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Microsoft News

Microsoft Plans News Aggregator 265

Posted by CmdrTaco from the following-google's-business-plan dept.
wyldeone writes "ZDNet says Microsoft is planning on creating a news aggregation service similar to Google's Google News. It will draw headlines from over 4,800 sites. It will also provide customized feeds, similar to Googles News alerts. Here is the beta version of the site."
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Microsoft Plans News Aggregator More

Microsoft Plans News Aggregator

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  • What's new? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:04AM (#9810207) Homepage Journal
    So, what is new here? Seriously.........Is this another case of Microsoft coming late to the game and saying "Oh, well, we have one too", or is this another case of Microsoft publicizing they have something in the works that will come out any time now to keep other folks from entering into the fray? Come on, if you are going to get into the game, offer something new. For instance, take a page from the Apple playbook when Apple realized a little late that mp3s and online music was the way to go, Apple put some thought and effort into things and came up with not only the iTunes music store, but also the iPod. Both of which were nice innovations and spurred other companies to improve their products.

    From the looks of Microsoft's news bot site here it appears that ther innovations are links to Hotmail, shopping, other proprietary properties and news programs of either Microsoft and NBC, and notably in the Science/Health categories, we have business news about companies such as Boston Scientific rather than real Science news. It's also more bandwidth intensive than the Google news site.

    • Re:What's new? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, from the FAQ, it looks like MSN is using generalized clickthru and your personal history to customize the results. I don't think Google does either of those.
      • Oh, just what I want. MS trying to "guess" what news I want to see. Just as they do with their OS, always trying to make a choice for us dumb end-users. I will take Google, just give me _all_ the news and let me pick and choose, or like Yahoo! where I can pick different news feeds. The last thing I want is some corporation like MS making a chioce for me.

        I can see this state-of-the-art algorithm used by MSN News.

        if(_newsTopic == LINUX_TOPIC)
        showMoreMSNewsArticles();
        else if (_newsTopic == ANTI_MS)
        showM

    • "Oh, well, we have one too"

      Every person/company who has ever made a website has said this.

    • Ummmmm, yea, Microsoft as a news provider. Just the job for a convicted monopoly. And don't say, "They're just getting news from other sites" because what you choose to cover is the biggest bias in the news industry.

      I wish they would get over this illusion that they are a content provider. They are SUPPOSED to be a software company, and hell, I'll even throw the X-Box in that category. Maybe if they stopped trying to own one of everything and just concentrated on their damn OS, it would be worth buying.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Ummmmm, yea, Microsoft as a news provider. Just the job for a convicted monopoly. And don't say, "They're just getting news from other sites" because what you choose to cover is the biggest bias in the news industry.

        I wish they would get over this illusion that they are a content provider.

        What did the MS in MSNBC stand for, again? Microsoft is a content provider, and with respect to MSNBC's offerings not appreciably more or less trustworthy than most others. They seem to cover Microsoft's latest worms


    • Not only is Microsoft imitating success, but they are doing a bad job of it by adding several annoying elements. This works when you have a monopoly. Thank heavens for Google.

      Does anyone actually use MSN Search [msn.com]?

      Is anyone such a prisoner of Microsoft offerings that they don't have a friend who told them about Google?

    • Layout (Score:3, Funny)

      by umrgregg ( 192838 )
      Well, it makes you want to stab your eyes out for one...

    • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by carnivore302 ( 708545 )
      Actually, Microsoft coming late to the game is part of its success. They take a concept that has proved to be a success and extend it with their own additions. The (in)famous "embrace and extend strategy".

      Sure, sometimes it backfires or fails miserably. But then again, if you don't risk now and then, you will not make significant gains either. Microsoft knows this all too well.


      Click here for the Mystery Futures Link [tradesims.com]!

    • Re:What's new? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by costas ( 38724 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:08AM (#9810874) Homepage
      Well, at least one thing that MSN Newsbot dows that Google News doesn't, is that MSN attempts to personalize the news page based on passed clicks. Now, my newsbot [memigo.com] has been doing that for almost 3 years now (plus a lot more, like customized XML and PDA feeds, peer networks, etc) with a more varied selection of sources (end of shameless plug :-)
      • There was a rumor going on at WWDC that Bill Gates was in the audience and he didn't look happy. I didn't give this much credence at the time but seing as how MS has recently made an annoucement about RSS agregators and HD-DVD I think the rumor might be true. Expect MS to make announcements about all the features of Tiger also being implemented by MS RealSoonNow (TM).

      • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Informative)

        by glinden ( 56181 ) *
        Memigo [memigo.com] is very cool with a ton of power user features. It's a fantastic site.

        If you're looking for something simple and easy to use, Findory News [findory.com] is another good choice.
      • That's interesting, because the idea of a program trying to guess what I want does not strike me as a feature. In fact, I have two main problems:

        1) It seems it would require YET ANOTHER login and password and links that to all my news habits

        2) The history of algorithms trying to guess what I'm interested has been exceedingly poor.

        Maybe the reason I'm not interested is because of point #2, and that said, I'll go visit memigo.com and see what I think. Somehow I like the purity of Google News - its anonym
        • Well, a login/password on memigo is needed only if you want the more advanced features. At any rate, memigo and sites like it are essentially serendipity agents, they are not meant to be your only source of web news.

          But you mentioned the Zaurus, so you will probably like the PDA version [memigo.com] of memigo, which was actually the original reason I built the site (not just PDA-formatted, but linking to PDA-formatted articles as well, and customized for you)...

      • I've been building my own news aggregate too

        same sort of idea, let the user see what they want, do some searching and browsing by category

        i really want to do something like slashdot does and let you pick the channels that show up by default, but I just haven't gotten there yet

        anyways, it's at http://fooey.net/NewsArchives/ [fooey.net]

        only problem is the stupid thing is too addicting, and I end up spending WAY too much time reading the hundreds upon hundreds of articles scrolling through it every day

    • Re:What's new? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by teal ( 4252 )
      Jeez! Does Microsoft come up with anything new anymore? Their entire business plan seems to be to find something someone else is making money on and to copy it.

      I have a feeling that this is the behavior pattern of a dinosaur as it goes off to die. In this industry it really is innovate or die, which gets harder and hardeer as a corporation gets large and lethargic. Again, I think Microsft rewally is their own worst enemy.

    • So, there's beta, and then there's *beta*. One headline is duplicated. Another few link to the wrong articles.

      Sorting that out is pretty basic stuff and should be done before any kind of public beta.

      I like the layout though.

      Funny excerpt from the article about Bush on his mountain bike:

      ---
      "I'm gonna show you a hill that would choke a mule," he says.

      He hits the brakes and is steadily advancing downhill when his front tire loses its grip amid the loose rocks. His foot gets stuck in a strap that keeps it
    • MSN Newsbot does look a lot like Google News, but it does have something unusual, personalized news. The site watches which articles you read and attempts to find other interesting articles. Microsoft certainly isn't the first here, but they are the biggest.

      If done right, personalized news can work very well. Of course, trust is a big issue. If you don't trust Microsoft, give Findory News [findory.com] or Memigo [memigo.com] a try.

  • Deja-vu (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peterprior ( 319967 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:05AM (#9810225)
    Ahh.. the good old "rip off something another companies done" move. Good to see they are still as innovative as ever. Doesn't google own any patents on this?

    • Re:Deja-vu (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      Patents on a news aggregation service? Google came really late to that game, if any patents exist google sure wouldn't have them.

    • Re:Deja-vu (Score:3, Funny)

      by Cereal Box ( 4286 )
      You must be kidding. A patent on Google News? Do you think Google News was the first website to collect a bunch of news stories from various sources and post them on a page? Do you even know what site you're reading right now?

      Microsoft isn't ripping anyone off any more than Google is.
      • There's a pretty big difference between a site with human submitters and editors and one that uses data mining to automatically aggregate the top stories from hundreds of different news outlets.

        It's like trying to compare the "links" page on Joe Blow's homepage to Google's search engine.

      • Re:Deja-vu (Score:3, Funny)

        by Skevin ( 16048 )
        Of course it's brand-spanking new! Even as we speak, Microsoft is gearing up to release its revolutionarily innovatively original news site, Dashslot! Dashslot, whose slogan is "FUD for Nerds, Truth in Tatters", will allow members of the ever growing anti-OSS movement to coelesce into a coherent online community, by conglomerating news stories about events and/or legislation that threaten the blessed Utopia Microsoft has promised to us, the Faithful. Members, once logged in with a Microsoft Passport ID,
    • http://www.msnoogle.com

      We tell you what's going on, and you will believe...
    • Microsoft does excel at imitation. MSN Newsbot appears to be a combination of Google News [google.com] and personalization technology like Amazon.com [amazon.com] or Findory News [findory.com].
    • Yeah, just another thing for Microsoft to stick their fingers into. First the search engine, then the e-mail storage (which they were not the first to follow, but still), and now the news system. What's next? Microsoft's version of Froogle? It'll never stop.

