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CYBER
CH@TTER
Newspaper
@ 24/7
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| IT Minister
Pramod Mahajan (right) launches NT, as Mr. Aroon Purie and ITGO chief
Anand P. Raman look on |
There's
no getting away from this one. It's too much of a trendsetter and certain
to affect the way we perceive and receive news. The News Today (thenewstoday.com)
went online last week, replacing the format of a portal providing aggregate
news through india-today.com,
in the process becoming the country's first 24/7 (that's round the clock,
seven days a week) e-newspaper with streaming news video and built-in
custom options. This is the multimedia way of the future.
In the past
two years, the Net has been inundated with web editions of newspapers
and magazines. Moreover, almost every ISP and portal has, along with services
and e-commerce, offered a grab bag of news bites from any available source,
often without a clear idea of what is newsy. This adds to what India Today
Group Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie calls "digital diarrhoea".
For most
such operations, while the main news remains unchanged through a 24-hour
cycle, occasional breaking news is updated as flash news with little background.
The News Today breaks that by constantly updating news to make the top
page, or the e-front page, a dynamic entity that changes as many times
in the day as the news demands it, fed by a worldwide network of dedicated
correspondents and editors. Delinked from the print editions of the group
such as India Today, Business Today and Computers Today-these continue
to be available on india-today.com and through links on thenewstoday.com
with their own add-on web-exclusive content-this approach provides the
surfer/viewer with a paperless paper with the sassy attitude of the web.
The plus
for The News Today, besides the full-blown newspaper-like features-editorials,
op-ed features, nation, business, worldwide stock market updates, foreign
affairs and sports, interviews, cartoons, jokes, astrology, and so on-are
chats, bulletin boards, video clips and another first: custom options.
Most webzines and web editions of newspapers offer a standard top-headlines
type option, delivered to your mailbox or through WAP phones and other
devices. The News Today's 'My Paper' option lets you choose whether you
want politics or business or sports, or all three, the number of items
per section, the priority and the time you want it delivered in, broken
up into increments of one hour, irrespective of where in the world you
register from.
So get with
it. It's a different experience.
Dot Watch
Here's another
web utility. DataBites (databites.com) is a 1.42 MB download that can
launch directly from your desktop or wireless device, captures content
from a web page of your choice and stores it in small "bites".
A well-designed demo-though a trifle slow to load-backgrounds you and
an easy click through installation procedure lets you get ahead.
If you were
stuck with the web translator Babel Fish (babelfish.altavista.com) try
some others that have followed the way of language exchange. There's freetranslation.com
that offers English to major European languages; transexp.com, which throws
in Polish, Finnish, Russian and Japanese.
Switch on
to the Maha Kumbh Mela at Allahabad that runs January 9 through February
21 with some Net action. Divinerevelation.org offers wise words and tour
options, as do travel.indiamart.com and yatraindia.com. Whatsgoingon.com
lists, well, what's going on and members3.boardhost.com/kumbhbaba links
a hippie-style message board. Get on to any major search engine for more.
Please
send your comments to Sudeep Chakravarti at
Sudeep
Chakravarti@intoday.com
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METRO TODAY
As
the Government brings in more people and mops more money in taxes, it
must be seen to be rewarding those who come forth and pay up, writes India
Today Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 