Newser

August 2, 2007 10:49 AM

Newser is a crazy NewsFilter site.
posted by chunking express (45 comments total)

The about page has more details on the project.
posted by chunking express at 10:49 AM on August 2, 2007

Not sure why but I'm reminded of what Sploid once was, crossed with what TodaysPapers once was, with a bit of Drudge mixed in.
posted by brownpau at 11:02 AM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

Crazy, indeed.

Before you click on the link, please note that (a) rolling your mouse over any item, apparently, will pop up a persistent layer (fake dialog) with more info that needs to be closed manually, (b) it's almost impossible to avoid mousing over any item in order to get to another one, and (c) the back button won't work, at least for me, likely because they're doing so much with javascript listeners and whatnot (Firefox 1.5 here.)
posted by davejay at 11:02 AM on August 2, 2007

NewserFilter
posted by DU at 11:05 AM on August 2, 2007

DayLife is pretty cool too.
posted by Mach5 at 11:06 AM on August 2, 2007 [2 favorites]

You can turn off the faux pop-ups -- it actually has a blurb about what they are doing and an option to turn them on and off in the faux pop-ups.

And I think it's a bit too busy, but I imagine it's the sort of news site that can find a niche.
posted by chunking express at 11:06 AM on August 2, 2007

Ow, my usability!
posted by boo_radley at 11:08 AM on August 2, 2007 [2 favorites]

It makes my brain hurt.
posted by SassHat at 11:09 AM on August 2, 2007

Oh wow, that is some awful interface. Are we sure this isn't just a fake news-site that was made as part of some web design course? One of those "Make sure your page doesn't look like this!" kinds of things? Because if that's the case, it could use more animated gifs of torches at the bottom.
posted by Greg Nog at 11:22 AM on August 2, 2007

Newser has PICTURES!
posted by davy at 11:28 AM on August 2, 2007

See also the former Gawker Media site Sploid.
posted by mdonley at 11:31 AM on August 2, 2007

Gah, this is horrible. Within 9 squares, it uses 4 different styles of displaying news, one of which uses inverse contrast (white text on black). My brain is actually working harder to read the news than if I was scanning a vertical list of unformatted text with inline pics.
posted by junesix at 11:31 AM on August 2, 2007

The back button doesn't work, davejay, because they're doing manual refreshes (as opposed to the normal-by-now AJAX style in-page content update/refresh), and the popups are the same sort of thing, and ... yeah, never mind.

It's just badly badly badly badly badly implemented. The front page design isn't unsalvageable, I think, but those popup things are horrible. Ugh.

Why do people design things that are painful?
posted by blacklite at 11:43 AM on August 2, 2007

Huh. Worked fine for me from the start with no random weirdness of any sort. The first roll-over came up, á la CoolIris, and I noticed it giving me the option to turn such things off, so I took 'em up on it.

It's easy on the eyes and has news I didn't expect to see featured so prominently, so I'm in favour. I'd just like a way to roll it into one of the other module-tastic homepage solutions so that I can continue assembling the ultimate module console for keeping up on the world.
posted by batmonkey at 11:50 AM on August 2, 2007

I should have previewed, I know, but...

Really? You guys feel it's *that* painful and poorly implemented?

I mean, it's got a lot going on, but Max Headroom prepared us for this loooong ago ;]
posted by batmonkey at 11:53 AM on August 2, 2007

I don't know if that no-click navigation project had any influence on this page's design, but if so, I hate it even more now than I did then.

I'm sorry to say that the design was so annoying that I couldn't manage to pay attention to the content, but that's how it is.
posted by invitapriore at 11:56 AM on August 2, 2007

Yes, it's painful and poorly implemented. Max Headroom was a dystopic vision of a future, remember?
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:00 PM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

These news sites are all useless. I set up my own news home page. The only content on it is this:

You are going to die.
Sooner than you think.
Possibly today.
Go.

It's not the Drudge Report, but it tells me pretty much everything I need to know.
posted by Pastabagel at 12:02 PM on August 2, 2007 [17 favorites]

I'm going against the grain here - I actually really like this site. I emailed it to a few co-workers and now we're all trying to out-read each other the latest headlines and shout them around the office.

(It's been a long, long week).
posted by banannafish at 12:02 PM on August 2, 2007

Do we really need yet another "online news service that scans Internet news sources and, using human and machine driven aggregation, delivers the best information in concise, efficient summaries, together with photos, video and audio and links to original stories"?

