In other news…

MSNBC.com has launched an suite of news tools dubbed NewsWare that includes the more pedestrian e-mail alerts, how to add MSNBC to your mobile device, and RSS feeds, but they also include some mindblowing applications that make reading the news much more recreational and interactive

Spectra Newsreader

The Spectra Newsreader allows you to choose your preferred news subjects. The stories pertaining to these subjects then swirl around the screen, eventually being pulled down to your menu. You can either read the story that is in front of you, or save it to your newsreader and go on to the next. You can also change the display properties of the tool to a more traditional ticker style rather than the swirling spiral that makes your screen look like a tornado of headlines. My only beef with this was that you couldn’t actually click on a story until it had been “pulled down” to the bottom - once they get that worked out this will be genius.

NewsScroller

This tool can be added to whatever social media you prefer - MySpace, Yahoo, your Google front page, and Facebook to name a few. Adding it to Facebook is a painless process, and the ticker is graphically attractive. The one glitch encountered was that if you customize the ticker to your favourite news subjects before you add it to Facebook, you’ll have to go back and do it again once you finally do add it.

Decision ‘08 Leaderboard
This funky widget may also be added to your social media in the same style as the NewsScroller. Want an up-to-the-minute report on everything US election? Install this to ensure that you know down to the candidate how Hilary and Obama are doing. We imagine that this will be adapted and added to throughout the election process to make it more exciting.

CBC’s network briefly blocked employees from from visiting social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace this morning. Also, some personal blogs, like John Gushue’s and the popular anonymous Teamakers blog were not accessible.

John Mang, operations manager for B.C. radio said: “It looks like was was a technical glitch. It was certainly unintentional. One phone call and it is being fixed.”

Ray Carnovale, head of CBC’s I.T. confirmed that and said the blockage “may be something going on external to us.”

All regions should have access to all those sites again.

What I think was interesting was just how fast news spread in the Corporation. I was on-air at the time and was getting dozens of CBC folks emailing me within the space of an hour. It spread quickly within the Vancouver radio newsroom and, presumably, others.