers that are included in the deal range from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which is the oldest paper in North America being first printed in 1764.

The first newspapers that are linking up with Google for the project are based in North America, according to a spokesman.

Source: European Journalism Centre

The Onion, a "fake news" source, announces the launch of Decider, a serious local entertainment website featuring interviews, event information and restaurant reviews, writes Tech Crunch. The site's content will focus on the Chicago area, although more cities are planned to be included soon.  

Decider"s "clean" interface will use Google Maps to locate reviewed restaurants and provide a calendar showing future events. "Regular" editorial content would be accompanied by users' own reviews and comments, reports Tech Crunch.

The Onion previously included "legitimate" local reviews and event calendars. While the site may be known for its satirical news content, Decider will be more sober.

Tech Crunch suggests that Decider would bee in competition with sites like CitySearch and Yelp, although it may "do just fine" as an expansion of The Onion's newspaper.

Source: Tech Crunch

NewsCred, a news aggregator site that ranks the credibility of online news stories, launches in a beta. The site lets users gauge a story, its author and the publication's credibility and then directs it towards an algorithm that decides the most "prominent headlines", according to Media Channel.

NewsCred was established following the increase in digital alternative news sources as well as a reaction to a study that found that less than a fifth of Americans believe what is written in news articles, reported Journalism.co.uk.

US broadcaster NBC reports "phenomenal" ratings for its multimedia coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with Alan Wurtzel, research president for NBC Universal, saying the broadcaster has been "stunned" by the popularity of its mobile content.

On 8 August, 210,333 people accessed the NBC mobile service, but by Monday this had more than doubled to 476,062. "These Olympics are influencing how people are using new technology," Wurtzel said. "Half of the people viewing on mobile are using it for the first time. After the Olympics, it will be interesting if these habits become part of their behaviour."

NBC has been using a new measurement system to combine viewing figures across all media outlets.

The NBC website saw unique users increase from 4.2 million on 8 August, the first day of the games, to 7.8 million on Monday, August 11, when viewers wanted to replay Phelps' US swimming victory. NBC recorded 1.7 million downloads of the final 4x100 relay final.

Wurtzel said NBC had feared that online content would negatively impact its TV audience share, thereby hitting its most lucrative advertising. However, this has not been the case. NBC's research showed that just 0.2% of its audience used the web exclusively.

"The internet hardly cannibalises - it actually fuels interest," said Wurzel. He went on to say that half the online viewers were watching events they had missed and about 40% wanted to see replays.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

See also:

Media companies reporting the Olympics, Google launches online tool

Media outlets have taken the Games as an opportunity to compete for audiences as sites reveal an array of Olympics-focused features. Google announced a series of new tools that were launched for the Beijing Olympic Games this year, such as a virtual 3D tour of the stadiums that uses a combination of Google Maps and Google Earth.

Other features include an Olympics widget that can be downloaded and added to a personalized iGoogle site in order to receive features that provide Olympics coverage, sports headlines, YouTube videos, daily horoscopes, weather forecasts and a Google News feature. Users may also add applications such as a clock or games, similar to those used on social networks like Facebook.
 

The New York Times has a prominent section on the homepage that provides stories, results, schedules, multimedia and an interactive Olympics Tracker that allows you to personalize.

USA Today has a colourful section on the Games, offering everything from stories and results to blogs and Twitter feeds. There is also an "Olympics: Looking back and ahead" section that discusses former games and upcoming games as well as a section with input from fans.

The New Zealand Herald's Olympics coverage entails a section that is easy to navigate, with features like "As our Olympic team a question" and "Weird Olympics" with unusual stories about the events (e.g. stories like "Spanish team defends 'slanted-eye' photo", "China opts for lip-synching in quest for perfect Olympic image").

Numerous newspapers around the globe have launched sites dedicated entirely to the Games, such as Russian gazeta.ru, Irish Independent.ie and Ecuadorian eltelegrafo.com.

Send us examples of your Olympics coverage.

Source: The Telegraph
 

Knol, Google's Wikipedia rival, may be inciting fear in media companies as they increasingly begin to see it as a competitor, reported The New York Times (NYT). Knol features user-generated content which authors have control over and which Google may pay for through advertising.

"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," said Jason Calacanis, chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that employs editors to write on different subjects.

Google will not own the copyright to Knol content and neither will the website contain the Google logo. The company's aim is to guide people towards the "answer" they want and it doesn't intend to own or create any content, said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. Knol allows people to create and publish information and the only role that Google has in this is to "organize that information", according to Stricker.

