Digg and other cutting-edge stuff

OK, I may be the last person to discover the wonders of digg, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write about it. Digg is essentially a link repository coupled with a user rating system. It does certain things very well — namely, collecting and filtering links to interesting stories in real time based on popularity. And it does other things poorly — such as providing context and hierarchy.

Digg, which until recently limited itself to tech topics, is expanding into other content areas. As a result, it will probably be decried as another insidious attempt (a la Google News) to rid online news of human editors, which would be missing the point. As with Google News, if you take away the good content at the source, there’s nothing left to “digg.”

One of the things I’m looking forward to seeing on digg is the promised live visualization of popular topics. Imagine something like Yahoo’s Buzz Index updated in real time. Talk about having your finger on the pulse of the net!

And speaking of cool ways to visualize news topics… Check out this very slick Flash interface to Google News:

newsmap.jpg

More extremely nifty stuff here.