How to Stay Ahead With Up-to-the-minute News

How to Stay Ahead With Up-to-the-minute News

In a world where everyone is connected, you shouldn't have to go searching for news — it should come to you. Karan Bajaj shows you how you can stay on top of current events or really anything you choose, with just a few clicks

Online Newspapers 

The newspaper is the primary source for news for a lot of people. To keep up with 

the digital age, publications also have a portal, which is continuously updated. www.allyoucanread.com and www.onlinenewspapers.com work as a central repository of newspapers from around the world. You can view newspapers from various countrires and access websites with one click. On a smartphone, a free app called Newshunt gives you quick access to news from multiple newspapers. 

Live TV News 

If you have a fast enough broadband connection, you can watch live streaming news video, right in your web browser. http://wwitv.com provides a list of channels from around the world. Select the news channel of choice and the website will either stream a live feed of the channel or take you to the live broadcast page on the official website. On your smartphone, check out free apps like nexGtv, YuppTV or Myplex Now TV. You can use them to watch Indian news channels. 

BuzzFeed 

As an online news aggregator, BuzzFeed lets you select the amount of news you want in different categories (Tech, Politics, Food, Sports and so on). Once you have set these parameters, the website refreshes the home page with the most relevant stories for you, from across the Internet. The best part is that you don't need to open multiple pages — all content is displayed on a single page — just keep scrolling down for more. 

Live News Ticker 

For a live, customisable, RSS-based news ticker right on your desktop, head to Snackr (www.snackr.net). Snackr is a free download available for Windows, MAC OS X & Linux. If you see something interesting on the ticker, just click it to pop it out in a window. 

Apps 

Feedly 

With a mobile-optimised view, this RSS news reader aggregates contents from different websites of your choice and delivers them to your handheld device. 

Flipboard 

Presenting news from topics of your interest, Flipboard has a magazine-style interface — you just flip pages to view various stories from different sources. 

News 360 

With a combination of text, images and videos, this free app offers the latest news from over 50,000 sources. You can also save articles for offline reading.

Pulse News 

Pulse shows headlines from various stories in a unique, scrolling interface. You can view an article in text-only format or just visit the new source directly. 

Zite 

Zite lets you select from thousands of topics of interest and then creates a personalised magazine with news, articles, images, videos in an easy-to-browse interface. 

Track a Word 

IF YOU NEED to constantly keep track about mentions of a particular word (could be a name, brand name or an industry) on the World Wide Web, check out http://en.mention.net. You can either download the desktop software, the mobile app or just use the website. You can also select specific sources which you want to track, such as Facebook, blogs, forums, videos and images. The free trial 

limits you to 500 mentions per month, while a paid plan (US$ 19.99/ month) gives you 50,000 mentions per month. 

Publish a NewsPaper 

USING THE free Paper.li service (http://paper.li), you can create and publish a virtual newspaper (around any topic) on your social network. You need to login with your Twitter or Facebook account and choose how often the newspaper will be published. Just select your preferred sources from a list and you are good to go. 

Google Alerts 

IF YOU WANT to get regular alerts about a specific topic, head to Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts). The interface is simple — type in a keyword, select the type of result you require (news, videos, discussions) and how often would you like to be alerted (immediately, once a day or once a week). Enter your email address and you will start receiving alerts in your email inbox. 

SMS Alerts 

CELLPHONE operators provide a paid subscription service for SMS based news alerts. Airtel has Cool Alerts (Dial *321# to subscribe), Vodafone has Vodafone Alerts (Dial *123*31# to subscribe) and Idea has a news portal pack. Other operators also have similar services for news alerts. Subscriptions to this 

service usually set you back by 30/month (for a news alert every two hours).

Courtesy : Techtonic, Times of India, dated: 17/04/2013