news aggregator

Along with the news that Reddit was spinning out into an independent company last September, the community-curated site also said it was searching for a new CEO.

That new CEO started the job today. Yishan Wong comes to Reddit with an engineering and management background; his last position was Director of Engineering for Facebook.

In a blog post, Wong writes that he was shocked to learn he got the position because even though he had worked at startups and managed large teams of engineers, he didn't have previous CEO experience.

"At first, I didn't really quite believe … Read more

It's been a great week to be a news junkie with an iPhone. On Tuesday, iPad darling Flipboard finally appeared on Apple's smart phone. Yesterday, Google launched its aggregator, Currents. And today, completing the trifecta, Zite unveiled its all-new iPhone app.

Previously, Zite had been available solely for the iPad. It established its place in the increasingly crowded aggregator field by focusing on personalization--giving users something of a Pandora-like experience with news: Like something and want to see more from a specific publication or writer? No problem.

Now, the company--which was bought by CNN in August for a … Read more

Appy Geek is a real-time technology news aggregator that pulls from thousands of curated sources. Running the same engine as its older brother, News Republic, this app is just as smooth, smart, and easy to zip around.

One of the first things you notice about Appy Geek for Tablets is its unique interface. It features dual sliding panels, with one coming in from the left side of the screen and the other from the right. Tap the world icon on the left, and the corresponding panel slides out with a 3D floating tag cloud for picking topics to read about. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Two new companies are launching products designed to get the news to users faster--and from a wider variety of sources. Both are in private beta and not yet available to the general public but were demoed live at the TechCrunch50 conference.

Thoora is a new tool that clusters and aggregates news. It offers people a way to track the latest headlines with a simple ranking tool, ordering incoming stories by "Web reaction." It uses a mix of sources, including Twitter messages, blog posts, and breaking stories from more traditional news outlets. These stories are then filtered and … Read more

A day after the editor of The Wall Street Journal referred to online news aggregators--particularly Google and its Google News product--as "parasites or tech tapeworms," Google is firing back. CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy gets to the gist of the conflict.

Plus, why are Kindle owners staging an online protest? That and more of the day's headlines, on Tuesday's CNET News Daily Podcast. Listen now: Download today's podcast

Today's stories:

Still waiting for GM's city car 'revolution'

Kindle owners stage e-book price protest

End nears for XP, Office 2003 support

Apple updates Xserve with new Xeons… Read more

Martini Media, an advertising network that's aimed at affluent people, announced Wednesday that it has officially launched Martini Life, a site that targets high net-worth individuals through seven main channels: sailing, equestrian sports, private aviation, wine, classic cars, golfing, and cigars.

Martini Life aims at becoming the "go-to" destination for affluent individuals, but it won't create its own content. Instead, the site has pulled in more than 70 publishers and blogs to syndicate content to the site. For example, the site's sailing page features updates from the Mega Yacht News Blog and various other yachting-related … Read more

Daylife, a news aggregation start-up that runs a pretty Web site but makes its money from licensing its software to clients, has launched a new product: Daylife Select. It's a tool for Web sites and online publications to add aggregated news and multimedia content (like YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, and Flickr images) from Daylife without requiring technical expertise.

With a point-and-click interface, participants can insert and place widgets, customize the theme, and even import the CSS design from their own sites. Access to Daylife Select comes along with a subscription to the company's API, which ranges from $10,… Read more

In the category of yet-another-news-tracker, Newsflashr.com added search engine to its news aggregation service, which was launched in February this year. It searches across feeds from popular news-oriented sites, such as Yahoo News, Google News, Digg, MSNBC and even Twitter, delivering results by source.

Newsflashr.com doesn't offer filtering mechanisms, except ranking sites via Alexa, which is an unrefined indication of popularity rather than relevance to the search result. "Our approach is to leave it to the user to compare between the services," said Gal Arav, founder of Newsflashr.com.

Newsflashr.com also lets users search … Read more

On Wednesday morning, I read about a new site called OurSignal, which mashes up the top headlines from Digg, Reddit, Delicious, and HackerNews, promising to show a more diverse array of what the Web's recommending. Kind of like OriginalSignal for social news.

Unfortunately, when I loaded up OurSignal, staring me in the face was "Goatse In Spore," a reference to an extremely crude graphical Web meme (don't Google it, please). Not exactly the kind of top headline I was looking for.

The concept is kind of cool: "warm" colors mean a story is gaining … Read more