Entries tagged with news - Channel 10

AP Launches New App for Windows Mobile

Sarah Perez — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:56:00 GMT

The Associated Press has just launched a new application designed for Windows Mobile devices called AP Mobile. Soon to be made available in the Windows Phone Marketplace, the new application offers news from 1100+ local providers across 50 categories including top news, business, politics, world, sports, celebrity, travel, and more.

The topics appear across the top of the application and you can swipe through them using your finger. You can configure the app to just display the categories you care about, too, if you don’t want to see them all. News items feature an image and headline which you can tap to read full story.

Also included are social networking features that let you share the news on Twitter or Facebook or save the link to your Delicious bookmarking account. You can email stories, too, if you would rather share privately.

Some users are already seeing the app listed under the “News and Weather” section of the marketplace while others (like myself) haven’t seen it show up yet. I imagine that it’s simply a case of the app being rolled out in stages, so it should be there for you soon if it isn’t just yet.

Microsoft's Next Gen Newspaper Concept

Sarah Perez — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:53:00 GMT

This summer, in an effort to help save the struggling newspaper industry, the Newspaper Association of America asked for ideas from companies who had experience in helping online publishers monetize digital content. Among the submissions, which included ideas about content management systems from Oracle and IBM, Microsoft (PDF link) submitted an idea about a next-generation newspaper reader. Interestingly enough, the concept looked a lot the popular third-party Twitter client, TweetDeck as many bloggers noted.

However, the desktop software application was actually built by a company called Sobees. (You may remember hearing about them here on Channel 10, thanks to several of our previous posts.) Microsoft had worked in conjunction with Sobees to develop the user interface as a way to demonstrate the company’s ideas about content aggregation and monetization.

According to the proposal, the software aimed to demonstrate the following concepts:

contextual awareness
interactivity and user participation
personalization
anywhere access
cross-platform/cross-device access
semantic search and navigation
pay-for-content
advertising-based monetization

Additionally, the media content included in this next-gen newspaper could also generate revenue through sales of “packages” or “parts.” The packages would be like a TV channel or newspaper today – meaning, a lot of different content from one main provider – and the parts would be more like an RSS feed containing individual articles.

Election News Comes To Media Center

Sarah Perez — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:59:00 GMT

A recent post on the Windows Vista Blog provides info on a great new resource for Media Center PC users just in time for the vice-presidential debates tonight: Election News! Under the TV + Movies section in Media Center, you’ll now see a new title called MSNBC News Beta. This title will be available to Vista Home Premium and Ultimate users in the U.S. and Canada.

Here, you’ll find a selection of MSNBC’s top stories and weather listings, including Editor’s Picks and Most Popular videos. Under the Politics section, there’s a category for “Decision ‘08” where videos pertaining to the current U.S. Presidential elections will be displayed. As you browse through the videos, you may notice a plus sign “+” appears when you click on a video. Using this plus sign, you can create your own custom news video playlist which you can play back any time you want. There’s nothing to download to start using this new feature so you can simply begin using it the next time you run Media Center.

Reuters AlertNet Makes Featured Mashup List

Sarah Perez — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:36:00 GMT

Reuters AlertNet is a web-based humanitarian news network launched by Reuters in ‘97 to keep relief professionals, journalists, and the public current on humanitarian crises worldwide. The site was recently selected as a featured mashup by the Windows Live Dev team, who picked out 10 of the most innovative mashups that feature the use of Windows Live technology. AlertNet was my personal favorite as it incorporates Virtual Earth in a really unique way. On the site, you can visually “mine” for headlines from a particular part of the world on their interactive map just by zooming into a country or region. You can select what kind of crises you want the map to display from conflicts to food shortages to natural disasters and more, or you can choose all the categories to see everything. This is really an ingenious use of the Virtual Earth mapping technology and one that serves such a good purpose, too. Before the Windows Dev article, I was not even aware of the map existence, but I’m glad to have found it as this could prove to be an invaluable resource for learning about what’s happening in different parts of the world.

Zine - Your Online Magazine on Facebook

Sarah Perez — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:03:00 GMT

A new Facebook application called Zine is an online magazine of articles and videos that you can add to your Facebook profile. You can completely customize the magazine so you only see the topics that are interesting to you, whether that's News, Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyle, or anything else. Each main category is further divided into sub-categories that allow you to further customize your Zine. For example, you can choose to see just NFL news from the Sports category or just U.S. News and Politics from the News category, and so on. Your Zine is then loaded up for you, with each main category available as a tab at the top which you can click on to easily move through the content.

