Newspond vs Digg: Who Does it Better?

A new social aggregator, Newspond, has been the talk of the blogosphere lately with some sites giving it glowing reviews and others offering a more moderate response. However, for a site whose tagline refers to itself as the "most advanced news site on the planet," it begs the question: "OH RLY?" Let’s see if that’s true…

The main difference between a site like Newspond and Digg is that Newspond doesn’t use human editors or voting. Instead, the stories are promoted via "machine intelligence" - that is, an algorithm that determines the newsworthiness of the article. Instead of being limited to a narrow range of sources, like Digg, Newspond claims to scour hundreds of web sites from major news portals to the tiniest of blogs.

So who does it better? Let the comparisons begin…

Stats

I pulled up the popular "Tech News" section of both Digg and Newspond and the first difference I notice is that each site provides looks at historically popular stories. At Digg, you can view the "Most Recent," "Top in 24 Hr," "7 Days," "30 Days," and "365 Days." Newspond, on the other hand, only offers "Now," "Today," "Yesterday," "1 week," and "1 month," completely missing a link to view the most popular of the year. Perhaps this selection will expand as the site ages? If not, Newspond is missing out by not providing annual snapshots of their data.

Winner of the Stats Round: Digg

Categories

Well, this is easy. At this time, Newspond only features three main categories, Tech, Science, and Games. Now, just because these are the only categories that appeal to me, Digg’s wider selection, which delves into areas like Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyles and also features sections with Videos, Podcasts, and Images, is the better option for variety.

Winner for Category Selection: Digg

Newsworthiness

The next thing to notice is the story selection differences between the two sites. On Newspond at 3:16 PM EST (2/20/08), the top tech stories (most popular now) were the following:

Microsoft Suspends Distribution of SP1, Sharper Image files for Bankruptcy, PC Gaming Alliance Officially Announced, Sony to Sell Chip Facility to Toshiba, Sony NW-A820 and NW-A829 Bluetooth Powered PMPs, Microsoft Makes XP SP3 RC2 Publicly Available, Airfoil for Mac OS X transmits audio to the Apple TV, Wii Fit to Launch in May, TypeIt4Me 4.0 Adds Spelling Auto-Correct, Logitech Driving Force GT Wheel.

On Digg, at the same time, the top tech stories were:

Lawrence Lessig Launches Change Congress Movement, Use Your Wii as a Media Center, Undersea Saboteurs May Have Been Responsible for Cable Cuts, Microsoft Post New Windows XP SP3 Build, International Clock Video, ‘DVD Jon’ Frees Your Media with DoubleTwist, Recharge Your iPod with Your Shirt, What do thousands of ‘internet voices’ sound like?, Cable and telcos side with Comcast in FCC Bittorrent dispute, and 16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat fonts.

These examples both come from the "popular now" sections of the two web sites’ tech sections. Each site has a couple of, what I would call esoteric stories, featured, as opposed to large, breaking news items. On Newspond, you could say that TypeIt4Me story and Logitech story fit into this category…maybe even the Airfoil story depending on your level of Apple fandom. On Digg, however, there are several "minor" stories being featured: a clock video, an iPod charging shirt, the "thousands of internet voices", and free fonts. If anything, these seem like articles crafted for Digg. They are the kind of headlines that peak your interest, making you want to click through, but as to whether they are considered "news" is debatable. (I vote no, for the record).

Perusing the other sections of both sites, the experience is the same. Newspond’s "Science" stories feature topics like Cancer Deaths Up in 2005, rate still falling, Do Animals think like autistic savants?, and Stem cells help rats recover function after stroke. Digg, again, goes for…well…Digg-bait: Mysterious Creatures Found in Antarctica, Top 10 Landfill Candidates, 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments, 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities.

Now, Digg may be a fun place to read these off-the-wall stories, but let’s be out with it: Lists Are Not News.

If actual news is what you want, I’m calling the winner of this round: Newspond.

Sources:

As Read Write Web mentioned earlier, Digg’s selection of sources seems to be narrowing. In this selection of stories, Digg featured 2 stories from Ars Technica, and the others came from Lifehacker, BBC, Yahoo, ComputerWorld, News.com, Metacafe, Lessig08, and bittbox.com.

Newspond claims their stories come from all over the web, but do they deliver on this? On Newspond, the stories in my sampling came from ZDNet, DailyTech (2 from here), i4u, Google News, Macismum, HotHardware, New Launches, The Mac Observer, and Uncrate.

Although both Digg and Newspond feature some stories from large news portals, Newspond also pulls from some blogs and sites that aren’t your typical A-Lister fare (like Digg’s favoring of Ars Technica and Lifehacker). However, featuring stories from Google News, i4u, and ZDNet isn’t exactly going to the ends of the internet, either. A quick comparison of some stories outside of the tech category, though, shows that both sites are featuring a combination of large portal news sources as well as smaller sites. 

