The 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-1 1-12 o'clock news (newsnow.co.uk)

Member Name: blackjane

Product:	newsnow.co.uk
Date:	16/08/01 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Revolutionises News Provision, Easy To Use, Up To Date

Disadvantages: -

Question:

Newsnow - Is it a portal? Is it a news site? Is it a search engine? Or is it a directory? The simple answer is that this site can be all of these.....and much more besides!

For anyone that has not yet succumbed to the charms of this extremely clever site, that has revolutionised news provision on the world wide web, you will certainly not regret reading on to see what you have been missing.

The primary purpose of Newsnow (www.newsnow.com) is to act as a news portal ie: to gather news articles on a diverse range of subjects. In the 'About Us' section, it describes itself as a "news aggregation site", and compiles "the latest headlines from over 3,000 leading news sources." It does this by trawling the Internet for relevant news stories on a variety of subjects. Newsnow generates no content of its own, but instead links to pages on other sites, presenting categories of information in a way that is easy to find and read. Newsnow has grown substantially in the three years it has been in existence, and now registers almost five million page impressions each month.

Links are categorised by age ie: when they were posted, as well as their country of origin, which is indicated by a flag next to the link. The date and time that each post was made is also shown, so it is apparent whether you are viewing this morning's news, or information from the previous day.

I now use this site on a regular basis for everything to the latest news on my local football team, to financial information and current affairs. The sheer simplicity of the idea, and its immaculate implementation is a wonder to behold.

News items are categorised into one of ten handy sections:

In The News This Week; Business & Finance; Industry Sectors; Information Technology; Internet; Current Affairs; Regions; Sport; Football; Entertainment

Within each of these main sections are a myriad of sub-sections m
eaning that it is never a chore to find the news that you require.

If you are unable to find a particular sub-category from the menus, then you can perform your own search by keying in the relevant word or words into the search box. For example, I tried typing in the word "Dooyoo", which provided three news articles posted in the last month. In performing such a search, the site is acting as a pseudo search engine, although it is specific to posted news articles rather than items of a more specific nature.

The main benefit of this site is that it is fully up to date, with a refresh each and every five minutes. Many traditional search engines trawl through pages that have last been indexed many days, weeks or even months ago. Newsnow has its finger firmly on the pulse of breaking news, and does all in its power to bring this information to its thousands of users.

Banner adverts are sparse, appearing at the top of the main frame, in the bottom left hand corner, as well as on an intermediate screen that appears prior to a selected article being displayed. It is worth noting that articles open up in new windows, ensuring the home page remains in a separate window of its own.

For slightly older news it is also possible to look back up to thirty days in the archive, by means of a handy drop-down menu. This can occasionally be of interest, although the most current news would usually be the predominant reason for using this site.

If you want news then this site stands head and shoulders above all other sources, including TV, radio, teletext, and the remainder of the world wide web. I'm not sure that I could give this site any more of a glowing accolade than that, although the proof of the pudding, metaphorically speaking, is in the eating - so tuck in now!

{An original Dooyoo opinion
© Blackjane 2001}

Summary: