Google News launched on September 22, 2002—exactly a decade ago.

Inspired by the widespread interest in news after the September 11 attacks, we invested in technology to help people search and browse news relevant to them. Google News broke new ground in news aggregation by gathering links in real time, grouping articles by story and ranking stories based on the editorial opinions of publishers worldwide. Linking to a diverse set of sources for any given story enabled readers to easily access different perspectives and genres of content. By featuring opposing viewpoints in the same display block, people were encouraged to hear arguments on both sides of an issue and gain a more balanced perspective.

In the last ten years, Google News has grown to 72 editions in 30 languages, and now draws from more than 50,000 news sources. The technology also powers Google’s news search. Together, they connect 1 billion unique users a week to news content.

As we have scaled the service internationally, we have added new features (Local News, Personalization, Editors’ Picks, Spotlight, Authorship, Social Discussions), evolved our design, embraced mobile and run ancillary experiments (Fast Flip, Living Stories, Timeline). In parallel, we have monitored our quality and challenged our engineers to improve the technology under the hood—increase freshness, group news better, rank stories more accurately, personalize with more insight and streamline the infrastructure.

Take a look back at the past decade in Google News through the top stories from each year and a few notable features that have launched in the interim:

It’s undeniable that the online news landscape has changed immensely. Smartphones and social networks have transformed how news is accessed and sourced, and shifted the relationship between readers and authors. Open journalism is the norm, and aggregation by humans and machines is an integral part of the ecosystem. New technologies such as Hangouts on Air have the potential to connect users, journalists and opinion makers and transform how stories are discussed.

Opportunities abound, and we are excited for where we can take this product in the next decade. While change is inevitable, one thing remains the same: our mission is to bring you the news you want, when you need it, from a diverse set of sources.

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Distinguished Scientist and Founder, Google News

(Cross-posted on the Google News blog)

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At it’s most basic level, the new service cc:to me is an easy and free way to email bookmarks to yourself from anywhere on the web. Because cc:to me gets everything done with the simple use of a bookmarklet, it doesn’t matter what your operating system or browser of choice is – anyone can use the service.

CC:to me couldn’t be easier to use. Simply navigate to the page you want to bookmark and click it. If you want to add text and images from that page select the text and then drag and drop, and it will be included in the email. Images are simply dragged and dropped into the window.

Cc:to me becomes a great alternative to services like Instapaper and Read it Later, giving you a quick way to save web pages for reading later. Gmail users in particular can really take advantage of email filters and labels to keep bookmarks their organized. The first step is to create a filter for all incoming emails from cc:to me.

To keep it further organized, founder Joel Monegro suggests taking a page from Twitter’s hashtags. Since you can add any text of your choice, adding hashtags to each email to categorize the bookmarks means you can easily navigate to the bookmarks of your choice at the click of a button.

Cc:to me also has a huge advantage over Instapaper and other similar services – and that is that it gives you one less account to log into. You’re going to log into your email no matter what, so why not use cc:to me to keep track of the pages on the web that you want to come back to later?

Pro accounts will be launching soon which will give cc:to me even more functionality. With a pro account, you will be able to email your links to other people as well. This gives the service a great collaborative angle making it a useful tool for teams who want to easily share links and text anywhere from the web.

Pro accounts will also be able to send POST requests to applications, so it has the potential to be integrated with other services like Dropbox.

While cc:to me emails contain the text and images you select, you don’t have to worry about adding the actual link because the service automatically adds it for you.

Cc:to me is a handy little tool which can slip right into your daily online routine because it is so unobtrusive and plugs right into whatever system you’re using. It’s genius lies in its simplicity and flexibility, because you can decide exactly how you want to use the service.

Have you tried out cc:to me? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

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Over the years, WordPress has introduced more and more features, which, although make the software a more robust blogging platform, have made the writing UI more cluttered.

Nevertheless, I have gotten so accustomed to it, so much so that I have found myself preferring it over many other writing tools and applications simply because it works, autosaves and I need nothing else.

There came a time however when I realized that I was becoming more focused on formatting than the actual content and to be quite frank, the standard WordPress editor isn’t exactly the most user-friendly interface, and it’s not particularly eye-catching either.

Artsy Editor, developed by Stephen Ou, is a premium WordPress plugin that strips away the unnecessary stuff in the editor, giving you a focused writing interface not unlike desktop apps like iA Writer, Byword and Ommwriter. It’s an ultra-minimalist overhaul of the WordPress editor UI, a classic example of “less is more” while at the same time giving quick access to the most commonly used features in an aesthetic manner.

More Than What You See

When I loaded Artsy Editor for the first time, it took a while before I realized that the editor had already loaded. It’s almost blank with the exception of the four visible buttons – a publish/preview button on the top right, a close button in the top left, a settings button in the bottom left, and an upload button in the bottom right. Before you go bonkers thinking that this editor is a joke, wait, there’s much more to it than meets the eye.

