3 Ways To Read The News A Little Differently

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3 Ways To Read The News A Little Differently

As the world continues its rapid movement to the Web, things are changing in the field of journalism. Where once newspapers dominated, the world of blogs and online publications are quickly springing up to take its place.

One of the cool things about the Web is that there's nothing holding developers to a particular layout, interface or format. Anything, with a bit of clever design-work, can be achieved. In the news world, there are a few options for unique, different, and fun methods of reading the news.

Whether it's a game, a puzzle, or an image search, here are three new paradigms for news-reading:

Spectra Visual Newsletter

Spectra is presenting a whole new way of reading the news. Instead of scanning a vertical page, you flip through headlines and images to find out what story you're most interested in reading.  You can choose the channels that interest you - Sports, Technology, Politics, and the like - and then flip through that day's MSNBC headlines with Spectra. If you only want news on a particular topic, you can search headlines by word. Clicking on a headline will take you to the full story, and you can save or share stories right from Spectra.

You can even interact with Spectra using your webcam or microphone for an even more immersive experience. Either way, it's a different way to see, read, and interact with news headlines.

Newsmap

The Newsmap is essentially a mashup of newspapers with social media. Using Google News, Newsmap aggregates stories, and presents headlines based on the number of stories reported on a given issue. The larger the headline, the more press it's being given. If you've only got about 10 seconds, but want to get a sense of what's going on in the world, Newsmap's the way to do it. The stories are colored by topic, sized by popularity, and darkened by relevance - dark squares are older stories.

You can sort the results by category (Business, Entertainment, Nation, etc.), or by country around the world. Newsmap's a great way to compare what the world is talking about, and to see in a simple and visual way what's going on in your country and around the world. Watercooler preparation's never been so easy.

NewsBreaker

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