  • Great.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Roskolnikov ( 68772 )
    One OS
    One People
    One Nexus

    I can't wait to see how they 're-write' links and searches
    to 'enhance' your experience.

  • It's about time (Score:5, Funny)

    by foistboinder ( 99286 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:06AM (#9810232) Homepage Journal
    Finally a news service uncluttered with
    anti-Microsoft stories. :)

    • Re:It's about time (Score:2, Interesting)

      by optimus2861 ( 760680 )
      This is modded funny, but Microsoft (or at least, any MS chuckleheads who monitor Usenet) has been known to yank posts from the microsoft.public.* newsgroups (at least from their own NNTP servers) that are overly critical of Microsoft policies -- do a Google on a chap named "kurttrail" in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general. He's a very outspoken critic of product activation and Microsoft EULA policies, and MS has attempted to censor his opinions on more than one occasion under flimsy pretexts (i.e. "this t

  • Why is it... (Score:2, Funny)

    by scifience ( 674659 ) *
    Why is it that Microsoft feels the need to do everything Google does? Microsoft is not exactly losing money.

    I'm waiting for the day that Microsoft announces that they are buying back all their stock just so they can do another IPO to be like Google!
    • "I'm waiting for the day that Microsoft announces that they are buying back all their stock just so they can do another IPO to be like Google!"

      Hmm.. I wonder how much Google stock Microsoft will buy...
    • It's simple, really, Google is one of the next round of targets. Microsoft has realized that if they want to win the search war, they're going to have to cut off every avenue of revenue for Google. I'd expect a Froogle imitation to be announced soon.

      Microsoft's goal isn't to beat Google by offering the best software. Instead they will try to simply drown Google by flooding the field of competition until everyone is loosing money. They'll do it with the power of Windows and pre-installed IE. So since M
    • MS stock value is based on the concept of their revenue growing exponentially. It stopped doing that a few years ago (it still grows though) and the stockvalue has not been corrected yet to reflect that new reality. As soon as investors figure out that the stock price is too high in relation to the actual marketvalue of the company, the stockprice will go down (because investors buy stock with the hope to sell it at a higher price later on).

      By opening new markets and thus growing revenue and perhaps even p

  • Next - Embedded in Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grunt107 ( 739510 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:07AM (#9810242)
    I would wager that this news service will get embedded in the Longhorn desktop presentation layer. This would hide the IE browser from view (although its underlying tech would be the content server), allowing MS to further embed its applications further into the OS offering.
    • This could be the next logical step. And if correctly filtered information comes to your desktop there'll be not much incentive to go to other information services.

      You'll be able to see the headlines of selected (in the bad sense) newspapers, and the newsfeeds of your favourite webpages. No incentive to go to the webpages, no incentive to go similar services (news.google.com), everybody plummeting (no ads revenue), but microsoft and friends. And then their friends will start to require subscription, after

  • Will we see a bias? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:07AM (#9810243) Homepage
    Considering MS owns MSNBC, I wouldn't be suprised if it's a bit bias towards it's own property.

    I like Google partly for neutrality.

  • 4800? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by isdfnmo ( 673446 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:11AM (#9810291)
    Who needs 4800 news sources?

    I have BBC, NYTimes, a few industry-specific, a few 'for interest' (e.g. Economist, New Scientist, Reason.com), a few for sport and one for UK TV Listings. Maybe a dozen tops and I am one of the most well-informed people I know.

    Too much information = too easy to lose the salient stuff.

    • Re:4800? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:18AM (#9810375)
      Maybe it is to actually get news without spin? A lot of those news sources are actually foreign papers (including Al-Jazeera on Google's site). It is nice sometimes to get a different point of view. Of course, on the other side, a lot of times 90% of those sources are just pulling the same exact AP or Reuters release verbatim.
      • a lot of times 90% of those sources are just pulling the same exact AP or Reuters release verbatim.

        All the more reason to have Xinhua and Al Jazeera in there, since those guys usually do offer a different slant on the news than the AP and Reuters feeds that everyone else is printing. CNN and BBC also have big enough news teams to cover most things themselves so they're worth looking at too.

    • Maybe a dozen tops and I am one of the most well-informed people I know.

      Did you read that in a Jayson Blair article?

      Seriously, though, I like Google partly because I'm exposed to more spin variety than I would if I stuck to my favorites. Sometimes I'll even hold my nose and follow a link to Faux News, just to see what I'm not missing.

  • Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link... (Score:5, Informative)

    by rixster ( 249481 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:15AM (#9810340) Journal
    and you're in for a surprise.

  • Very Strange (Score:4, Funny)

    by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:18AM (#9810368)
    I couldn't access the site

    Something about a conflict, dumping physical memory, and then the browser went all blue and restarted. Strange, I've never seen anything like it.

  • "Most Popular Articles"... (Score:4, Funny)

    by southpolesammy ( 150094 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:21AM (#9810409) Journal
    Ok, Slashdotters, here's your chance to googlebomb (hmmm, ok, guess we need a new catchphrase here) the MSN Newsbot. Go to the site [msn.com] and use the "Find Your News" search field to look for things like FOSS, SCO-MS interplay, RIAA, or get really nasty and search for things like goatse and other wrteched sites.

    Let's give MSN's newest beta a warm sendoff...

  • So how could they do this... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:21AM (#9810410) Homepage Journal

    Without breaking copyright law? Are they really going to license content from every single site? Or will the Feds bust [sg1archive.com] them like Adam McGaughey?

    • Re:So how could they do this... (Score:4, Informative)

      by RazzleFrog ( 537054 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:29AM (#9810509)
      Have you never seen how these sites work? They don't copy the entire article onto their site. They provide a link to the original site with a short blurb. This doesn't infringe on any copyrights and, if anything, the sites are getting free advertising. In the case you link he had the information on his site. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he was infringing but you can't compare the two.

      Imagine the precedent if they did. It would totally destroy the search engine industry (which is basically all this is).

  • Google news isn't entirely original either (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:22AM (#9810418) Homepage
    newshub [newshub.com] been doing news gathering for a long time..

    google came and did it better..

    Now MSN is throwing its hat in the ring. AOL will provide a web page with news/ other stuff based on what you want to see which is oddly good (It shows movies playing at the closest movie theaters..)

    There a probably lots of others I'm missing.

    Competetion is good. Hopefully everyone competes and makes theses sites better.

    Win Win Win...
    • Even MyWay and the My Yahoo! pages have done this. The articles are from a variety of sources (mostly AP, Reuters, and a few big newspapers). But you can choose what headlines you want to see, how many of each, which sports scores to show, tv listings, your weather, local movie listings, etc. I prefer MyWay [myway.com] because they don't have banners or popups and it's much more customizable.

  • Not AGAIN... another COPIED innovation! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Seraphnote ( 655201 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:22AM (#9810419)
    Come on Microsoft! Geez. With that whole RESEARCH department you have and $50 Billion, you'd think we'd see MORE than this tripe innovation from you! Oh wait that's right, you put all your time in the AESTHETICs, mouse cursors, icons, freaking large graphical interfaces that treat the user like a child and use up half the screen's space...
  • Microsoft "innovates" again.

  • Google News is beta too... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Artega VH ( 739847 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:26AM (#9810468) Journal
    at least the australian version [google.com.au] says Beta..

    The MS one is too busy, hard to follow. Whereas the Google one is as clean as can be expected for a screen with so much information and so many links.

    So let me get this straight. Which beta is better? Do we really need a slashdot poll to know that answer? Didn't think so...
  • I could tell it was a Microsoft site without even looking at the URL. How? Easy, it failed to render correctly using a W3C complient browser.
  • Microsoft has a new news site similar to Google news. To find it, type "Microsoft News" into Google.
  • To the casual observer that website sure looks like an MSNBC News site. It appears that what they are doing is stealing stories from all over and passing them off as MSNBC News stories. I mean, nobody is fooled into thinking Google News wrote all those stories on it's site, but if you went to this MSN page, it sure looks like it's all from MSNBC News. And we all know that the kind of people who actually visit MSN will think these are MSNBC stories. Granted, they probably aren't breaking any copyright laws h
  • I jumped to the beta site and was intrigued by the "'Showgirls' Bares All in Self-Mocking DVD" I clicked and it took me to the wrong link. Yet another little bit of MS software presented to the public without being double-checked for accuracy. Following is the bad link, but don't bother, you'll just waste your time. http://g.msn.com/0PNENUS/1?http://c.moreover.com/c lick/here.pl?z180993149&z=50237909

  • Current headlines... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:34AM (#9810560)
    Anti-Trust Legislation: Evil or just Wrong?

    Macs turn people gay.

    Office XP: Best Software Ever!

