Online affairs

Many companies emerging during the halcyon days of the dotcom boom were founded on a single principle - that newspapers were on the way out and soon we'd get most of our news via the internet.

The printing presses kept rolling and newspapers have even experienced a renaissance in some markets. Newspaper circulation and advertising has revived.

But the internet is an increasingly compelling source of news, with technological change making it a news-friendly place.

So-called RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and news aggregation websites are revolutionising the way we consume web-based news.

Among the most popular of the aggregators is news.google.com - a service from the company behind the world's most popular search engine, www.google.com.

The news service will "spider" the web for all the stories it can find on any given subject, sometimes returning hundreds of results.

It will link to sites that can only be accessed with a subscription but will warn you beforehand. Websites such as Yahoo.com and Altavista.com boast similar services, and these aggregators are great for comparing rival media organisations' coverage of a story.

Most big news information websites and newspapers have RSS-enabled their websites, removing the need to constantly check the site for updates or subscribe to news alerts that are emailed to you.

RSS is simply an XML-based web format for sorting content, but it has become a powerful tool for delivering news.

At Bloglines.com you simply chose the RSS feeds you wish to receive. As new stories are posted, your Bloglines news list will be updated. No constant visits to your favourite news websites to check if they have been refreshed with the latest bulletins.

Once you've visited your desired site in Bloglines the counter for new stories is reset to zero.

The internet news mill is relentless and your Bloglines news list needs daily attention.

Locally, the website of the country's largest daily newspaper, the Herald Online (www.nzherald.co.nz) offers email news bulletins twice a day, the first delivering links to the stories making the print edition and an afternoon bulletin updating the day's developing stories.

As web traffic grows, the Herald Online and other news websites are increasingly posting stories and photos exclusively to the web and directing readers of the paper to the website for more in-depth analysis.

An extensive revamp of news coverage on the site has been accompanied by changes in the way classified ads are presented.

Copies of job adverts and property listings are now viewable as they would be in the paper and are searchable from 7.30am each morning, putting the Herald Online website on an even more equal footing with the print edition.

Scoop.co.nz offers useful nuggets, such as lists of questions members of parliament are lobbing at each other in the house and their answers.

Go to state broadcaster tvnz.co.nz for free video feeds of certain news bulletins, while Stuff.co.nz aggregates the newspapers of media group Fairfax, such as the Dominion Post and the Sunday Star Times.

At NZcity.com you can create your own homepage, with news and information totally customised to your tastes.

Telecom's website, Xtramsn.com, has the advantage of being the arrival point for thousands of Kiwis who log out of their Hotmail.com email accounts. It's also a massive source of news and is particularly strong in the areas of sport, entertainment and breaking news.

But for international issues, it is the large foreign news sites that offer the most. Many are still free to access, well designed and their archives are searchable. The Guardian's (www.guardian.co.uk) online home to Britain's respected left-leaning broadsheet newspaper is a great source of news, especially features, opinion and reviews.

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com) requires you to register but is also free to access.

The high-brow Arts & Letters Daily (www.aldaily.com) is a fantastic and free source for essays and features culled from the world's magazines and newspaper review sections.

The website of the Arab news organisation Al Jazeera (www.aljazeera.com) has become popular as its coverage of conflicts in the Middle East has provided a different slant to traditional western news agencies.

And the rise of the "weblog" - internet opinion and commentary journals - has given anyone with a point of view scope to articulate their own take on the news. Publicaddress.net is the best local site of this kind.

Sifting through a handful of well-chosen online news sites and credible weblogs involves more effort, but is ultimately more rewarding than lounging in front of a TV that's playing rehashed satellite news feeds.

For many, however, reading formatted news stories online has nothing on browsing the pages of a newspaper. The website www.pressdisplay.com is trying to bridge the gap for ink-and-paper faithfuls. It displays full-colour reproductions of the pages of 200 newspapers, usually a day after publication.

Google is working on a search engine for video clips, which has exciting future prospects for news junkies. Initially, Google Video will allow users to search for digital still pictures and transcripts from their favourite TV sitcoms. But the plan is to extend this to full motion clips of all kinds. A month-old 60 Minutes interview piece from the US therefore may end up available to a world audience via a search engine.

Executed properly it could be as revolutionary as the step radio news broadcasters, such as the BBC World Service (www.bbcworldservice.com), took in broadcasting its signal digitally via the internet to a world audience.

Other approaches to online media are also gaining momentum. The Vodafone Live mobile phone service, which is being offering free until the end of March, gives access to news stories on the handset. Telecom offers a similar headline news service for its mobile users.

As third-generation mobile services roll out and phones with high-resolution, colour screens become more pervasive, watching video clips of the six o'clock news as you inch forward in gridlocked Auckland traffic will become a reality.