One thing I noticed right off the bat was that there was no "technology" news section listed. However, there is a feature called "My Topics," which lets you add the latest news stories for specific topics. For example, you could create a custom topic called "Olympics." I, of course, added a topic called "Twitter." I was happy to see a bunch of articles returned on the subject from big news sources like the NY Times, News.com, SFGate, and, of course MSN.com, which helps power this app.

When browsing through the categories, you can click "Prev" and "Next" buttons to scroll through the virtual pages or click "Expand" to have a particular section spread out across the page. You can also send a story to a friend or post it to your Facebook profile.

With all the talk of how newspapers and other print media are fading businesses, Zine stands out as a useful "new media" kind of way to get your daily news...right there in Facebook.

Search Share for Facebook

Sarah Perez — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:36:00 GMT

A Live Search powered Facebook app called Search Share lets you search for all kinds of information that you can then share with your Facebook friends. Results for Search Share can include videos, images, web pages, news, and more. But Search Share isn't just a way to see traditional search engine results within Facebook, you can also preview the content and select the results you want via drag-and-drop in order to share them with your friends.

The items you want to share are dropped into a box at the top of the app and you can then choose to email those items to a friend or post them to your feed. What's really wild is that when you hover your mouse over a thumbnail of a video, it automatically starts playing. I wasn't expecting that - I figured you would have to go off site to watch videos, but it's all right there in Facebook.

On the main Search Share page, some interesting topics are already listed for you like Today's Hot Topics. For example, today's #1 topic is "polar bear status" (how sad!). There are also boxes showing Top Celebrities, Words of the Day, Your Friends' Latest Searches, and Your Saved Search History.

Search Share is somewhat similar to Zine, in that it facilitates you being able to share various items with friends, but unlike Zine, it's more of a tool that can be used as needed instead of an online digital magazine.

MSN Environment Launched

Sarah Perez — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:59:00 GMT

For eco-warriors and environmentalists, there's a new channel on MSN that will be of interest: MSN Environment. On this site, you can read news and blogs, watch videos, get eco-friendly tips, plus get access to tools like a carbon calculator and a water usage meter. The site is only on MSN UK (for the U.S., we have MSN Green instead), but there are certainly features on the site that will appeal to everyone interested in these issues.

If you want to follow various sections of MSN Environment, there are several RSS feeds to choose from, including:

Environment Blog: Matthew Yeomans is the co-founder of Custom Communication an online media consultancy that provides environmental reporting. He reports for MSN on The Climate Report blog.
Environment Features: All the feature stories from MSN Environment Editor including analysis.
Environment Photos: All the photo stories from MSN Environment Editor including analysis.
Environment News: Updated throughout the day with breaking and feature news stories
Environment Videos: Stand alone features from VideoJug
Green Living : Reports on Green Living

(via vnunet)

News Search Adds RSS

Sarah Perez — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:43:00 GMT

Here's some great news from the Windows Live Search team: Earlier this month, we told you when the new web service News Search was launched. The site, which offers many great features like local news and top videos was only missing one thing as far as its users were concerned: RSS feeds. Well, no more! A blog posting on the Live Search blog states, "you wanted it, and now you have it." That's right, RSS feed are now available in News Search for all the categories or for the specific searches you perform. Thanks guys!

MSN's A-List

Sarah Perez — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:50:00 GMT

There's a new MSN page available at http://a-list.msn.com where you can find the most popular searches and headlines on MSN. The page features one hot topic per day and related searches at the top and below, are other popular searches and headlines, including the top web searches, the top people searches, the top videos, the top MSN.com headlines, the top movies and DVD rentals, the top five in Sports, the top Deals, the top health stories, the top tech stories, and more. What a nice way to get access to all the top news from one convenient page! Pretty cool! (found via SEO and Tech Daily)

Live Search News Launches

Sarah Perez — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

The Live Search team has just launched a new feature for finding news on the web: Live Search News. Here, you can find the latest news stories, categorized as "Top Stories," "World," "U.S.," "Local," "Business," "Politics," "Entertainment," "Sports," "Sci/Tech," and "Health."

The site has several really great features, one of which is the local news sidebar. Although you can access local news by clicking on the category page, having the sidebar there makes keeping tabs on your state's news even easier - especially when you just want a quick glance at the top stories.

Another cool feature is the "breaking news" bar at the top. You won't see this all the time, but when a big story is released, you'll see an orange bar at the top linking to the article.

