Category: News website

Ananova – URL: http://www.ananova.com/

 Ananova is a Web-oriented news service that features a computer-simulated animation of a woman newscaster, named "Ananova," who has been programmed to "read" newscasts to Web users. Ananova is described as "the world's first virtual newscaster," Ananova, the animation, is really a novel user interface to a Web service that allows users to receive customized news. Ananova can be requested to:

Read a two-minute newscast summary

Read a customized newscast based on selected preferences

Give you selected sports scores and weather information as it develops

Alert you by e-mail when a story you're interested in becomes available

Periodically scan a targeted group of Web sites and notify you of new changes

Ananova combines live Web newscasting from an animated "talking head" with intelligent agent service. The animation is described by her designers as 28 years old, 5 feet 8 inches tall, and with a "pleasant, quietly intelligent manner."

Ananova would work well for the busiess excuitives that travels frequently. Ananova would also useful for the individual that doesn’t like watching standard new programs.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananova

Category: Search Engine

SpyOnIt – URL: http://www.spyonit.com/Home

Spyonit is a free, web-based service that makes it incredibly easy for you to "spy" on things online. Spies can track when a certain page on the web changes, or when an article is posted by a particular author. Spies can alert you when a stock rises by a predetermined percentage, or when a particular auction closes. The Spyonit "Spy Catalog" contains a whole host of preconfigured spies, which you can tweak -- making it easy to set a good number of spies loose on the web at your behest.

Spyonit smartly recognizes that different types of spies generate different types of messages -- with varying levels of priority. That's why each spy notification can be sent through one or more different channels -- your email address, an email-based pager, ICQ, AOL Instant Massager, or just on your "My Spies" web page. Additionally, Spyonit has made it very easy for webmasters to add spies to their own site, and will be releasing their SpyBuilder SDK to enable XML- and Java-based development of more complex spies.

Unfortunately, Spyonit is no longer available. As of Jul 26, 2002 the free SpyOnIt alert service has been turned off. The owners have announce that the Spyonit service is on hiatus effective July 26, 2002. However, they do intend to bring it back online after a significant upgrade and the addition of several exciting new.

Source: www.searchengineshowdown.com/ blog/2002/07/spyonit_turns 

www.theobvious.com/archive/1999/12/27.html

Category: Search Engine

TVEyes – URL: http://www.tveyes.com

This Web-based service bills itself as a search engine for TV and radio. It scans the closed captions that accompany most television programming for keywords selected by users. For radio broadcasts, it employs a special speech-to-text program that quickly produces searchable text.

Soon after your keyword has been mentioned, TVEyes sends you an e-mail message containing the reference and a link to a partial transcript. A free version of the service allows you to track up to three keywords or phrases; subscription versions (starting at $500 a month) offer features like unlimited keywords and direct access to a video or audio clip containing your keywords.

The primary subscribers are marketers, investors, government agencies and consumers.

I can certainly see how these agencies could take advantage of something like this. For the average person however, the cost can be quite high.

Source: www.venchar.com/2004/06/tveyes.html