Sunday, November 05, 2006

Introducing Newgie

Newgie is the novel creation of Jason Windebank and Jacob Rheuban who decided to fill a niche market for news junkies. This web-based news aggregator scores selected articles based on the reputation of the reporting agency and then adds or subtracts points based on user views, recommendations, and forwards. While user-driven rankings are nothing new – one need only think of Digg – Newgie is taking a more dynamic approach to generating ranks: Rather than relying on user votes, Newgie’s in-house ranking engine continuously monitors the activity surrounding a story and automatically adjusts its score.

Though the site’s layout is spartan – surprisingly void of web 2.0 graphical overkill – it provides an intuitive platform upon which to submit stories, subscribe to feeds, and manage user-defined categories. Additionally, custom Newgie RSS feeds can be created for users of external RSS readers.

Newgie frontpage view

Newgie category view

Newgie’s ranking system is an interesting idea but one which relies on the active participation of its users within the Newgie community. The question now revolves around the site’s ability to generate sufficient mass to make it a viable option to other socially driven "news" aggregators.

Though still in Beta, Newgie definitely warrants a look.





Digg!

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