Regator is a combination of a lot of different methods of news aggregation. Actual people do a lot of the work, reading through and finding blog posts they think are interesting to read. Those posts are sorted into almost 500 channels. Users can also submit items of interest and move things up the food chain by viewing, commenting and rating sites. The What's Hot list is then created with algorithms based on what users are looking at.

I found some really interesting stuff I hadn't seen so far in my daily web surfing by going into the Beijing Olympics Channel.

You can also use Regator as a feed reader, to make audio playlists and to share with friends on Facebook, etc. by registering for a free account.

If you don't already have a favorite place to find news or you're looking for a change, this might be something to check out. And, if your blog isn't on Regator, you can nominate it for coverage.

I'm personally tiring of all the news aggregation sites that have popped up all over the web, and am frustrated and dismayed that as of yet the holy grail of personalization seems not to have been achieved successfully. It was with some trepidation then that I followed James Kendrick's advice (he co-runs the wildly popular JKOnTheRun blog with Kevin C. Tofel) and decided to check out SpotBack, the latest in the line of news aggregation sites.

Right off the bat I was impressed with the pleasant and easy to read user interface. It's not overdone, just attractive and approachable. Clicking a headline opens the article in a new browser window or tab. Rating stories is achieved through the use of an interactive slider; slide it to the left to rate a story negatively, or to the right to give it a positive rating. Interestingly, if you give an article a positive rating, SpotBack will immediately display a related article immediately below the one you just rated, giving you the opportunity to get more information about a subject you've shown an interest in. Slick.

The categories range from things like Computers and Internet to Sports, Business, Science, and even include a Blogs category.

It remains to be seen how well the personalization engine works in SpotBack, but based on my first experience with the site, I'm willing to give it a shot.

It's not like RSS hasn't been around for awhile now. For me it's become ingrained in my web usage so completely that when a new site comes along that wants to aggregate news for me, if it doesn't have RSS I'm not going to take another look.

Well, at least that's what I thought.

Unfortunately, Daylife came along and showed me that as much as I'd like to think I'm an info-snob (give me my feeds, I don't need no stinkin' formatting!), pretty pictures and effortless design do tend to make me turn my head.

The concept behind Daylife is that they intelligently aggregate news from sources around the world, and give users an easy way to track and follow photos, articles, publications, and people in the news that are important to them. It's a neat concept, and brilliantly executed; the site feels fresh and quick. Of course, after playing around in their interface for awhile, I was longing for the comfort of my Google Reader account, with my hotkeys to let me go zooming past articles and pretend I've "read" 25,000 this month. Real news presented in a compelling way really slows down my information consumption.



But I think I like it.

Hmm, maybe that's the idea.