It’s too close to call without serious analysis, so I’m calling this one a tie.

Comments

We all know what they say about the comments on Digg, but let’s see if it’s true. I dig deeper (pardon the pun) to read the comments on various stories on both Newspond and Digg. Again, differences are apparent.

A typical Digg comment seems to be, more often than not, negative, rude or crude, and doesn’t provide additional, insightful information or feedback regarding the story. For example, a Digg comment on a story about XP, goes like this: seeing as you have "mac" in your name, I’d assume this doesn’t apply to you. You’re comment should read "I don’t care" which would be more accurate of a comment but equally worthless. On Newspond, a comment on a Vista story reads, "I’m not exactly surprised about this. And if you really want to try it out, get a MSDN subscription.Then you can get the Service Pack 1 Beta 2 off of MSDN." Which one is more useful to you as a reader? And this was a mild example, as I’m sure you know. Browsing through other stories, the trend is similar, Newspond readers are commenting with, if not more intelligent, certainly less juvenile thoughts and opinions.

Winner of the Comments: Newspond

End Results

Although a feature to feature comparison of the sites seems to result in a tie, there is something to be said for Digg’s foothold in this niche and the traffic provided when your story is "dugg." Many competitors have tried, and failed, to be the "new Digg," and Newspond is really just another attempt at the same. Getting a story on Newspond won’t bring your server down, bring in additional linkbacks, or turn you into an A-Lister overnight , but reading the stories on Newspond will give you a more intelligent selection of news, even if a more limited slice of that pie.

The thing is, the act of interacting with the news, clicking a button to have your say on a story and its value, is  a process that makes digg…fun. Participating, not just passively consuming, that’s what the web is about now. So where does that leave Newspond and other aggregators? Will they ever have a chance to succeed? If there is any hope at all for them, the one to watch is Newspond. I’m watching, and you should too.

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Buzka is a new site that lets you share your favorite web stuff. In other words, Buzka is digg without the voting. Although digg claims to be a social news site, more and more items on digg are "offbeat" photos or videos. Buzka takes those interests and expands on them by offering a place to share not just stories, but funny items, videos, photos, and more. You can create your own "spot" on Buzka where you can organize the web content you have to share. Some sample spots include "BeatsandPieces - All things musical," "Teaching Resource Plans," and "HipHop is Livin", to give you an idea. Will Buzka really take off? Probably not, but it can still serve as a convenient place for you to organize your web stuff in the meantime.

Sputtr is a start page that offers easy-access buttons to your favorite websites in addition to a Google search box. Clicking the buttons take you to sites like MySpace, digg, twitter, StumbleUpon, and many more. Sputtr has been around for a while, but I did not realize until recently that there is also a mobile version available at mobile.sputtr.com. The mobile page lets you do searches from the search engine of your choosing like Google, Yahoo, flickr, eBay, Amazon, and more. Handy!

Things have been a little busy for me lately, but just because I’m not posting here, doesn’t mean I’m not blogging! Check out my latest on RWW:

Postalz & Scrapblog - Doing More With Digital Photos

When
you go on vacation, you no longer pack canisters of film for taking
vacation photos - you just pack a digital camera and a handful of
batteries. If the hotel has wi-fi, you might even upload photos from
the day’s activities to flickr in
the evening. However, when it comes time to send postcards back home,
you still have to browse through the assorted offerings from the gift
shop, emblazoned with hokey “wish you were here” sentiments overtop
images that look nothing like the place you’re visiting.

In this post we look at web 2.0 services that give you more options with digital photos - postalz and scrapblog.

Continue reading »

Christmas is over and now you have a stack of gift cards but are short on cash to pay your bills…what are you going to do? A website called Swapagift.com can help! Launched in 2003, Swapagift.com will let you buy, sell, swap, and exchange gift cards or use your gift cards to pay bills. You can even mail them in for cash! If you wanted a gift card to your favorite store and didn’t receive one, you can also visit the site to buy gift cards at a discounted price. If you want to swap cards with another user, you can directly do so directly - one-for-one - or you can swap several cards for a single card. You can add cash to the transaction, too, if the cards aren’t of equal value or popularity. It is $1.99 to list a gift card and the listing stays active for 150 days (or until it sells or swaps). If you want to pay bills or receive cash for your gift card, you must refer to the preferred merchant list for bill paying or cash. So, get what you really wanted for Christmas! And feel free to send me your unwanted Starbucks cards!

