Bot News
Newsguard

By Brian Proffitt

I'll admit it; I'm a news junkie.

The most recent bout I had with my habit was during the U.S. Presidential elections last November.

I stalked the Web sites and the TV like a predator, hungry for news about the whole insane affair. (Usually the result of finding out something new was to yell something profane about either one of the political parties.)

If I had had Newsguard at that time, I likely would have done a lot more yelling.

News bots are a source of fascination for news junkies like myself. It's like having an endless fix, all ready and waiting. For my own self-preservation, I tend to avoid them, else I'd never get any work done.

In the spirit of work, I tried out Newsguard, a new news bot from the Dutch firm newsguard.com.

Right away, I wondered at the stark interface at the bot's home page. Basically, the interface is a simple form you fill out with your search terms, the types of sites you want the bot to check, and the e-mail you want to send the results to. The site uses cookies to remember you when you come back, so there's no login needed.

These cookies also allow you to set up one bot for one e-mail and another bot for a different address.

This wasn't stark; this was simple and efficient!

You can have the results e-mailed to you immediately, once a day, once a week, or even once a month, if you so desire. Immediately was my option of choice, then I sat back and let the e-mails roll in...

...And got a bit flooded. For anyone less than the hardest-core news junkie, I recommend the once a day setting, so you can see the links all together on one nice Web page. Which brings me to the only potential hitch to this bot: results are e-mailed in HTML, so if your mail client has issues with this, you may not want to try this service.

But if this isn't a factor, I certainly recommend Newsguard for all you people who have to stay in the know.