Daylife: the first webified newspaper?
Do you want to read news that other readers decide is relevant (digg), or do you want to read news that professionals (nyt) select? BTW, we're talking reading news on the web as opposed to paper, here. Anyway, if you tend towards the latter, Daylife is a stab at the future. The layout is clean and the "take-the-tour" section is very, very impressive. RSS and comments will come, no doubt, and so will other features.
The big challenge remains, though, the user interface. If there is to be a webified newspaper, we will need some pointers about how to get from the front to the back, as it were. OK, Daylife does have a "front page" of sorts called "Covers", but readers may take a while to understand that the bottom image strip is a selection of "front pages" that lead into related stories. Still, as navigation goes, it feels right. Rainy Day suggestion: Drop "Covers" and call it "Front pages" instead. In this transitional stage between paper and web, carrying over some print terminology may be worthwhile if it helps users grasp the structure.
Michael Arrington, a Daylife backer, was less than charmed with the launch, which may not bode well for the future. Says the TechCruncher: "And the fact that the news is gathered by humans, instead of the algorithmically determined news at Digg, means the company will always have a higher cost of doing business." But Jeff Jarvis, who is also involved in Daylife says: "Note that the only thing that is created by editors is the cover you'll see on the home page. Everything else is automated." Huh? If Daylife is a pure news aggregator, fair enough, as gathering and managing the world's news is/was the job that newspapers do/did and now we've reached the next phase. In a world of limitless choice, someone should give Google News a run for the money when it comes to compiling the news and Daylife is as good a contender as Technorati or Topix, and better looking, too.