    Internet Explorer Holes Largley Fiction

    Bill Gates Lands on Moon

    Dennis Miller Funniest Man Ever

    An Editorial by Clippy©

    Better Computing Through Crashes

    Spyware Ain't So Bad

    Your Computer is Old, Buy a New One with XP Now

    How I Caught a Cold from Viral Open Source

    Windows Saved my Life!

    Jesus Uses XP

    MS Wins Nobel Peace Prize

    Service Pack Two Will Cure Impotence

    Child Killed by Linux Installer

    etc

    • Funny, but actually there are two about Google - one about its IPO price being too high and a sign of arrogance, and one about it being hit by MyDoom. Plus one article about Real hacking the iPod. Nothing about Open Source being a security threat though. Must've read that at a less reputable source.
  • I was openminded about this, I tried that other news bot thing for a while. So I click on the link, and my Mozilla 1.7 under fluxbox in slackware linux kind a hangs... actually, the page took an extremely long time to load and not only did mozilla hang but my whole system did! Eventually it came up normally but it was as if it put the entire machine under a very heavy load ... so much so that the keyboard and mouse would not move. After a minute or two it came back... anyone else experience this?

  • Looking at the two sites ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ggvaidya ( 747058 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:36AM (#9810589) Homepage Journal

    ... all I can say is "HA HA HA HA HA!"

    See for your [google.com] self [msn.com]. If you can read anything past the ugly blue-black-and-white font, you're a braver man than I.

    Google news stories seem more interesting as well. MSNBC basically has a lot of US-related tabloid articles, while Google has some real news. An example:

    World news according to MSNBC:

    1. U.S. hands over four French suspects at Guantanamo
    2. Prosecutors dissect Berkeley fishing story (about a murder in S.F. - how is this world news??)
    3. Jenkins asks to see US lawyer

    In contrast, Google has:

    1. French Guantanamo detainees back home
    2. Sudan Says US Using Darfur to Topple Government
    3. Freed Egyptian Says Treated Well by Iraqi Captors

    Also, Google allows you to go to country [google.com] specific [google.com] news [google.com] feeds [google.com]. I'm sorry, but MSN is going to have to do much better than this to steal my clicks. And before you argue that it's still beta, Google News had much better functionality [archive.org] than this before it first appeared [archive.org] on the Google front page.

  • Little experiment (Score:5, Informative)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:39AM (#9810613) Homepage Journal
    Search for Linux in http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com(within first 20 hits):

    Opinion: Why Linux isn't ready for the Desktop
    Vulns: Linux Kernel Unspecified Local Denial of Service Vulnerability
    Vulns: Linux Kernel Floating Point Register Contents Leak Vulnerability
    Vulns: Linux VServer Project ProcFS Weak Sharing Permissions Vulnerability
    Vulns: Apache mod_userdir Module Information Disclosure Vulnerability
    How Microsoft Can Embrace Linux

    I love biased news source. So here I'm. :)
    • >I love biased news source.

      Me too! Thats why I love slashdot!
    • 'Within the first 20 hits' yes, but lets see the first five headlines I got;

      Linux gaining steam in China
      ITV switches on to Linux
      Seagate and Linspire, Inc. Exclusively Bring Linspire Linux OS to Latin America
      Susquehanna International Group Selects Reuters Trader (small mention of Linux as an added technology used)
      Linux-based Nitix serves the works

      The Linux desktop readyness article is actually from osnews.com, which is not overly biased against Linux. The 'How Microsoft Could Embrace Linux' is very p

    • I love biased news source. So here I'm. :)

      Hello, biased news source. A quick search for Linux [slashdot.org] gives (first five hits, in order):

      An article describing the adoption of Linux in China,

      News about a television station considering a switch to Linux,

      A supermarket chain testing a new Linux-based point-of-sale system,

      Seagate and Linspire bringing Linux to South America,

      A financial company selecting a Linux-based trading solution, citing 'quality and flexibility'.

      Biased indeed....

  • Is it just me or does this thing not even work on Macs? I'm using IE something or the other on OSX and I get nada - newsbot.msn.com no work. Tried it on PC and it looks like MSNBC to me. What a waste of electricity.
  • http://msn.co.uk used to be a news aggregator years ago, when MSN first dumped the "lets try to be an online tv station" and went for a portal strategy, for a good few years it was a personalisable news aggregator.

    So, maybe Google News is the copy...

  • Quick observations. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:10AM (#9810902) Journal
    It's slower than google news. Because it uses the left hand side MSNBC toolbar (with its less than instantaneous menus) less actual news fits on my screen.

    Finally, this statement is somewhat disturbing.