I mean, really -- do we?
posted by blucevalo at 12:03 PM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

YAAG (yet another aggregator)
posted by delmoi at 12:04 PM on August 2, 2007

JAFO
posted by SaintCynr at 12:10 PM on August 2, 2007

"Do we really need yet another [aggregator]"

Its not that we need that many of them, but that we could do with some better ones. There is so much stuff (news and otherwise) out there, not being effectively found, filtered and delivered, that I think aggregators will continue rapidly evolving for a long time. Essentially, aggregators will keep being made and improved until everyone gets something approaching their own perfect view of the web.
posted by MetaMonkey at 12:17 PM on August 2, 2007

Pastabagel is my hero.
posted by rhizome23 at 12:18 PM on August 2, 2007

LIKE IT
posted by poppo at 12:38 PM on August 2, 2007

Huh. My setup of Firefox doesn't allow scripts, and the annoyances others reported don't occur. I like the site.
posted by SaintCynr at 1:21 PM on August 2, 2007

FilterFilter
posted by salishsea at 1:34 PM on August 2, 2007

"Yes, it's painful and poorly implemented. Max Headroom was a dystopic vision of a future, remember?"

I dunno - it's not painful to me, and I'm really not feeling the implementation trauma that's afflicting so many others.

Max Headroom was right, though, which is my point. We're in almost precisely the future they pictured for us. I want to be so inured to fast info that I can still see the truth even when it's blinking past at .003secs per image ;]
posted by batmonkey at 1:47 PM on August 2, 2007

Not sure why but I'm reminded of what Sploid once was, crossed with what TodaysPapers once was, with a bit of Drudge mixed in.
For me too--very Sploid-esque--with some HinesSight too. It's not bad--sort of an online tabloid.

I hate those zoomy popupish things tho (too many sites use them now)--those and that new thing where if you highlight a word something pops up too related to that word--ugh!
posted by amberglow at 2:05 PM on August 2, 2007

DayLife is pretty cool too.

DayLife is very cool--thanks! I'd never heard of it.
posted by amberglow at 2:07 PM on August 2, 2007

Yeah, count me in as another non-hater. The roll-overs are kind of annoying, but without them it reminds me of Sploid with its god-awful layout that I eventually grew to love.
posted by slogger at 2:12 PM on August 2, 2007

Your favorite NewsFilter site sucks.
posted by spock at 2:17 PM on August 2, 2007

Reminds me of SourceRunner from awhile back.
posted by gum at 2:58 PM on August 2, 2007

ahh-- New News Site: The Newsier Newser -- ...Wolff came up with the idea, which he told me was born with the idea of trying to reinvent the network TV news paradigm for the Web. ...
posted by amberglow at 3:06 PM on August 2, 2007

I like the look.

I'll give it a try for a while. I'm pretty defensive about what news aggregates such as news.google or news.yahoo (and their algorithms) decide to put on the front page.

It's a break from the usual. More usable than some -- like Digg's stacker and swarm, for example.
posted by surplus at 4:06 PM on August 2, 2007

Wow, people remember Sploid?
posted by kenlayne at 4:07 PM on August 2, 2007

we loved Sploid! (until that redesign thing ruined it, of course)
posted by amberglow at 4:21 PM on August 2, 2007

amberglow: Right, the hated 2nd Design. Here's another new site (dumb Yahoo celeb news) that does the latter-day Sploid photo grid.
posted by kenlayne at 4:51 PM on August 2, 2007

it's their version of TMZ and Perez! funny! (they've been experimenting lately, or branching out or something--i posted about cool video interviews they do a while ago, but no one noticed)
posted by amberglow at 5:06 PM on August 2, 2007

what are you doing now?
posted by amberglow at 5:12 PM on August 2, 2007

Horrible.
posted by Joeforking at 5:56 PM on August 2, 2007

From the about us page: "Newser does the reading for you."

I don't like this idea. So what, I should now limit my news reading to one paragraph per topic? I've always thought the great thing about the internet was the breadth and depth of information available to anyone willing to do a bit of homework.

But this is like reading USA Today circa 1990.
posted by brina at 6:59 PM on August 2, 2007

amberglow: Work with some other dudes at Wonkette.
posted by kenlayne at 7:04 PM on August 2, 2007

kenlayne, you look cute in glasses. But you don't talk about ass-fucking nearly enough.

I'm desperate for some new news format, somehow. I used to prefer CNN and ABCNews.com, but both of those have redesigned (CNN now gives you two! instead of three! stories per topic!). I hate their front pages now because they link to all this YouTube and BoingBoingish content, which I already saw three weeks ago. And they now have stories that persist for days at a time. What, they're trying to catch the once-a-week crowd?

I may have to build my own news aggregator.
posted by dhartung at 10:22 PM on August 2, 2007

Like Saint Cynr, my Firefox setup allowed me to avoid all the annoyances. The NoScript extension for Firefox is your friend, people. Embrace it.

Aside from that, I fail to see how this is better than, say, a MyYahoo portal with newsfeeds from several news agencies displayed on the front page. Or how it is at all crazy, unless by "crazy" one is referring to the idea that a news portal is somehow fresh.
posted by moonbiter at 2:54 AM on August 3, 2007