Start-up's new take on news

An Internet start-up in Bedford aims to challenge online searchtitan Google Inc. by changing the way people find online news.

Newsflashr.com launched in February. It's a news aggregator sitewith links to the latest stories from hundreds of online newssources - just like Google News and other popular headline sites.

But Newsflashr founder Gal Arav said his site gives readerssomething that rival sites don't - greater ease of use and a storyselection process that helps readers understand how the site picksits top news items.

"I think I've got a technology here that is that much better thanwhat exists out there," said Arav, a native of Israel who came toMassachusetts in 2000.

Arav said Google News doesn't reveal the workings of itsselection algorithms. That means users can only guess why aparticular story is at the top of the page. Also, when Google Newslists hundreds of stories on the same event, it's unclear why areport from, say, the Times of India might be ranked higher than onefrom the Associated Press.

Arav said readers may suspect that editorial bias has crept intoGoogle's system. "Who's to say big companies aren't buying their wayto the top of the news page?" he said.

Newsflashr makes no secret of its method. The company getsnewsfeeds from several hundred sources - newspapers, wire services,and broadcasters. It then analyzes the headlines of each story toidentify keywords. The more often a keyword appears in a headline,the more significant the story. The right side of the Newsflashrpage shows dozens of these keywords, in alphabetical order and invarying type sizes. The bigger the word, the more recent storieshave been filed on that subject. The top of the headline listingfeatures the five most popular keywords, enabling readers to quicklyspot the hottest stories at that hour.

In addition, Newsflashr uses Alexa, an Internet service thatranks the amount of traffic received at various sites. A user cansort news stories by the Alexa rankings of the sites that publishedthem. Sites with higher rankings have more readers, probably becausethey've earned a reputation as a reliable information source."Traffic rank serves as a proxy for the credibility of a site," saidArav.

Apart from Newsflashr's story selection methods, the sitepromises greater ease of use. The keyword feature makes it easy tofind major news stories in seconds. Newsflashr also has a previewfeature that displays the first sentence or two of a news story,when the user merely moves the mouse over the story's headline.

Barry Parr, media analyst for research firm JupiterResearch LLC,said there's plenty of room in the Internet news market for aninnovative new approach. "There are so many ways of using the news,that in an ideal world we're going to have lots of different ways ofgoing about it," Parr said. But he questioned whether Newsflashrwill find a mass audience, because Google News and other online newsaggregators are probably good enough for most users. "Except for ahandful of people, they don't necessarily care, as long as it comesfrom a reputable source," Parr said.

Arav said his initial goal for Newsflashr is "to get people touse it essentially as their daily newspaper." But he's alsointerested in partnering with existing Internet companies that mightadopt his technology for their own news aggregation services.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.