Best internet news for people who prefer reading the news?

It really bothers me that news sites have so much video content and do not seem to be geared towards providing an interface for scanning headlines and reading the stories that are of interest.

(I use Firefox, BTW, and the videos seem to be Flash).

When I do get sucked in, and click on a video headline then the videos that load seem to be Flash videos and they always load with the quality set as 'high' and a video frame that is too large to even all fit on my laptop screen. I generally proceed to change the quality to low, to make it load faster, and I don't even see any difference in the image quality, so it would be nice to be able to set low quality as the default.

My laptops screen dimensions are 1366 x 768, and when the videos start, the bottom 25% or so is not visible. This does not really make my love for the videos any greater.

At this point I wish I could just read the stories, but failing that, making the videos small enough to load quickly would be an improvement. Are either of this goals attainable?

Thanks, HandsOff!

 

Maybe set up your google news or some rss?

news.google.com

 

Hi, B.D.,

I never tried Google News, however if there are preferences that can be set that would be a step in the right direction. I've never used RSS. If I understand it, it keeps you posted about updates to stories you are following. Actually not a bad idea.

It's been a couple of years since I moved from the Silicon Valley into the mountains, and I have only just got the internet. LOL, the internet has changed quite a bit during that time!

 

Hi HandsOff!

Well, I don't know exactly what you are looking for, but a site that I like is Alltop.

For example if you go to http://news.alltop.com, you will get latest international news headlines.

And if you go to http://mac.alltop.com, you will see the latest news headlines about Apple.

Or Windows....http://windows.alltop.com/

If you go to http://tech.alltop.com you will see the latest tech news from the most popular tech sites.

Food? then http://food.alltop.com

Those are just a few examples, but I am sure you will understand how Alltop works when you have visited the site

HTH SweX

 

There's your 'problem'.
Do try an rss reader. You will get hooked. You don't search the news, the news come to you.

As you visit a website, and realize you'd want to keep tabs on what's new, you search for the feed url and add it to your reader - Firefox also has a function in the bookmarks menu to search it, "Subscribe to this page"; other probably have that too. After that, when you open the reader, it will update automatically, and you read it from there, or click the title to visit the page.

Not only news websites, but normal blogs and other websites usually have a feed you can subscribe to.

Then there's Miro, or similar applications. You subscribe to a feed as before, but this application is specially made and focused on videos, not text. You set the rules for each feed to automatically download or not the videos. Then as they get downloaded, you can watch them not unlike TV.

Check out Miro's website, introduction videos and so on, you should see what it's about.

 

A site that I use all the time is Newsnow,if this is what you're after:

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/

 

Thanks for all of the great suggestions!

Just for the record, what I came up with on my own (before posting my problem here) was the top 20 internet news sites from 'Best of the Web.' Not to knock their list, but my connection speed in the Santa Cruz Mountains is just not fast enough to comfortably navigate those pages, and view the videos. I'm going to try all of your suggestions. It seems like you ideas will allow better targeting of what I want, and hopefully the ability to download content before click on it, so there won't be watching the first five seconds of a video, and then waiting forever to see the rest.

And my connection is not all that slow. Just not like what you get in the big city!

 

Hi HandsOff,

You might want to try the FF plugin - Flash Video Downloader Youtube Downloader to see if it meets your need.

-- Tom

 

Drudge Report is popular if not the biggest news aggregation website.

 

If you want to know all of the headline news, then checkout: Headlinenews.

-- Tom

 

I use Google Reader and just set up multiple RSS feeds. Some national, some worldwide, some local. Most TV stations have news feeds and of course you have your CNN, BBC, etc.

 

I find NewsMap to be a unique way of accessing news-stories. It can be configured for whatever part of the world you want.

 

When I first recommended news.google.com I didn't use it myself, now I find it really great with all the tweaks you can have, including customizable topics and sources.

I just noticed I can't add source of "NYtimes.com". I tried "newyork times", "nytimes" etc and I couldn't find it. So it means not all sources are usable? They need to have a contract or sth?

 

Breaking News Is a good resource.

 

Thanks for all to info! So far I find I am liking Google News the best but it will take me a while to try them all out. I have a more pressing concern at the moment. It has to do with credit scams. I think it might fall under privacy issues so I will post it there.

Sadly, I may be using my news searching skills mainly to be looking for information about these scams for a while!