Online invitation service, eVite, has just released a cross-platform mobile service that lets you send & respond to invitations from your mobile device. The platform consists of 4 mobile products that work together to bring the eVite service with you on the go. The QuickVite feature lets you “quickly” create and send invites called “QuickVites” from either your computer or phone. Guests who receive QuickVites, get them as either an email or a text message, and then they can reply in 3 different ways: they can reply “yes” or “no” by clicking a button in the email, they can reply “yes” or “no” to the text message, or they can click a link to see who’s coming, and add a message before replying. Using the eVite send-to-phone feature, you can send an event’s details like the date, address, and who’s replying, to your phone. You can have the service notify you when you receive a new invitation, (as a host) when a guest replies, have it send you event details within 24 hours of the event, and notify you if there are changes to an event you’re attending. With the eVite mobile page, available at http://m.evite.com, you can view your upcoming events, get event details and see who’s coming, send QuickVites to friends, and reply to QuickVites you’ve received. The fourth feature, “evite on-the-go,” will be a custom downloadable application for your mobile phone, but it has not yet been released.

Lately, I’ve been reading about some new ways to work with your documents offline and then sync them back to an online service. While initially this seems to go against the idea of an online office suite, working offline in this way has some benefits. For one thing, the internet is not everywhere yet. Although wi-fi is now being slowly introduced on some airlines, many business travelers still need to be able to work on their files on the go and this still is not an option on all airlines yet. Then there are other jobs that take people “into the field” that also often involve working on documents when no internet connection is present. Without offline capabilities, a lot of work could come to a stop.

Another useful aspect of working offline is that you have the ability to work in your traditional “offline” office software, which is, at the moment, much more robust and feature-rich than its online counterparts. Suites like Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, StarOffice, and others let you to do a lot more than a free online service like Google Docs, though this may change in the future.

Until recently, the choice between web office suites and offline suites was an “either/or” choice; however, now, there are options available that give you the best of both worlds. Here are a few services and tools I’ve found, some of which are now just on the verge of launching, that promise to bring you the new “blended office suite”:

• DocSyncer: DocSyncer is a yet-to-launch service that syncs up your Microsoft Office documents with Google Docs. The screenshots look nice, so it’s worth signing up to see how it works out.
• OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs: This OpenOffice extension exports & imports your docs in and out of Google Docs. With this, you can upload OpenDocument Text (.odt), StarOffice (.sxw), Microsoft Word (.doc, but not MS XML), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Comma Separated Value (.csv), & Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps) files into and out of Open Office.
• Microsoft Office Live: (Private beta) Your documents are online in the Microsoft Office Live workspace, but when you go to edit them, the editing is done in Microsoft Office software, which you have on your PC. Those edits are immediately reflected in the version on Office Live. Documents can also be shared with others who can comment on them or edit them and the different versions are tracked in the Office Live workspace.
• Zoho Writer + Google Gears: Zoho Writer lets you click a button to go offline. The first time you use the feature, you will be prompted to install Google Gears. After installation & a browser restart, click “Go Offline” again to make your documents (15 docs by default) available offline. When you’re offline, you can go to http://writer.zoho.com/offline to access and edit your files.
• ThinkFree, Premium Version: ThinkFree just announced that they will begin offering a premium version of their online office suite that offer users the ability to work offline. The premium edition will be $5-10/month and the free version will be rebranded as ThinkFree Online Basic Edition and supported by advertising. The private beta will begin in January, 2008 and the wider beta in February.

Do you need to work offline? If so, what software or services are you going use?

TuneSquare is an online community where unsigned artists and bands are making money while listeners download their songs for free. The artists are paid via the site’s “carefully selected” on-site advertising and flash advertisements that are shown while a song is played. So maybe it’s a lot of ads, but if it means free tunes and artists making money, I suppose that is OK. You can browse through different genres like pop rock, hard rock/metal, Soul/R&B, Singer/Songwriter, Hip-Hop/Rap, Techno/Electro, World, Club/Dance, and Other. For more detailed browsing, and even more genres, you can click on “Browse,” which is where you will find options like Alternative (hello!), as well as more obscure genres like “Screamo,” “Shoegaze,” “Breakbeat,” and “Zouk.” (I had no idea the extent of musical ignorance until reading through the full genre list!) You can listen to the songs online, and then, if you like them, click “Download this song,” to snag a DRM-free mp3. You can also recommend the song to other users or share the song on Facebook.

If you have ever used online photo editor, Picnik, then you know that it’s one of the better free tools out there. Now, that easy-to-use functionality has come to Flickr! Flickr has teamed up with Picnik to offer this service right from Flickr. To use Picnik, you need to first give the Picnik service permission to edit and save your photos, like other 3rd party services, but then it’s integrated right within your Flickr account. With Picnik, you can fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, add text, shapes, or apply effects to your photos. To get started, just browse to one of your photos on Flickr and click “edit” from the menu above the picture.

Excellent Video!

Here_Comes_Another_Bubble_-_The_Richter_Scales
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