JNet's Picks of the Week - 2004

Here is a random selection of some of the best, most topical or just plain fun sites for journalists.

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JNet's Top Ten Picks of 2004: JNet's Top Ten Picks of 2004 From new Google tools to the best news search tools and new search engines, check out JNet's Top Ten Picks of 2004

Pick of the Week December 18, 2004: Yahoo Video Search Yahoo has launched a beta video search site that offers decent results in its simple format and many advanced features. You can search by format, by size and even by domain --for example, videos from education sites only, or from US government sites only -- or videos from a particular site (for example, CNN or BBC). For more video search tools, see JNet's Find Video page.

Pick of the Week December 12, 2004: A9.com A new search engine that uses Google, but gives you plenty of extras. You get the usual web search, but also image search results "Search Inside the Book" results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, and even movies results from a movie database. Plus, you can keep your own notes about any web page and search them. For more new search tools, see JNet's Best Search Page

Pick of the Week December 5, 2004: WorldPress There are many ways to find newspapers around the world but this convenient list is one of the few that gives you a short political description of the media outlet -- "conservative", "pro-government" "opposition", etc -- which is convenient when you are hunting for news in troubled or politically-divided countries. For similar tools, see JNet's Find Papers page.

Pick of the Week November 28, 2004: Google Desktop The best search engine on the web can now be used to search your files and emails on your own computer. This beta test download installs easily, searches your computer and then lets you find lost or forgotten files -- even files you deleted thanks to Google's cache function. For similar tools, see JNet's Google page.

Pick of the week November 21, 2004: Veoda Searching for video on the web is always a hit-or-miss affair, but this new search tool does a decent job. Put in a news search term -- be sure to use the buttons for "all the words" or "exact phrase" -- and the results tell you how the words appear in the video clip description and the format of the video clip. For similar tools, see JNet's Video Search.

Pick of the week November 14, 2004: WorldPress.org World Press is an automated headline service, updated every 15 minutes, drawn from a sampling of newspapers and magazines worldwide. Its main adavnatge is that the selection is more diverse than the usual fare you find on Google News or other popular news sites. It also offers a free email service to keep you up-to-date with the latest news from thousands of newspapers from around the world, free of charge. For more news tools, see JNet's News page.

Pick of the week November 7, 2004: Headlineviewer A free program to download, this tool uses Moreover's vast world newsfeeds to give you the latest news on everything from health to culture to politics, with excellent regional feeds from most countries. Simple to use but you can't add your own newsfeeds. For more newsfeed tools, see JNet's new RSS NewsFeeds page

Pick of the week October 31, 2004: US Election Coverage This week's news will be dominated by the Nov. 2 US election. This site from e-democracy.org provides a handy list of top American news sites (TV, radio and print) and their election special pages to give you a fast overview. To see the front pages of the world's papers to see how they covered the momentous day, try recent Picks of the Week from Jnet such as Today's Front Pages and PressDisplay. For more ways to cover US news, see JNet's US Pages.

Pick of the week October 24, 2004: FactCheck With just over a week left in the US elections, this site remains one of best ways to check on political lies and exaggerations. (It was the web site that Vice President Cheney tried to cite during the debates but got the address wrong). You can also get the latest fact checks sent to you by email. For more ways to cover US news, see JNet's US Pages.

Pick of the week October 17, 2004: Feedreader One of the simplest of the new breed of news readers to use. It's free and allows you to use the growing number of free RSS (Real Simple Syndication) offered by the New York Times, the BBC and thousands of other sites. For more on RSS Newsfeeds, check out this article in the Online Journalism Review. And for more ways to find news, see JNet's News Pages.

Pick of the week October 10, 2004: BBC Radio Player The best radio news network in the world now offers an easy, free player that allows you to choose from dozens of its top World Service programs. You can find out more on the World Service main page. For more radio news tools, see JNet's Radio Pages.

