Morocco Time

Every morning I browse various news aggregators for info on Morocco and other topics I’m interested in, plus Google sends me a roundup of Morocco-related news. Normally, I just use my custom Google index page, but I’ve discovered something new: Newgie.com. It’s still in Beta, so it has a ways to go yet - spelling errors are a classic sign of that - but I really like how they have it laid out.

My Newgie index page has both a category “Regional > Africa > North Africa” and an RSS feed from South Africa’s IOL Online, showing only Morocco-related stories. It also has categories for Culture and Religion and Tech/Science, a feed from Slashdot, etc… I’m still tweaking it, but it looks good so far. Of course, I still have all my blog feeds lined up in Google Reader, but I think I’ll put the main ones here, since I can combine reading them with news reading. Then I’ll use Google Reader when I have more time in the evening – since I have 50+ blogs I read on a semi-daily basis!

The other unique feature on this site is that it has a tab showing you what stories are “newsiest,” based on user activity and interest. It’s appalling that Anna Nicole Smith resting in a Bahamas hospital is considered “news,” but the luckily the top story, is Things you probably didn’t know about November 7. The top North Africa story is that 600kg of TNT was seized in Egypt in the Northern Sinai Peninsula – kind of scary, huh?

It all makes you wonder how much longer traditional newspapers can stay in business – I get the Sunday NYTimes, and I always read the Guardian Weekly when I was in Rabat, but that’s it as far as newspapers for me.

What do you use to get news on Morocco or whatever else you’re interested in?

November 4th, 2006 | Category: Personal, Morocco | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL