Announcing Tech.NewsJunk.Com

Friday, July 04, 2008 by Dave Winer.

There's a new site on the net today:  

http://tech.newsjunk.com/  

It's the counterpart to the political NewsJunk, which is focused on news of the 2008 presidential campaign. The Tech site is focused on technology product news.  

I created the site because I wasn't getting enough news about products. It's that simple. I'm interested in the other stuff too, the finance, trends, parties, puppets -- but that's adequately covered on TechMeme. What wasn't getting through is the stuff I, as a product developer, care the most about -- news about products. And the interesting new products I'd find wouldn't make it onto the bus. If it got bought by Google or Microsoft, that would likely show up on TM, or if a VC invested a lot of money in it. But I like to find out when things are small, before other people invest. 

It's important to note that the Tech NewsJunk, like the political one, does not have original content, it just points to the sites that are producing the relevant stories.  

I did it so I could learn, and in the spirit of the web of course I wanted to share and hopefully people will forward me links to product news that isn't already on TechJunk (please, no press releases) and even better, pointers to feeds of sites that regularly review products. 

A couple of notes. I'm not just interested in new products, I'm also interested in how the products evolve. So if Flickr were to (for example) add a bunch of new features tomorrow, we would defintely link to that.  

I also want to hear about products from the people who design and implement them. Their point of view is very important to not only understanding their work, but to understanding the market.  

I expect and hope other people will compete with this site, so we can focus more attention on products, so maybe there will be more products that fit user's needs better.  

Now, as with the political "junk" site, there are many ways to consume the flow. 

1. The old-fashioned way -- you can refresh the site manually. 

2. There's a feed, of course, for your reader, or aggregator, or whatever. 

3. You can follow it on FriendFeed. 

4. Or on Twitter. 

5. Or read the mobile version on your iPhone or Blackberry. 

And soon you will be able to follow it on identi.ca (as soon as we figure out how to do it). And there will also be an email interface. 

PS: One of the great things about this site is that I learn which sites are providing the best product coverage. So far they are (in no special order): ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat and Webware. This is just my opinion of course, and it could change. I wish some of the sites would cut down on the cuteness and add more hard info.  

PPS: The counts page is getting interesting.