Dave Winer takes a look at Google News support for Atom and RSS feeds of their categories and reaches a different conclusion than I do. I've greedily subscribed to the Google News feeds and dropped several others. The problem is that with popular stories where the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and everybody else covers the same story it ends up in my aggregator many times.

There are places where I'd like to see the individual feeds from different sources and compare them. But as a part of my stable of information consumption having Google concatenate several stories about a topic into a single post is a huge help. This is not to say I'll give up reading the feeds from some of these other great publications all together. Rather, in my scan of the up-to-the-minute happenings around the world and what matters most in my corner of it the Google News Feeds are a huge help. More editors!

A blog post by John Borland at C|Net's Apple Blog goes light on the facts to try and take a swipe at Apple.

The post, incorrectly, states that Apple defines blogs as "A weblog: blogs run by twenty-something Americans with at least an unhealthy interest in computers."

There are just two problems with this. First it's the Oxford American Dictionary not Apple who comes up with the definitions. Second it's not a definition but an example given of how the word can be used.

But why let the facts get in the way of a false story.

Somebody has posted a flickr image showing NetNewsWire's before and after view of a blog post. This is a really important feature of NetNewsWire that most RSS readers lack. More than once I've seen an outrageous post, linked to it and had the author change the post.

Dan Gillmor says esentailly the same thing Adam Curry told the BBC a few days ago. Curry was talking about podcasting, the online radio equivalent of weblogs, when he said podcasting will kill the business model of radio. Gillmor's article suggests a similar shift will happen in the newspaper realm.

I agree that podcasting and weblogs will have powerful influences in toppling the traditional media business model. All too often, however, this is taken as an excuse for producing a poor quality product. Podcasts-a-plenty are full of folksy poorly produced blots of sound. Of the many podcasts that have at one time or another crossed my iPod the only ones that have stayed are IT Conversations, Career Opportunities and New York Public Radio's On the Media. All three share several things in common. Among them high production values and they are the right length. What is the right length? Long enough to cover the subject and short enough to keep it interesting.

I suspect I am not alone in that after the first "wow" factor wears off listening to someone who is not good at radio will loose its allure quickly. There is a reason Rush Limbaugh has a radio show. It is not his politics. There are conservatives behind every corner these days. The reason his show is on the air is he knows how to put together a good radio program. The same will be true of weblogs and podcasts. The good among them, those that find a stride and figure out how to put a professional polish on the product will likely replace many of the mainstays of the media machine.