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Thank you to Stephen Marvin and his students at West Chester University for their invaluable feedback!
Newstin is an excellent resource. It has features that are attractive to people of many backgrounds but most especially business. The translation feature is a great one since there are many relevant and valuable publications around the globe that are not accessible in every language. Upon searching for the topic, “FCC and cable television” five-hundred and fifteen documents were returned. Review of several of the articles proved that these were indeed viable resources on the topic. The links to the articles were clean and led to reliable sources such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. The presentation is very good there is a polished look to the site. The feature of being able to sign up for RSS Feeds on certain topics is also handy. The “discover more” feature in the search component is helpful as well.
I would recommend this for use in the Academic community since many professors and students, especially in the social science, journalism, and political science fields would find this a useful information source. The news is up-to-date and the site must be updated daily if not more than once. The articles retrieved from my FCC and cable television search displayed in order from most recent to least recent. The first displayed article in the returned items was a story from today’s Washington Post.
As mentioned above, I believe this resource would be extremely valuable to those in the business or corporate world. International business travelers would be able to access information globally and have it translated into their mother tongue instantly.
This website could be useful to those individuals in the societal, cultural or historic institutions as far as the news is important and the cultural ramification of this delivery is of interest to historians. I would not recommend it for genealogists or people doing research on past events.
The SWOTS of this product are:
Strengths - Very well presented and connected to top sources.
Weaknesses - Is not based in the United States. Is based in Czech Republic so may be more likely to be censored.
Opportunities - The sky is the limit for this source. I think their market could expand once they are able to fully patent their technology.
Threats - There may be many more of this type of search engine/interface so they must try to make themselves more accessible and carry news that may not be just the mainstream.
Who does it serve?
This site can serve a wide variety of users. It caters to those who are searching for news stories in a variety of languages or from diverse perspective. It can be useful for a researcher or a novice user.
How much would you pay?
Cost is a difficult thing to determine. Depending on the size of the library serving, this source could be more valuable for the user base. A small rural library wouldn’t have quite the demand for this as a paid service compared to an academic or more urban library. I do think because of the translation service, it has merit as a paid service. This service does act like an RSS service in some ways, aggregating the main needs feeds from other sites such as Yahoo.
Who would you recommend to use it in an academic community?
I think that this could appeal to a wide user base in an academic community. International students and faculty would appreciate the diverse perspective of news being presented. Those studying foreign language could practice reading and translating into a variety of languages. Students in social or political science, journalism, or other fields can easily access the news across a broader perspective, but have the access in their native language.
Who would you recommend to use it in a corporate community?
Again, I feel that this could be good for those who are seeking out the public opinion or current news. It is very customizable, so the busy executive could easily tailor the site to their needs.
Who would you recommend to use it in a society, cultural, or historic institution?
Many non-profit organizations could benefit from this site for similar reasons mentioned above.
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Give me the SWOTS
Strength—Translation service, readable interface, good “about us” and blog section
Weakness—Because it like an RSS feed, some people might question using it as a paid service. If they can already customize their own RSS feeds, why do they need the site?
Opportunity—News Archive searchable by date
Threats—Google news also offers RSS and translation services.
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NewsTin is a site that allows users to search the news in different languages. Users can look through a large list of topics instead of just searching by keywords. Users can also set up an account and customize their page to keep track of topics of interest. Reading articles of interest by topic seems a bit easier than keyword searching, especially if one would just like to browse. One of the cool features was to enter a topic and then a map comes up that one can click around on it to related topics.
The strengths of NewsTin include: free usage, easy to use, can customize. I really did not come up with weaknesses. There would be huge marketing opportunities for NewsTin to market this product to many businesses and organizations. The threats would include other news companies that provide similar searching.
www.newstin.com
- Who does it serve?
This product serves anyone who wants news retrieval in a systematic or customized way, or anyone who desires to have their news and information translated into other languages.
- I would pay a fee comparable to other subscription services of that nature.
- I would recommend its use to students and libraries in an academic setting. Obviously, blogs are not authoritative news sources but the rest of the site includes respected news sources.
- I would recommend its use to anyone in the corporate world who needed information regarding companies, executives, or topical information.