Customization

First things first; customize the UI according to your needs.

Artsy Editor is intentionally minimalist but also come provides a few choice settings for those who want them. With background color options, font selection, font size and also the ability to open directly into Artsy’s Editor rather than WordPress’ default editor, you should be able to find the interface that works for you.

Intuitive Formatting

The way Artsy Editor’s formatting works is that whenever you select a portion of the text you want to format, a neat little pop-over editor appears with all the basic text formatting options. Clicking elsewhere hides the editor so you’re able to continue focusing on your writing. Of course you still have access to all the standard keyboard shortcuts as well.

Photo Uploading Made Ridiculously Easy

Perhaps the feature I love about it the most is the photo uploader, which takes away the unnecessarily tedious process for photo uploading when using the standard WordPress feature. In contrast, Artsy Editor makes it ridiculously simple to upload photos – simply drag a file from your computer and it automatically gets inserted into the post.

Moving or resizing is just as easy and can all be done within the post. Just like in text selection, there are also options that appear whenever you highlight an image.

The thing about Artsy Editor is that whenever you can’t find a WordPress feature that you need, you can simply shift back to the standard editor by clicking on the close button or simply hitting escape. You’re probably going to need to do so too if you’re using other WordPress plugins that allow for customization within the editor, or when embedding links to songs and videos.

Not For Everyone

Artsy Editor is a premium WordPress plugin with a price tag of $ 19. The price is reasonable considering the unique features and drastic overhaul of the WordPress interface but many will consider it expensive simply because they won’t be accustomed to paying for WordPress plugins.

It’s also important to note WordPress 3.2 is to introduce distraction free writing. Whether it will be quite as feature rich as Arsty Editor is questionable but it is definitely something to consider.

Also if you’re a formatting or HTML-intensive blogger, it might not be the best tool but if you’re the type who writes lengthy stories with minimal HTML requirements, this plugin will definitely be something worth getting your hands on that should radically transport your WordPress writing experience into something both simple and enjoyable.

TNW readers interested in trying out the app can earn a 20% discount using the code TNW20 that you can enter at checkout. If you’re still unsure whether Arsty Editor is for you however, there’s a fully featured demo of the tool available here.

Written with Artsy Editor

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There are no shortage of games on Apple’s App Store; app developers are constantly evolving their ideas to create the next Angry Birds.

Some apps function as useful services, trying to add gaming elements to prompt users to come back to the app, but with gamification often coming as an afterthought, many services fail to attract a large userbase.

Appysnap is an app that motivates users to play a game, not on their handsets, but by interacting with objects in the world around them. The new iPhone application sets users “missions”, challenging users to take a photo of a specific object within a set time (night or day) and rewarding them with prizes for completing them.

Appysnap will prompt the user with a text message style notification, alerting them to a new mission that has been added to the missions section of the application, listing all other outstanding missions that haven’t been completed.

If missions are completed quickly, Appysnap will reward users for completing them before others. Never Odd Or Even, developer of the app, says that users can win iPads, Kindles and Amazon vouchers but we weren’t quick enough to get that all-important notification.

As well as prizes, Appysnap allows its users to collect “caps”, which serve as points that can be redeemed for deals and offers. The user with the most “caps” at the end of the month is also eligible to win a special prize.

Some of the first missions sent to us were requests to take a picture of ourselves and to share a photo that had three or more people in it. The app is available to iPhone owners all over the world but Appysnap will occasionally send missions to players in specific towns or neighbourhoods, opening up ways for the company to partner with local events.

The game is fun but can be annoying to those who aren’t used to their iPhone beeping at random intervals. Whilst we get this is the idea of the app itself, we soon found ourselves looking for the option to turn off the notifications so that it didn’t annoy us whilst we were trying to work.

If you have a little time on your hands or can drop what you are doing at a moments notice, Appysnap could be the perfect fun app that has you competing against others to win some pretty impressive prizes.

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If you haven’t stumbled upon Intel’s Museum of Me yet, you really need to give it a go. A showcase of everything that’s brilliant and creepy about the social Web, it hooks into your Facebook account to build a museum… of you.

Within seconds of authorising your account, you’ll be taken on a video tour of the museum, which has rooms dedicated to your life, your friends, places you’ve been, things you’ve liked and even a huge screen displaying words from your status updates.

It’s incredibly impressive, although it’s fair to say that if it were real it would be an incredibly boring exhibit for anyone but yourself. Yet according to the video the public are happily touring your life – instant ego boost!

Here’s a video of the generic experience – now go try it with your life pasted on. I guarantee it will leave you feeling… strange.

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