I must have missed the announcement. The Globe and Mail has an Insider Edition with more content, some of it exclusive, along with the much desired access to archives, and some personal tools including alerts. Perhaps this explains why the Globe never responds to my request for an e-mail newsletter - they have probably discontinued the free version. Package sounds very attractive costs $14.95 / month + tax. Subscribers to the print edition (5 or 6 days a week) pay $6.95 / month + tax.
The US firm Zeppelin Energy has bought Rocket Technologies in Ottawa. Rocket Technologies developed the news aggregator and news reading tools, RocketInfo and RocketNews. Zeppelin Blasts off with Acquisition of Rocket Technologies Business Wire. (Aug 4)
Rocketinfo Announces Release of Enhanced Desktop Search Software Market Wire (May 27) Rocketinfo Desktop is at Version 3.0 that includes a full-featured RSS news reader. It also has new content from market research firms, Gartner Group and IDC. This is downloadable software. 14 day trial is available. Annual subscription of $29.95 US /year.
Government of Canada offers RSS feeds for news and information targeted to particular audiences - business, job-seekers, immigrants, rural, children etc. There is also news by province. Site also has information about the benefits of RSS, how to use it, and where to get a newreader / aggregator. See Government of Canada Newsroom.
Mentioned by Researchbuzz.com.
CanWest Takes Tiered Approach to Pay Content at Canada.com by Mark Glaser OJR (NOv 10) There will be four tiers: 1) free breaking news headlines for everyone, 2) access to online papers for print newspaper subscribers, 3) pdf for electronic subscribers, and 4) pay multimedia - sometime next year.
Has a chart showing top news sites in Canada as of Sept 2003. MSNBC receives the most Canadian visitors - 2.9 million, with Canada.com network in second place at 2.7 million. CBC and Globe and Mail are at #5 and #7.
CanWest will charge readers to access newspapers online. Ottawa Citizen. (Sep 19)
CanWest will start charging readers of its 11 online newspapers through Canada.com starting in November. "Asper said forcing readers to pay is justified by the fact that the portal gets about 120 million page views per month. "
The MyYahoo Canada is slipping in its news options. It still shows Canadian Press and some categories of Reuters Canada as available but they haven't been updated for months. Instead Canadians can personalize their choices for Headline News & Politics to Yahoo Full Coverage, top stories from NPR, Reuters including World News from Reuters Canada (but no other category such as Canada alone), AP and AP Canada. Very slim pickings and all US.
At least at MSN.ca one can get CBC, Maclean's, and Le Soleil - along with MSNBC.
Sympatico gets its news stories from the Globe and Mail but there are no updates over the weekend, and some categories can get stuck on one story for many days. Bob Hope died a week ago and that is still the top entertainment story. Odd that MySympatico doesn't get stories from CTV as well.
CBC.ca has a nice feature by which you can personalize the news page to your location. Thus I can see the top 3 stories for Toronto and the weather.
Canada.com does a better job with Canadian news since it draws from Canadian Press, National Post and other papers in the CanWest collection. However, there are no personalization features.
There is no good Canadian news service that can be customized to the reader's interests.
Dialog Newsroom: Dialog Newsroom (a for-fee service) has added more Canadian sources. Key sources are Canadian Press, Broadcast News, Toronto Star Metroland. Details at New Canadian Content Providers. Chronology (July / August 2003)