Pick of the week October 3, 2004: Clusty JNet has long been promoting the new technology of clustering - the ability of search engines to group your results into folders of connected subjects of topics. Vivisimo, one of the pioneers in this field, has just launched Clusty - poor name, but a good attempt at a clustering search engine. For more of the best new search engines, see JNet's Search Pages.

Pick of the week September 26, 2004: Metagrid An efficient way to find newspapers and magazines, this is one of the few sites that lets you search not just by country or continet but also by subject theme -- for example, Arts publications or Business news sources. For similar tools, see JNet's Find NewsPapers and Find Magazine pages.

Pick of the week September 19, 2004: Soople.com A simple way to use all the advanced tricks of Google. Easy to fill out forms help you search by domain, by country, by language, by format and for phone numbers or financial information. Not for those who are already expert users of Google's Advanced Search, but handy for anyone else. For more search tools to view real papers, see JNet's Search pages.

Pick of the week September 12, 2004: PressDisplay offers a peek what the front pages of today's papers really look like -- not just their web sites. Choose from 200 newspapers from 50 countries. You can also search by country or language. And the archives go back two weeks for most of the papers. But you only get the front front pages for free. The rest you have to pay for. For more tools to view real papers, see JNet's Finds News pages.

Pick of the week September 5, 2004: NewsInEssence is one of the new "clustering" tools, this time developed by the University of Michigan. It tries to find and summarizing clusters of related news articles from multiple sources on the Web, including the CBC, CNN, and the International Herald Tribune. You can create your own clusters as well. For more of these new breed of smart agents, check out JNet's Finds News pages.

Pick of the week August 29, 2004: Daypop is trying to become the Google of blogs, those increasingly-popular web diaries. It offers you the choice of searching just for news, or just for blogs, or both. It also monitors hot words and trends in newspapers and weblogs.For more blog services, check out JNet's Find Blogs page.

Pick of the week August 22, 2004: IHaveNet World News One of several websites that use the Moreover newsfeed, this site has the advantage of giving you easy access to news from dozens of countries listed on the left-hand side of its page. You can also find business news by subject, as well as other topics such as Health and Entertainment. For more news services, check out JNet's Find News page.

Pick of the week August 15, 2004: Enewsbar Another of the fast-growing number of news tickers, this free service incorporates headlines from over 7500 sources in topics such as Business, Entertainment, Sports, and Internet. For more personalized news services, check out JNet's Choose Your News page.

Pick of the week August 8, 2004: WorldFlash Ticker One of the first web sites to offer a news ticker as long as five years ago, this company continues to offer a free and vast array of international news and business that can scroll across your desktop. World sources include New York Times, , BBC, Sydney Herald from Australia, CP and CBC from Canada and other media from France,Spain and Germany. For more personalized news services, check out J'Net's Choose Your News page .

Pick of the week August 1, 2004: Newslink A veteran web site that still remains one of the best ways to find newspapers -- especially in the US, but also worldwide. It also promises to improve its international magazine search tool shortly; plus a great way to find US radio and TV stations. For more ways to find papers, see JNet's Find Papers Page and Magazines Page.

Pick of the week for July 25, 2004: IwantMedia One of the best one-stop sites for news and analysis of media trends (mainly American), plus resources for jobs, who owns the media, gossip and criticism. For more media news and criticism, see JNet's Media Page. For more job tools, see JNet' Jobs Page.

Pick of the week for July 18, 2004: MSN Newsbot The UK version of MSN offers news from several countries in several languages - French, Italian, Spanish -- and easy access to world news. For more news tools, see JNet's Find News Page.

Pick of the week for July 11, 2004: Yahoo's Audio Video Search Yahoo's Audio/Video search gives you instant access to TV news stories from Reuters, AP and other video services. For similar tools, see JNet's Find Video Page.

Pick of the week for July 4, 2004: Columbia Newsblaster Columbia University has come up with a better way to search the news - instead of just a mish mash of headlines. Every night, the system crawls a series of Web sites, downloads articles, groups them together into "clusters" about the same topic, and summarizes each cluster. The end result is a Web page that gives you a sense of what the major stories of the day are, so you don't have to visit the pages of dozens of publications. For more news tools, see JNet's Find News Page.

