The New News At Google

From Dave Winer's Scripting News blog:

Google PR sends a message that they have a new News service. Maybe I'm slow this morning, or maybe I'm spoiled, but what's the big deal. I thought they already had this. My personal aggregator is better, it shows me what I'm interested in, it's not one size fits all. Help me figure this out. I'm sure there's something innovative here, I just don't see it. 

Well, the main page of their News service isn't much different than any portal services "add news to your home page" feature, but their News service does have one feature I like very much and have already found several uses for -- their news article search engine.

Say, for example, you've seen a really interesting article referenced on someone else's blog, but there are no links to it available.  You'd like to be abe to offer credit to the initial publisher of the item but aren't sure where to look.  You can grab a sentence or short phrase from the article that you think might be unique, put it in the news article search box, and it'l find any matching new articles with that line or phrase in it.  This, I've found, is extremely useful. 

Because it only searches news articles rather than the entire web you're less likely to get "junk" returns - sites that have the phrase you're looking for, but otherwise bear no relevance to what you're trying to find. Plus, it helps you find other interesting news sources to add to your aggregator page.