- I don’t know who would use it in a historic institution
- SWOT
Strengths: There are manystrengths, especially in the organization of the information itself. I was surprised at how simply the information was laid out, particular topics grouped into categories and subcategories. The “help” features explain how to access information in easily understandable ways such as the “custom topics” section. Language translation ability is great, and the custom topics section fantastic, with step by step navigation on the left side. Advanced search is searchable by genre, source quality, source location. . .terrific! This site anticipates user needs before the user does. Weaknesses/opportunities= blogs. I’ve found that insightful information can come from blogs although they are not authoritative. Many young, techno-hip, upwardly mobile, professionals blog, with some being helpful and some, junk.
This site serves journalists, investors, business people (competitive intelligence professionals, marketers, etc.) researchers, information brokers, and reference librarians. It is similar to other specialized search engines such as Intelways (http://intelways.com) or LeapTag (http://leaptag.com) that enable one to perform subject specific searches and/or feature push technology for news. Large, mainstream search engines offer similar services as well, such as Google®’s customizable home page with user-specified, subject specific news feeds. This site offers valuable subject trees and search refinement options that make monitoring defined subjects and fields easy. The site also offers a global perspective on the news; it is not limited to United States or North American media.
It is difficult to say what one would pay for such a service. For one, newstin is in beta. One would be wary of paying for a beta service. For another reason, the amount one might pay would depend on the reason for using the service. One who is using the service individually to stay up to date for one’s job may not be willing to pay for the service as it is presently, partly because free competitors exist and partly because the employer or company is not willing to pay for such services. An information broker, corporation, or competitive intelligence professional may be willing to pay a reasonable fee. Perhaps $9-$10 per month would be possible after newstin is out of the beta stage. This site could be useful in the academic community. Journalism students, researchers and subject librarians are likely to find the widespread, current news stories helpful. The site is also likely to be useful for corporate research, particularly in the fields of marketing, research and development and competitive intelligence.
Strengths: Currency, taxonomy, customizable / Weaknesses: still in testing stage, need for more subject choices / Opportunities: Expand subject trees, capitalize on translation feature / Threats: Numerous competitors.
Newstin is an interesting combination of news and blog on a powerful search engine. In addition, one can switch between languages such as English, Russian, Arabic to name a few. The layout of this search engine is pleasing to the eye. It has a navigation bar horizontally across the top of the page as well as the topics are vertically listed on the left hand side. The right hand side is the advertisement side of the page. While searching on this site, one can organize the news into various topics and/or related topics. The results of the topics (once defined) are listed by the most relevant topic to least relevant topic. Search queries may also be saved.
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Newstin is a search engine that can serve all and indeed does on an international basis. I think that it would be a great addition to the academic community as well as to a corporate community. I would recommend this site for all to use in society. It has value across all disciplines.
SWOT Analysis:
Strengths:
- Visually appealing
- Multi language
- Serves a diverse audience
- Can customize search
- Organizes information
- Saves search query
- Keywords not necessary
Weaknesses:
- Help feature should be more visible
- Background/direction feature should be located where user can see it
Opportunities:
- Search engine is used across the world
- Could be used in the academic setting and/or school setting
- Marketing could also take place in Barnes & Noble, etc
Threats:
- Established search engines
- People set in searching styles
Sites like PageFlakes enable you to do something similar. Not as efficiently as Newstin, but you can collect your favorite sites together on one space. A business in a highly competitive industry would pay to have Newstin do the searching for them and deliver the information to their Intranet.
Who would you recommend to use it in an academic community? Some of the news sources are subject/industry specific; like redorbit.com, a science and technology site. However many articles come from yahoo.com and newspapers. I would recommend the site to educators and students who want current information. Education is one of the topic headings.
Corporate community? Business is one of Newstin’s top indexed subjects. The topic customization feature adds value and is easy to use, except I couldn’t figure out how to search with the refined topics I’d chosen. One can customize articles according to one’s industry. This customization reminds me of the ALERT feature that databases have.
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Strengths: Free, easily searchable. The Star Tree Navigator is an interesting graphic organizer. The ability to translate material from other countries is very unique.
Weakness: The articles don’t always fit the topics; like a fossil article under the Entertainment category.
Opportunities: Add professional journals to source list.
Threats: Other companies copying the service.
