Personalized Web Sites Tailor News, Other Information to Your Interests

When a big story breaks, there’s nothing more entertaining for news junkies than following updates from newspapers, cable TV and the Internet. But the Web is a boon for newshounds who can follow stories as big as the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa or as small as the domestic squabbles of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson. Thanks to personalized sites, you can tailor a page to suit your interests.

The major search engine sites (such as Yahoo, Excite and Lycos) are now known as “‘portals,” offering everything from free e-mail and home pages to stock quotes and weather forecasts. They all offer some form of personalization, which means you enter your ZIP Code and basic personal information and interests and they tailor a front page with headlines, horoscopes and sports scores for you. Most personalized sites rely on wire services such as Reuters or Associated Press, and don’t give the depth of local stories you’d find in a daily paper.

(The Times’ site has a free service (https://www.latimes.com/HOME/HUNTER/) that finds stories from the past seven days.)

Still, for finding more sources on national, international or entertainment stories, some Web portals are exceptional. CNET’s Snap!, now co-owned by NBC, offers the widest array of news outlets for your personalized page (https://www.mysnap.com), with everything from Fox, MSNBC and U.S. News to PlanetOut, EcoMall and Arthur Frommer’s Travel. Snap! is especially good for entertainment stories, with top headlines from E! Online, Hollywood Online and Mr. Showbiz. Its only downside is the long, arduous task of personalizing--though the results are worth it.

Yahoo’s personalized page (https://www.my.yahoo.com) includes a handy nightly TV mini-grid. For news, Yahoo’s Full Coverage section (https://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage) is incredible, giving you a list of links, related Web sites, and streaming audio and video. The section on the Kenya bombing included a link to the Africa News Service, and “The Avengers” entry linked to more than 30 reviews of the film, few of them positive. Other areas include “China Floods,” “iMac Fever,” and “The Howard Stern Show.”

Most of the other portals have less comprehensive news. Excite (https://www.excite.com) names each section “My” whatever, so your page annoyingly has My Stocks, My Weather, My Video Releases and My Columnists. It does let you adjust layout and colors, on the page, including the text of the greeting (mine now reads: “Go outside, Mark!”).

For hard news, you might want to leave the portals for personalized sites at CNN (https://customnews.cnn.com) or MSNBC (https://www.msnbc.com). CNN in particular gives you a jaw-dropping array of coverage in its Custom News section. You can pick from among hundreds of countries of interest and the sports includes news from Division III college football, wrestling and lacrosse. The entertainment section is lacking, though, with “Seinfeld” still listed.

MyLook (https://www.mylook.com) is an intriguing service, with a huge list of news and entertainment outlets ranging from Digital Chef to Popular Mechanics. It includes older stories on your page, and even lets you choose Webcam photos from Hermosa Beach to Santa Monica, Hawaii to Texas to Australia. A nice touch lets you see weather conditions or just to daydream.

Mark Glaser is a freelance writer and critic. You can reach him at glaze@sprintmail.com.