    "Newsbot (beta) responds to your reading preferences. Clicking on articles determines what we base your recommendations on."

    MSNBC does go out of its way to label AP wire service stories as such, which is a nice touch-- I really don't need to read the same story 700 times.

    However, google does print the headlines of stories from three sources for each news item, which is more useful that a simple "Also covered in Sun, Herald-Tribune, and ABC". Speaking of which, is that the Chicago Sun, International Herald Tribune, and American Broadcasting Company? Or is it The Sun, Southwest Florida Herald Tribune, and Australian Broadcasting Company?
    • "Newsbot (beta) responds to your reading preferences. Clicking on articles determines what we base your recommendations on."

      I find this disturbing too, though probably not for the same reasons as you do.

      I could care less if the site uses my browsing history to determine what I like and don't like -- it's better for them and for me if they can target ads well enough that I don't see ads for things I wouldn't buy.

      The reason I don't like the idea is that because the importance of news should not be based o
      • Good point. I dimly recall that in David Brin's novel, Earth, a user of the World Net News was required to accept a certain amount of off-topic news-- so as not to become informationally inbred.

  • Ewww! Seriously, anyone else find pretty much everything on MSN designed with really poor taste? Hell, half the shit on MSN doesn't even have a background color set.

    It's all so... cluttered.

    That's my first reaction; I was expecting better, considering the resources they have.

    No opinion on the content yet.

  • I heard this is going to be an Oceania-only release. Any news when it'll be available in Eurasia?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:20AM (#9811027)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • When I first read it, I thought the headline was:
    Microsoft plans new aggravator..

    Made perfect sense to me at the time... I was just surprised that they'd put that in a press release.

  • Too little, too late. How about some innovation? (Score:3, Informative)

    by iapetus ( 24050 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:41AM (#9811293) Homepage
    Or isn't MS allowed to do that any more?

    While we're waiting, why not try newsmap [marumushi.com], which does some interesting things with Google's news feed.

  • Interesting Headlines... (Score:5, Funny)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@nOSpam.keirstead.org> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:42AM (#9811306)

    Emphasis on 3rd line added by me....

    Rapper Ja Rule Charged With Assault
    Kansas City Star - 12 hours ago Popularity Rank: 17 Similar Stories: 23
    Register now for your chance to get passes!
    TORONTO - Rapper Ja Rule appeared in a Toronto courtroom Monday on a charge of assault causing bodily harm.Authorities would say only that the...
    Also covered by: CBS News BBC AP via News-Journal Kentucky.com Times Union ABC 7
    More photos & full coverage

    Register for passes? To what, the assault?

  • Microsoft Plans News Aggregator

    Did anyone else read this as "Microsoft Plans News Aggravator" ...?

    -kgj
  • It found 20 stories less than a week old for my home town in the UK. 90% of the stories have been in the local papers over the weekend so they were not new to me. The other 10% made for an interesting read.

    The graphical layout needs work and the front page seemed to be filled with US centric stories.

    Right, I've seen enough, back to buying the local papers.

  • MS announces Dotdotbackslash (Score:5, Funny)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:23AM (#9811915) Homepage
    This just in. Microsoft has announced a beta version of a revolutionary new news aggregation service to be called "Dotdotbackslash." Unlike automatic services such as Google News, this one relies on the human judgements of hundreds of Microsoft MVPs to locate and make available the most relevant information needed for IT managers.

    Slogan: "News for PHBs--Words that Buzz"
  • Anyone see that HTML source?

    Doesn't look real Microsoft like.

    More stylesheeting, and more XML-like than normal (though still missing a doctype).
    <?xml version="1.0" ?>
    Freaky.

    Perhaps outsourcing is making Microsoft move like tar (rather than a rock) towards web-standards?

  • the beta of this has been up for some time (Score:4, Informative)

    by jamner ( 37206 ) <jamner.gmail@com> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:38AM (#9812143)
    This article [slashdot.org] was posted back in Nov of '03. go figure.

  • Huh (Score:2)

    by LafinJack ( 9054 )
    And in other similar to Google news...
  • Go to Google News, what do you get? A nice, spaced out, clear interface, search box clearly located, the categories clearly separated and the source for each article clearly marked.

    Go to this MSN thing, what do you get..? ... A HUGE MSNBC logo, links to the rest of MSNBC scattered everywhere, a big MSNBC navbar on the left, and the actual news squeezed into the right, huddled together in a claustrophobic manner that almost hurts to look at, with the cites for each article tiny and easy to overlook at the e

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