Google seems to be on a roll these days with all of its news offerings.  Who knew that a little renewed competition in the search engines wars could lead to such an outpouring of innovation!  While some of Google’s releases have been very high profile (Real Time Search, for example), others have been snuck out with less fanfare.  Living Stories debuted quietly today.  We at iBraryGuy were so impressed by it, however, that we decided to give it a little hype of our own.

Google Living Stories is an awesome concept – all of the news on a major topic, gathered in one place, with a permanent URL to which you can constantly refer for the latest updates, and organized in a logical and accessible fashion.  It’s a tall order.  Thanks to a partnership between Google, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, it is almost a reality.  Living Stories has launched, but it is still in beta.  Even so, you have to check it out!

By choosing one of the currently featured “Living Stories” on the beta site, you get an interactive view of the topic as never seen before.  You get news stories, opnion pieces, media, discussions, quotes, additional resources, and – one of our favorite features – even a timeline.  The whole “story” is constantly updated with new materials, yet the URL for it never changes.  You can even sign up for e-mail updates or an RSS feed of the “story”.  It is some serious innovation for those who are serious about following a story. 

Google Living Stories is still in development.  However, with two of the most respected newspapers in the USA participating, it is off to an excellent start.  Give it a look and let us know what you think.

Here at iBraryGuy, we are news hounds.  Our days begin and end with the latest headlines from across the library and information world.  We literally live on our newsfeeds!  As such, we know just how difficult it can be to sort through the crush of internet news services to find the truly “good” stuff.  Thus, we have been on a mission to make it easier for you – our fellow information professionals.  Regardles of where in the spectrum of this industry you fall, iBraryGuy’s customized news services have you covered.  Librarians, information professionals, publishers, knowledge managers, archivists, and so on . . . we have striven to bring you the best of news and blogs with the following offerings:

Libraries, Information, and Knowledge Management News at Google News:  Using the pioneering news customization functions at Google, iBraryGuy’s editors sat down and customized a news section especially for librarians and information professionals.  This section is designed to search across Google’s wide array of news sources to bring you articles of interest to our profession.  Articles, videos, and even images . . . it is all there.  All you have to do is subscribe!

LibraryVibes at Netvibes.com:  Netvibes is an awesome service for tracking the blogs and news sources you enjoy most.  The iBraryGuy editing team recently sat down with lists of the top rated blogs and sites for library, information, and technology news and created a central Netvibes site to hold them all.  Check out LibraryVibes for all the best blogs and news sources in our industry.  There is a tab for library news, one for tech news, and even one for more general news.  A truly unique one-stop shop!

Books at AllTop.com:  While this is not one of our creations, the Books topic list at AllTop is still a resource we like to share.  Yes, iBraryGuy is on AllTop’s list of best blogs for readers and book lovers.  However, so are many other great sources for the latest goings-on in the book and publishing world.  The iBraryGuy team is working to convince AllTop to create a topic for libraries and information.  In the meantime, we are honored to be featured here.
A great deal of work and library-love have gone into creating and maintaining these resources.  We hope you will enjoy them and invite your feedback on how we can make them even better!  Please let us know what you think.  And please SHARE these links with your colleagues.  In our profession, USE is the highest form of flattery!

One of the things that many of us “old timers” miss, when it comes to accessing our news publications online, is that sweet and tactile ability to simply skim the pages.  Most of us have spent many a lazy and lingering moment idly flipping pages and reading opening paragraphs in a hunt for something that more fully consumed our attention.  It is hard to do that online with so much being thrown at you at once.  At least one publisher is trying to recapture a little of that old glory.  The venerable New York Times has launched its new Skimmer!

Launched today, the New York Times Skimmer is designed to recreate that experience of leisurely paging through the paper.  Granted, it is not nearly as tactile. However, it certainly is a fantastic interface.  The grid-like presentation gives you a smattering of headlines and accompanyiong summaries for each section of the paper.  You choose the section from tabs on the right and simply browse the headlines.

Skimmer is actually a web-based application, not a site per se.  It is optimized to work with rious browsers and gives users some degree of control over the display options.  A particulalry neat feature is the text itself. Skimmer is using the actual NY Times fonts!  Thanks to some real innovation at the New York Times, reading the news could yet again become a pleasure!

With so much great stuff on the Web today (and conversely, so much junk as well) Social Bookmarking is a very big deal these days.  Netizens want to be able to store, organize, manage, annotate, and share their favorite Web sites.  They especially want to be able to access their favorites from any place, at any time, on any Internet-connected computer.  There are many sites and services that provide for some form of social bookmarking.  One of the better ones worth noting is the interestingly named, Mister Wong.

Mister Wong allows its users to search for the best sites on the web, save and manage their favorites, access their accounts from anywhere, and connect with Twitter and Facebook to import interesting links.  Best of all, for all of its functionality, Mister Wong is FREE!  It even offers a plethora of tool bars, buttons, gadgets, and plugins to make using the service as seamless and simple as possible.  For you mobile types, Mister Wong also offers two flavors of its service that are optimized for smart- and web-enabled phones.  Too cool!

Launched in 2006, Mister Wong has grown to become Europe’s largest portal of its kind with over 7 million monthly users.  In addition to English, it is available in German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and French.

You simply cannot go wrong with Mister Wong!