Pick of the week for June 27, 2004: Ask Jeeves Famous People Search One of the venerable search engines, Ask Jeeves, has added several improvements - a better news, image and phone search. Their Famous People search does a better job than most search engines in finding relevant biographical information. Just put in your subject's full name. For more biography help, see JNET's Reference Pages.

Pick of the week for June 20, 2004: GeographyIQ More than just facts and figures about each country's geography, demographics, economy, government and political system, this web site also offers researchers some vital historical, cultural and political background information. Plus there are rankings that list countries and territories by more than 50 geographic, demographic, economic and military criteria.For more ways to research countries, see JNet's Find Countries Page.

Pick of the week for June 13, 2004: LaborStart A well-organized site for the latest in labour and trade union news. While aimed at labour activists, it's a handy tool for journalists. You can search for news by country and there are extensive archives. For more alternate news, see JNet's Alternate News sources

Pick of the week for June 6, 2004: $20,000 Investigative Reporting Prize Deadline Nears Time again to announce the annual deadline for entries for the annual International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting must be postmarked by July 15. The ICIJ Award aims to foster international investigative reporting. The work must have involved reporting in at least two countries. There is a $20,000 first-place prize and up to five $1,000 finalist awards. The ICIJ is a project of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington.

Pick of the week for May 30, 2004: Archive Index A librarian's guide to free (and not free) newspaper archives. There is a long listing of American papers, and special pages for Canada, Asian and World papers. For more archive searches, see JNet's Archives Page.

Pick of the week for May 23, 2004: AlltheWeb Advanced News Search Not as popular as Google, AlltheWeb still offers a decent search engine. But its Advanced News Search is certainly worth a look - you can hunt for words in the article or headline; choose a newspaper, city, or country and even limit your results to news in the last few hours. You can also include or exclude certian web domains or countries. For more news searches, see JNet's News Page.

Pick of the week for May 16, 2004: PDF Converter How many times have you gone to a website looking for a document, only to be forced to read it in .pdf format with Acrobat Reader? This handy free tool - borrowed from a US government website -- lets you copy in the web address of any .pdf file and it instantly transforms it into an easy-to-copy, easy-to-search and easy to print Word format. For more tech stuff, see JNet's Tools Page.

Pick of the week for May 9, 2004: Google Deskbar The best search engine on the web now offers a new tool. The deskbar allows you to search using Google, even when your browser isn't running.You can preview search results in a small inset window that closes automatically. It's similar but more versatile than the Google Toolbar and Google Buttons For more Google tools, see JNet's Search Page.

Pick of the week for May 2, 2004: About.com The best site to find "ordinary experts" has made itself even easier and faster to use. This is the place to go to find people who are passionate about issues - everything from health to news to hobbies. They have found some of the best web links and organized it for you by theme. Particularly useful is the new News and Issues section. For more search tools, see JNet's Search Page.

Pick of the week for April 25: Yahoo Advanced News Search Yahoo has beefed up its news search tool, making it one of the most precise on the web. Like Google News, it now allows you to search by newspaper source and by country. It also allows you to search by date. And unlike Google, you can also select the language. For more search tools, see JNet's Find News Page.

Pick of the week for April 18: World News While not as powerful as Google News, this news search site does hunt through 500 news sources. Its biggest advantage over Google is that you can search for news in many languages. For more search tools, see JNet's Find News Page.

Pick of the week for April 11: NewsDirectory An excellent way to find newspapers, this site allows you to click on any country. Or, for the US and Canada, you can punch in the telephone area code. You can also search newspapers and magazines by title. For more search tools, see JNet's Find Newspapers Page.

Pick of the week for April 4: Reuters Feedroom Watch the latest TV news from Reuters News -- top world stories, business and entertainment. Plus a selected archive. One the easiest web sites to use to get a glimpse of breaking TV news. For more TV News, see JNet's News Pages.

