OLD NEWS ANEW
Speaking of newspapers and technology, Google's introduction of a newspaper archival service at the bustling TechCrunch50 Conference in San Francisco yesterday is a notable service for any news junkie. This TechCrunch article provides good background:
" Marissa Mayer just demoed the new Google News Archive search onstage at TechCrunch50. The news archives will run contextual ads from Google AdSense, which will be split with the newspaper publishers.
Google is launching with millions of articles, to which it will add to as time goes one. The service will also try to drive print subscriptions."
The service has a cool interface, and there's something really cool about seeing old microfiche copies of archived newspapers in a web browser. The technology applied is pretty impressive, with every item of interest in the paper being auto-magically turned into a blue-tinted web-link. This excerpt from the Google announcement explains:
"Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all."
While many of the results that pop up in a search query do carry per article charges by the newspaper in question, a lot of content is free. Hopefully more of the archival content moves to an ad-based free model over time. The service overall is an important step forward in "organizing the world's information". Well done, Google.
P.S. I'm attending TechCrunch50. If you're at the conference too, and would like to say hi, drop me a line.
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