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Yahoo! Launches Local News 54

Posted by Zonk from the where-you-are dept.
prostoalex writes "Yahoo! News front page added local news today. Available for logged-in users right on the front page, local news are also delivered at location-specific URLs." There are a few words on the new feature at Search Engine Journal.
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Yahoo! Launches Local News More

Yahoo! Launches Local News

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  • Not all that local... (Score:5, Informative)

    by lisany ( 700361 ) <slashdot@thedo h . com> on Saturday March 18, 2006 @01:25PM (#14948688)
    ...for those of us not in North America.

  • Appears to be scrapes from local media sources ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Saturday March 18, 2006 @01:33PM (#14948716) Homepage
    From a brief look at Colorado, it appears they've compiled a list of local media sources (I saw both print and TV) and are scraping the contest, showing the headline/first paragraph, with link (including click tracker) to the story on the original site.
  • This looks pretty cool for my area, but had to type in the URL on my SideKick II to get it to load (javascript problem?) I like this
  • This confirms Yahoo! want to be a serious provider of Location-awareness tools, such as Google and Microsoft are.

    Spatially enabled Yahoo! tools now includes:
    - This Local News announcement
    - Yahoo! Maps [yahoo.com], including APIs [yahoo.net] (more reading [slashgeo.org]).
    - Flickr (/. story about the acquisition [slashdot.org]) maps [flickrmap.com] (undoubtly a similar service will soon be provided by Yahoo!)
    - Probably other I forgot?

    I doubt Yahoo! will join the Virtual Globes frenzy. With Google Earth, Windows Live, NASA WorldWind (and Punt [sourceforge.net]), the competition is already fierce.

  • Here are the gnus (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The news are not delivered. The news is delivered.

  • are? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 )
    Local news are available, huh?
  • Why is this worthy of our attention? All they did was was create a new box that aggregates headlines form news sources near your zip code. Not exactly rocket science.
    • aggregates headlines form news sources near your zip code. Not exactly rocket science.

      Yet another way to get people to give up a bit more privacy and "log in" just to read web content.

      The rocket science part comes when they use reverse DNS for the majority of broadband users:
      eg., locally targeting Dynamic-129.DALLAS.rr.com and PPPoE-254.DALLAS.swbell.net users

      • Re:No news is no news (Score:4, Interesting)

        by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday March 18, 2006 @02:35PM (#14948877) Homepage Journal
        RTFP dude. This service is available to signed-in users. Who have voluntarily given up their zip codes. No reverse DNS required. Anyway, if you consider somebody figuring out from reverse DNS where you live an invasion of privacy, you shouldn't access any web site.

        But that's just bullshit. There are many reasons to worry about your privacy. The fact that web sites know the zip code you live in is just not one of them. So what if they know that you're an overprivileged type from 90210 or a blue-collar hispanic from 95112? Hardly a first step to finding all about you.

        Incidentally, 95112 happens to be my zip code, and the databases actually do have this area classified as bch. Not that this classification actually describes me....

        • FYI, I'm not signed in and I see local news. On http://news.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] I see the following: Sign In New User? Sign Up And: San Francisco Area (BETA) Berkeley, CA Indeed, I'm browsing from a machine in Berkeley. Take that for what it's worth.
          • I stand corrected. But my being wrong about one issue reinforces what I said about the other: you can't browse the web without a web site tracing back your IP. If you're that concerned about privacy, you shouldn't use the web at all. Or use it through an anonymiser — assuming you trust the anonymization service! If you're that paranoid, you probably shouldn't.
          • I spoke too soon in my previously reply. When I logged out from Yahoo, it did indeed identify my city (San Jose) correctly. But as an experiment, I logged into the system in L.A. that hosts my web site, and used lynx to bring up the web page. Instead of the L.A. news, I got:

            Local News (BETA)

            Change Location
            *

            Source Name

            More of what you want.

            Sign in to add your favorite news sources from around the web here.
            For example, popular Local News sources are BBC News, CNN.com, and
            MSNBC.com.
            > Sign in now

  • Several other sites like http://msnbc.com/ [msnbc.com] has been doing this for years.

    • Several other sites like http://msnbc.com/ [msnbc.com] has been doing this for years.

      I remember a certain pseudo-ISP (sent out 30 million disks per year) also doing it.
      Hint: It was far enough back that software distribution was half-floppy, half-CD.

      With more breakthrough ideas, this Yahoo company might become the next AOL.