While some people like Wenda Harris Millard, co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worry about the bias of Google search results, Stricker said that if Knol pages do rank high, it is because they "earned their position", reported the New York Times.

Calacanis expressed concern about Google overtaking search results, which may "alienate Web publishers that are Google's advertising partners" although Google might not actually "artificially favor its sites", reported the NYT.

Google currently owns YouTube, blogging service Blogger and Usenet archives, a digital discussion board collection that is older than the Web. Google also digitalizes books that show up on search results as well as containing stories from the Associated Press in its Google News service and publishing stock market information on Google Finance.

Source: NYT

See also:
Google launches paid Wikipedia alternative

Google has announced last Wednesday the launch of its Knol feature, a website dedicated to providing user-generated articles on a range of topics, similar to Wikipedia. 

Jack Schofield, a Guardian blogger, warned that Knol may harm the media industry since writers not only have the chance to sidestep editors but also be able to earn money from the ad revenues on their pages.



A "knol" or a "unit of knowledge" will offer articles on a wide range of topics, written by experts on those subjects. Individual knols will be treated like web pages, indexed in Google's search engine.

"The ultimate goal is: we want to improve search," said Cedric Dupont, Knol product manager.

The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that the latter has anonymous articles that are edited a multitude of times, reported the Guardian. Knols stress authorship, according to Dupont.

Knols may be edited if the author opts for the "moderated-collaboration" mode, but he or she has the right to chose what changes may be made, reported ZDNet UK.

Google partnered with the New Yorker magazine to let authors add cartoons from the publication to their knolls, ZDNet UK wrote.

Source: CyberJournalist.net, The Guardian, ZDNet UK

Here are some stories from yesterday from our sister SFN blog:

-Google's Android phones to be available later in 2008
-Monster partners with 19 newspapers, strikes distribution deals with others
-Taiwanese paper to turn tabloid after downsizing
-Facebook launches Chinese version

Prominent South African newspaper Mail & Guardian (M & G) recently revamped its website with social networking and Web 2.0 functions. New features include a new layout, the ability to save article clippings, StoryHistory, StoryPredictor, the ability to comment and debate, semantic tagging, and the implementation of NewsSwarm.

In an interview with the Editors Weblog, the M & G Online general manager Matthew Buckland said that the aesthetic aspect of the redesign includes "a wider layout, top navigation instead of left", use of mixed fonts and more white space.

The new site attempts to "build networking features", Buckland said. The ability to see other people's news clippings allows a user to "meet users based on similar interests."

NewsSwarm allows users to see who is viewing what at a given time. "It's interesting from a user perspective to see what articles are important," Buckland mentioned.

StoryPredict will forecast what stories a user will be interested in based on the browsing history, which is in turn saved.

In the past, users were not able to comment but this was due to technical restrictions, according to Buckland. Now comments to the news site are enabled for registered members. "We ensure comments. We encourage users to post under real names. We ensure a high level of intelligent debate," Buckland said.

Every site except the Thoughtleader.co.za, the Techleader.co.za and the Sportsleader.co.za sites require users to register if they want to comment.

Registered users are also able to blog, Buckland said.

The advanced printing function allows for articles to be printed in a row.  

Buckland pointed out that the new site is "tagged quite heavily". Related news stories are linked to articles, even if they are "from competitors and blogs", according to Buckland.

In his blog, Vincent Maher, strategist at the M & G, said that because the old code and the database were "messy", the developing team had to reconstruct "the site from the ground up on a completely new set of technologies."

According to Maher's blog, "the project scope and order of production" included:

- Redesigning and developing front end, designing a new strategy for ad formats, new CMS
- Developing a new data structure to accommodate real-time visualization and semantic tagging
- Integrating an advertising engine and negotiating with advertisers
- Integrating national-level navigation mapping, city-level mapping through Google Maps, "contextually-relevant" outside news sources through Google News, "contextually-relevant" blog postings through Google Blog Search
- Creating new templates for e-commerce partner sites
- Rebuilding newsletter system
(For the whole list, go to Maher's blog) 

Source: Matt Buckland, General Manager Mail & Guardian Online, VincentMaher.com

See also:
South Africa: Mail and Guardian launches Amatomu blog aggregator

To mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the Council of Europe is launching an online discussion forum on media freedom in times of crisis, reports the European Journalism Centre.

The forum, intended for both journalists and anyone else concerned about freedom of expression, will center on how journalists do their job in the face of government restrictions during wars, terrorist threats and political instability.

This year's World Press Freedom Day comes days after a report by lobby group Freedom House concluded that global press freedom declined in 2007. According to the survey, Iraq and Somalia remain the most dangerous countries for journalists.

Sources: EJC, AFP