Pick of the week for March 28, 2004: GlobalInfo This alternate news sites gives you news from around the developing world. Easy to search and divided by regions and countries. For similar resource, see JNet's Alternate News Pages.

Pick of the week for March 21, 2004: Headline Addict There are several bonuses to this news search tool aside from the top world news. Check out its "Category Blitz" on the bottom left side of its main page -- instant access to dozens of story categories from technology to consumer news. And click on "Regional news" for stories by country. For more ways to search news, see JNet's News Page.

Pick of the week for March 14, 2004: Big News Network Like many news portals, this one offers the usual top world and regional news. But it also has a few novelties, including a section for editorials (from the UK, Asia and the US) and for media and religion news. For more ways to search news, see JNet's News Page.

Pick of the week for March 7, 2004: Speechbot The technology to search for news audio clips is still in its infant stage. Speechbot has expanded its database and now provides about 17,000 hours of searchable audio -- mainly from National Public Radio in the US, PBS Newshour and the American government. For more ways to search audio, see JNet's Audio Page.

Pick of the week for February 29, 2004: The World News Forecast On this Leap Day during a Leap year, try this web site which looks up to one year ahead for news stories that will shape the future. Designed for news professionals the diary is available by subscription but you can get a free trial and major immediate events are available on the main page for all. For similar tools, see JNet's Look Aheads.

Pick of the week for February 22, 2004: Initiative for Policy Dialogue This website is designed to help reporters who cover finance and economics in developing countries. It includes backgrounders with tips on banking crises, foreign exchange markets, trade agreements, privatization, money laundering, derivatives, pension reform, the World Bank and other topics. For similar tools, see JNet's Alternate News page.

Pick of the week for February 15, 2004: Dave's Quick Search Taskbar : This toolbar installs itself on your taskbar - that bottom strip of icons on your desktop. Type in any word and it searches Google. Simply add an exclamation point to the word (for example, fbi!) and you get Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" function which automatically transports you to the first result. Type in any city, followed by an asterisk (Paris*) and you get the weather. Put a colon at the end of a word (larceny:) and you get a dictionary definition. There are tons of other shortcuts to learn. For similar tools, see JNet's Toolbars Page.

Pick of the week for February 8, 2004: CNN Headline Alerts The international news network offers free breaking news alerts and headline news. But the best tool is a personalized news alert that allows you to choose the keyword. It's free but registration is required. For more news services like this, see JNet's News Alerts Page.

Pick of the week for February 1, 2004: BBC Documentary Archives The largest broadcaster in the world has begun to put some of its best radio documentaries on the web. This page also gives you instant access to any of the current programs as well. For more radio archives, see JNet's Find Audio Pages and Find Radio News Pages

Pick of the week for January 24, 2004: Rocketnews One of the early entries into the news search business, Rocket news has simplified its search tool. You can search for top news going back several days. The main page also gives you access to the top headlines organized by country and topic. You can also download a sophisticated news reader called the Rocket Desktop. It allows searches of 9,000 media outlets, books and market research -- but it is not free. For more news tools, see see JNet's Find News Pages

Pick of the week for January 18, 2004: Today's Front Pages The Newseum provides you with a great peek at the front pages of 34 world papers. You can see what they look like in living colour -- and then check out their web home page if you want more. For more news tools, see JNet's Find News Pages .

Pick of the week for January 11, 2004: Web Assistant Tired of reloading web pages you need for your research? Or are you on the road, away from the web and you need to consult an important web page? This free tool (there is a professional, pay-for version as well) allows you to easily store any web page you visit and gives you easy access to it. The WebAssistant archives all websites you have visited online when you want and restores them even when you are offline. For more tools, see JNet's Tools Pages .

Pick of the week for January 4, 2004: Digital Librarian Start the New Year off with a jump on research. Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in New York offers her "Choice of the Best of the Web." There is no search box, but you'll find nuggets buried in the subject categories that vary from Islam to Science. For similar search assistance, see JNet's Librarians Pages .

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