  • Update (Score:1, Troll)

    by sloths ( 909607 )
    In today's news, Yahoo! Inc. has sued Google Inc. for using their patent without permission. The patent, issued for localized news syndication transmission was issued to Yahoo! this month. This most likely was provoked by the trend to sue Google Inc. in hopes to get a share of their massive cash pool. Google could not be reached for comment.
    • If you are realy serious then Yahoo! just committed suicide.
      Yahoo! has been workingvery hard to look just like Google. Look at the search results page. Damn near identical. Look at the image search. Yahoo! again copied Google's look. Google's distictive styles almost certainly qualify as "Trade Dress", and Yahoo! is deliberately infringing. Yahoo! probably infringes on some Google Patents anyway. So if Yahoo! sues Google, the counter-suit will kill Yahoo!.
  • It should read Yahoo! Launches American Local News. I wasted time clicking on it. Slashdot's local is over 5000 miles from me.

    Peter

  • Scrolling News Block (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jaredmauch ( 633928 ) <jared@puck.nether.net> on Saturday March 18, 2006 @02:23PM (#14948849) Homepage
    So, I love Yahoo news as it's a good source for the AP/Reuters feeds, but the recent addition of the auto-scrolling/cycling articles is making me reconsider it. I'm tired of web designers thinking that just because i visit their page (and leave it set for their auto-refresh interval) that it's the only thing on my desktop (1600x1200 dual mon (3200x1200)). I don't need their thing to constantly suck my cpu (yes, i use flashblock to prevent that as well) and provide a distraction from the real work i'm doing as well.

    It's seriously making me reconsider setting up my own RSS fed news website for my own news gateway/needs. The local thing is kinda nice, but the scrolling highlight articles make me want to find a way to turn off javascript. (anything that does that like flashblock?)

    • Re:Scrolling News Block (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Well, the CPU drain is not that big a deal. And if you don't want a distraction, why do you even have the page up? But I do agree that those auto-cycle news applets are a pain — they make sites harder to browse.

      What they're trying to do, of course, is get our attention. A better way would be to stop giving us dense lists of headlines, and actually present the first paragraph or two of each news story so we can decide for ourself whether to read the rest. Every high-school journalism student knows ab

      • A static page that has a meta refresh in it for every few minutes isn't that big of a deal to leave up on the other (left) monitor when i'm working in another window. Now that they've added the moving images/text, i'm less likely to use the website all the time. It may help my productivity and/or be a blessing in disguise.
    • ocal thing is kinda nice, but the scrolling highlight articles make me want to find a way to turn off javascript. (anything that does that like flashblock?)

      Take a peek at the NoScript [mozilla.org] Firefox extension - it allows selective site javascript disablement.

  • I live in Buffalo, and it seems most of the stories have to deal with national issues, its just my local news reporting on them.

  • How soon until I can get news from my block? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neo ( 4625 ) on Saturday March 18, 2006 @03:11PM (#14949014)
    This might seem local to some of you, but I really want to hear the news from the three blocks around my apartment. Too often things happen that I can see from my window but I never see anything in the news regarding them.

    I would very much like to empower neighbors to take pictures and write stories regarding truely local events.

    Give us the power to be local journalists!!
    • Neo (4625) spends all day on Slashdot again

      See inside for our feature article with candid long-lens photos of neo posting while eats instant ramen noodles, not taking out the trash for the eighth day in a row and kissing his Carrie Anne Moss poster. Our editorial on page 2 asks "will he ever leave that basement?"

  • I think I will still stick to using personalized Google News, where I can get local news (if I want to) in more than one ways:

    1. By searching for keyword like "South Park, Colorado"
    2. Using RSS feed (if available) of local news providers/local news sites

    This is infinitely more customizable, and I have control over and access to more local news than getting local news from a predefined list of sources identified by somebody else and NOT ME.
  • I checked the local news for Princeton NJ (which is equidisant between NYC and Philly; many Princeton residents think of themselves as living in an exurb of NYC).
    Most of the "lcoal" news was for Philadelphia, none at all for New York.
    The issue here: each user needs to be allowed to draw a map of what that listener thinks is "local".
    - Precision Blogger.
  • ... is this news story just really, really late, or did they drop local news some time ago then readd it? Several years ago I had a my yahoo account for local movie listings. The listings were right under my local news.
  • I already had RSS sections set up in My Yahoo (and Google, for that matter) that grabbed headlines from my local sources, so this isn't *that* big a deal. It is kinda nice that they included the local free alternative newspaper, usually those kinds of publications are just plain ignored. Also very cool that there's a "Suggest a local news source" link on the resulting page when you click on the "All local news from..." link.

    Yeah, heading down the path towards information overload...
  • "Today another blogger was arrested, after we willingly gave the authorities every information we possessed of him."

  • I have had at leat 4 local news feeds on my http://my.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] page for the past 3 years.

    Jesus, someone needs to get a clue here.

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