'How do you find all the stuff that you do?' is a question that I'm often asked, and one of my responses is that I use news curation tools that find it for me. So I was interested to see a new one on the scene; NOOWIT. What's different with this one is that it's actually web based, rather than an app on a smartphone or tablet, and there aren't many of those around.
So - if you want to try news curation, have a look at Noowit. Unfortunately, that's about as positive as I can get really. In comparision to other excellent tools such as Zite and Flipboard, this one is sadly lacking. It uses the magazine concept of small news blocks like magazine articles that you can click on and go to the whole story, but these are *huge* - you're lucky to get 2 or 3 to a page. This requires much more scrolling than should be necessary (they make a big thing of scrolling left right and up and down - but guys - that's just scrolling, we've had the for a while now), and it's really hard to work out exactly where you are. Some of the images cut over the text, and so I can't see what it is that I'm supposed to be reading.
I found stories being repeated on pages, which was irritating. Unlike Zite for example, which greys out a story when you've read it - very helpful - Noowit doesn't do that. I liked the fact that you could share stories on social media, like or bookmark them, but again, that's not revolutionary, it's just to be expected. There wasn't a like/dislike option as you have with other tools, so how could it learn quickly what interested me and what didn't; if you're going to have a personalised news feed, it's got to be well... personal.
I was slightly disconcerted over the reference to Google Reader, which died over the summer. Admittedly, it gave me an option to import my OPML feed, which is helpful, but most people will have moved on to other tools already, so why the emphasis on GReader, when it should have been on an OPML file? This just makes it look worryingly out of date.
I didn't have the flexibility to choose subject areas of interest to me, which I have with other tools, and I was fairly limited to choice of sources, although admittedly I could pull in my own RSS feeds, but again it's not ideal. I expect a vast array of subject areas, and having two - yes, two - for internet material was a little laughable. It just doesn't cut it.
So in summary, if you don't have a tablet device, and you're interested in news curation tools, give this one a go; it will give you a vague flavour for what people are experiencing on a tablet device. Hopefully Noowit will improve, but until it does, I'm not really interested in it.