Climbing the Newsvine
As usual, I'm hesitant to tag too many things as "Web 2.0," but here I'm going to do so. Last night, I received an invite from a friend for Newsvine, a new news service that's currently in private beta. The Web 2.0-ishness of it is that you can literally have your own "column," (mine is tombiro.newsvine.com) where you can write about anything that you consider newsworthy - and so can anyone else. When combined with a slew of other features (detailed below and in the forthcoming links), I'd have to say that this is one of the cooler things I've seen of late. The man behind the project (assuredly with others) is Mike Davidson, formerly of ESPN.com.
Back in November, Davidson announced Newsvine, calling it "Just like your favorite news site, only smarter." It's got a combination of Associated Press and independently published stories - and within any story, you can "vote" for it to make it more popular, like Digg, and you can comment on any story, like most blogs. Additionally, you can "report" links to the appropriate authority for delisting, if necessary. One thing that I *really* think is awesome is the bookmarklet-like "Seed Newsline" feature, which allows you to just click once and submit something to Newsvine for others to see - a great timesaver, and super helpful for those of us who are either a) regularly publishing elsewhere and don't always have time to publish more content here, but want to contribute or b) are better at filtering and can point people to a ton of great stuff.
Obviously I can't explain it all, and you really have to see it to believe it. However, Anthony Casey has a great runthrough over at his blog, Escape Crate. I advise you to check it out and see what you think.
Lots more here at Technorati.
