News, news
Muse #372 - two different ways
I typically acquire news from two sources - both online. But with two different completely different approaches.
My go-to source for headlines is BBC News that I read through their app. It is structured and categorized and in a few minutes I can glance through their feeds for global news, breaking news, country-specific news - US/Canada, Europe, UK, India, Asia, Australia; sports, technology, business, and other relevant categories. I like their fairly structured reporting, unlike many other sites which are biased towards the news they want to push - ie CNN and other similar North American networks.
My second go-to source is Google. And I do not read structured and categorized news with them, even though they have it. I use the personalized edition that keeps changing based on my interests. Google knows me more than I know myself, coupled with the fact that I gladly give my data away to them through a variety of sources including my use of Gmail, Maps, Calendar, and most importantly search.
This leads to unstructured news specifically tailored for me which includes the top 5 popular news (that is again tailored to my context). The rest of the feed is engineered based on my interests. And I get a different perspective from this. My shopping needs drive news about new products, price reductions, and so forth. Recently I had WiFi troubles with my (Google built) mesh router and my feed included blog articles on others facing recent and similar problems. I also like the ability to reduce or reject keywords or topics that I want not to follow or eliminate completely - and these get replaced automatically by newly derived interests.
Between these two it serves my varying needs with a combination of structured and unstructured - popular and dynamic interests-based information (overload). But an interesting contrast to different and varying approaches - old school and new world.