March 10, 2005, 9.16am • 18 comments » • 611 Views

Google News offers customisation

In the last half-hour, as they say, Google made a big announcement - user customisation of the Google News front page.

Of course, the likes of Yahoo! and Excite have been doing this for years. But who uses Excite anymore anyway?

Google’s implementation is nice and simple; it’s dynamic, meaning you never have to leave the front page. Just click “Customise this page” to expand a dynamic menu; then just drag the default sections around to create your own news agenda.

More than that, add sections for news as filtered by your own keywords. I just made R.E.M. top of my news.

Another example of The Daily Me.

Here is the press release…

Today, Google announced a new feature on Google News that enables users to

customise their front page news as they read it.  This enhancement

represents another important achievement in Google’s ongoing focus to help

users find and organize more of the information they want.

 

When users visit Google News at news.google.com, they will see a box

labeled “Customise this page” that offers the following features:

 

*Page customisation– Users may customise the Google News front page with

news sections of their choosing. They can choose from 9 available languages

and 22 local editions of Google News from around the globe, enabling users

to view Google News in a customised global, multilingual format.  For

example, a user living in London who speaks both English and Japanese may

choose to view “Health” news from the UK and “World” news in Japanese.

 

*Add custom sections– Users may create their own personal section for the

Google News front page by specifying keywords, preferred language, and/or

categories from where to draw the stories.  For example, users interested in

reading news about Google may select [google] as a keyword in the

“Technology” category. Newly created sections will also appear in users’

left navigation bar.

 

*Section rearrangement– Users may rearrange the sections of the front page

they’d like to view. For example, if they’d rather read “Entertainment” news

before “Business” news, they may place the Entertainment section toward the

top of their customised front page.

 

*Number of headlines by section selection– Users may easily modify the

number of headlines displayed per news section.  (Changing the number of

stories in a section will change the alignment of sections on the page.)

 

*Show headlines only– Users may also select to view headlines only, without

displaying the first sentence of a story nor images.  In addition to the

“Text Version” that Google News provides, this feature may be helpful for

users with non-broadband or slower Internet connections.

 

*Share customised news page– Users may share their customised news page

with others by clicking on the link at the bottom of their page that reads

“Share your customised news with a friend.” This feature provides a URL for

their current customised page.  If users change their customised settings,

they will receive a different URL. An example of a bilingual customized news

page that displays news in English and French can be found at

news.google.com/news?ned=:ePkh8BM9gxjPDiRAuiD2AHlJMF45iFcO46WCeKlSYLN
BdiYnAgAqpgpQ

.

 

We’re excited about the opportunity to be able to offer the customised

Google News feature in 9 languages, and we’re exploring opportunities to

make the Google News service available in more languages and more countries.

More information about Google News can be found at news.google.com
.