The Problems with Google News (Besides the ‘Parasite’ Issue)

Google News has been under attack recently for being a news parasite
In short, the argument from those at traditional media organisations is that Google’s largely automated news aggregate service which tries to sum up the goings on in the world in one page, is denying them ad revenue and proper credit. Google defends themselves by stating that the their service helps news organisations out by promoting their news services and by directing people to visit their websites.

Aside from this argument, my problem with Google News is that it can display some odd behavior.

1. Obsession with Apple Inc.

A story or multiple stories come up just about every day on Google News. The Iphone (particularly Iphone applications) seems to be very popular with the man, woman or machine which chooses the technology stories.

I think this is why a lot of news services rarely put technology stories on the front page or equivalent as any technology news article has a lot of people who don’t know what it’s about or don’t care.

Then again, this topic has featured in the top 10 of news.bbc.co.uk, a utility which I think represents a good insight into the zeitgeist of intelligent people.

2. Strange choices in what image to display with news stories (and revealing another possible Google obsession with Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan)

This image of Mr Swan or one very much like it appears every day on Google News, sometimes twice in the same segment. Google news also seems to prefer using file photos or stock photography to neatly illustrate a story in one small icon, rather than using a current photo for the story in question. This practice would lend itself to the argument that Google news really isn’t geared towards sending people to the news site in question, but I’m not trying to prove that point in this post.

the website Australia.to also gets first photo preference most of the time for stories related to Australia. The .to address refers to web addresses assigned to the pacific island nation of Tonga and the actual physical location of their website appears to be in Arizona. I would guess that most of its images are from press releases or stock photography. They have no photographers listed on their staff page. This leads to a situation whereby the people or organisations in the news are picking the images that represent them on Google News. Not a great example of crusading online journalism.

3. Deadline Spam
Newspaper websites will typically update all their stories at once unless there is breaking news. This leads to a situation whereby when a major news organisation publishes all its new stories then Google News gets flooded.

You can also see there that Rupert Murdock has been depicted as the Media Chief Executive of Fairfax. He’s not that powerful, yet…

Youtube without the internet

Long video on Youtube? afraid your connection might go down and it will reset?

If you want to save videos from Youtube you can try one of these two applications

Youtube downloader

<a href="“>Youtube Grabber

Cnet.com claims to test all their hosted applications for spyware, but please be aware that there is always a risk when downloading appliactions from the internet. Download at your own risk.

What this Blog is about

First of all, Welcome all Writing and Editing for Digital Media (106-477) students as you will be undoubtedly be the first visitors to this site besides the omnipotent Google spider bots.

The title isn’t exactly a bold statement. I don’t comletely disagree with Marshall McLuhan’s famous “Its the message not the medium” but I wanted to find a snappy title. That said, there is merit to the idea that some of the better traditions from old media can’t carry on to the new. There’s no reason why there can’t be integrity, accuracy, objectivity, legality or a decent writing style on the internet can there? you just have to be a more active consumer to find it but that should change in what I like to call the digital media transition.

Now excuse me while I pretty this blog up a bit.