New News Aggregating Site On the Horizon -- Topix

I rarely get site announcements describing the site as a "News Site of Doom," but what the hey. After viewing it, I'll give it props as a news site of doom, though a Beta news site of doom. (doomlet?)

Anyway, Topix ( http://www.topix.net ) aggregates news on over 150,000 topics and splashes 'em all over the front page for you to see. You can get a sense of how many Topix there are when you look at the front page on the left side and see local news available from Akron, OH to Windsor, CO -- and that's not he entire city list! In the middle of the page are news teasers in several categories including US & World News, people news, and auto news. A keyword search box is also on the left side of the site.

I chose to look at Electronics because I was interested in the idea of over two dozen news topics just devoted to electronics. Alas, there weren't two dozen topics, but instead eight. (Beta.) I picked one: MP3 Players. I got a page of news summaries and links to news about MP3 players from several different sources including BusinessWire, PC World, and Slashdot. It looked like about 30 days' worth of news on one page.A "Show All Articles" link at the bottom of the page takes you to a headline-only list
broken out by date. A busier category, like Audio And Video, has news in two columns. Looks like recent stuff (in the last 24 hours) on the left, with other articles on the right.

The site currently uses over 2000 sources to develop these very specific news categories. There aren't any e-mail alerts or personalized pages at the moment, but Topix notes in its FAQ that they are "two of our primary goals for our next iteration". I'd like to see a personalized page option and I'd like to see all those yummy categories that are promised on the front page. Worth a look.

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