When you're browsing the news, you can click "more on this story," to pull up a whole list of related stories about that topic while, in the sidebar, you are presented with options to refine by location or category or perform related searches.

Another unique feature to Live Search News are the "news videos" sections found midway down on most of the categories' main page. Here, you can access the days big stories in video format - and we're not talking videos from a user-gen site here - the videos come from Reuters TV, AP Video, Fox News, ABC News, USA Today, CNN, and other similar news organizations. What's even cooler is that you don't have to leave Live Search News to view them - just rolling over the video with your mouse will begin to play their stream.

The site also has a clean and well-designed look and feel and will certainly appeal to news junkies everywhere.

MSNBC launches “Multimedia On Mobile”

Larry Larsen — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:10:00 GMT

MSNBC announced that it will be offering consumers a rich news and entertainment experience for Windows Mobile devices called "Multimedia on Mobile". You will be able to find and save your favorite pictures, stories, and videos - including video from NBC News and The Today Show. Slideshows will be available with content being shared easily via SMS messaging and email. How much will this service cost? It’s free, launching with Windows Mobile being the sole sponsor. The service supports 15 Windows Mobile devices right now with more to follow.

Xbox Update with Tony Hynes!

Tina Wood — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:39:00 GMT

Okay party people! I'm hoping to sit down with the Xbox peeps to bring you what we can expect from the Xbox 360 department each week. Tony Hynes and his crew will be bringing us the updates. Check out this week's Xbox 360 news.

You Witness News launches from Yahoo

JD Lewin — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:22:00 GMT

Per yesterday's NY Times article, Yahoo launched their citizen journalism site You Witness News this morning. After signing in with your Yahoo! ID, you can upload just about any movie file that weighs less than 100 megs. After providing some brief description, tagging, and date information, the video will go live. You can also connect a Flickr account to the site and upload still images through Flickr. The media that gets contributed to this new site will be available to the editors of both Yahoo News and Reuters for use in appropriate articles.

Solo Tech Journalism: from personal passion to writing for Macworld and The New York Times

Laura Foy — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 14:00:00 GMT

Self-proclaimed ‘Unsolicited Pundit’ Glenn Fleishmann came by to share his thoughts on being a one-man journalistic force. Glenn talks about his focus on the wireless industry and the larger goal of explaining complex technology easily and making a name for himself in the process. We pried into his vault of expertise to learn more about cell phones on airplanes, testing WiFi access points, and how what you study in school rarely influences what pays the bills ;)

Links: Glenn's Bio, Glenn's page, WiFi Net News

"Times Reader" The New York Times on Windows Vista!

Tina Wood — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 20:33:43 GMT

Kevin Gjerstad stops by and demos the new WinFX application called "Times Reader". This app uses many of the new display features of Windows Vista to show you content in a whole new way. The Reader will resize and reflow your content to best fit your screen, giving news enthusiasts a better electronic reading experience with The New York Times.

I'm a complete news junkie so I'm absolutely looking forward to this. What about you guys?

Links: Buzz Machine, The New York Times, Times Reader - Press Pass

Tantalizing Tech Topics for Today

Tina Wood — Tue, 02 May 2006 17:00:00 GMT

We all spend WAY too much time browsing the internet and sometimes there are sites and stories we find that the world simply MUST know about. This is our chance to share some of our favorite web findings with you! And if you've found a site or story that you think people should know about it-- then post a comment, don't keep these wacky web wonders to yourself! Share!

Links: Nintendo Wii, Oregon man survives 12 nails to the head, Piracy worse than child pornography, Rat on your pirate boss, win $36,000, Trojan Freezes Computer, Demands Ransom, Your Thoughts Are Your Password

Today in Tech

Erik Porter — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Laura and Tina serve up their most recent fun findings from the net.

Links: DNA Jewelry, LASIK @ Home, Portable Playlist, Uranus Has Blue Rings, XBox Live Diamond Card Typo

Today in Tech

Adam Kinney — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Laura and Tina dish out their latest finds from the net.

Links: Beastie Boys return cameras, Dell Renegade PC, Fined for stealing wi-fi, Reset body clock, SpoofStick, unseen video

Today in Tech

Adam Kinney — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Technology News as presented by Laura and Tina, news desk, blazers, smart-looking glasses and all. Ok, well maybe not the blazers or the news desk...or even the smart-looking glasses. But the news, yes, we've got news.

Links: CeBIT, Enceladus, High tech wine glasses, LaLa, Neverwinter Nights Journalism