As the HEXUS News Editor I spend a lot of my time trawling the Internet searching for news. That involves visiting a lot of familiar sites, but I also try to find new sources of news that have either different news or an interesting take on a subject. One of my key tools in searching for tech news is Google News.
Completely automated, Google News searches the top news sources around the world (HEXUS included) and then presents the latest news stories. It is capable of finding thumbnail images to go with a story, along with grouping together the same story if it is being covered by various websites. You can search Google News for a particular story or subject, or you can choose a category, such as "Sci/Tech" or "Business". Better still, now you can customize Google News. So let me show you how to do it.
The first thing to do is hit the Google News main page. You'll see something quite similar to this:
On the right is a "Customise this page" link. Click it and the box will expand to reveal Google News' funky editing system.
You can drag items around within the edit box to change the position in which they'll appear on the page.
You might not want all of the above categories on your custom Google News page. So, clicking on an item allows you to edit or delete it.
Back at the main customise screen there's an option to "Add a custom section". A HEXUS news section would be cool, wouldn't it? It can be done!
Any news stories containing the word HEXUS will be listed, so that will include HEXUS itself and any other news sites referencing HEXUS.
After some dragging, some dropping, some deleting and some adding, I was left with all I really needed. Sci/Tech on the left and HEXUS on the right. Beautiful!
Go have a play and setup Google News just how you want it!
