Pedagogy,  Productivity,  Software

NewsIsFree

NewsIsFree may be freely used for personal and non-profit purposes, as their terms of service statement explains. The site allows you to customize your pages on their server much as you would pages on Yahoo or some other portal. After logging in, you choose the sources you wish to “subscribe” to using the built in links to the “News Center” on the right side, opting to browse the sources either by Category or by Name, or you can Search for specific topics or sites.

Select the sources you want to subscribe to by clicking the check boxes. At the top of the list is an “Add” button and a drop down menu which lets you choose an extant page (by default you have two, “New Sources” and “Random News”) or create a new page (you’ll probably want a new one).You can then name your page, and decide on the layout you want for the news items you’ve subscribed to. You can also customize the order and layout in which your pages are presented though preference settings via the My Account link at the top of the page, if you change your mind.

One of the really nifty options at Newsisfree is the support for sources in 26 languages, including languages like Danish, Persian, Arabic, Russian, and Estonian, as well as the usual Western European and Japanese you’d expect. You should opt out of any languages you don’t want to be included. My Mail lets you choose any of your customized pages to be emailed to you automatically. There’s even a My Blogs page that lets you post from NewIsFree to your own blogs, using the Blogger API; this works with Radio, Moveable Type and Blogger, among others.