Sure, Google news is nice. It’s a great news feed pulling from other sites and presenting it in a nice little package. Imagine if there was a way to grab the news even faster. Faster than Google, you say? From the looks of it, that’s exactly what Gal, founder of Instantbull, has done.
Welcome newsflashr, the latest in web news services.

Now, while I don’t care for pink (and oddly enough neither does my wife), the color choice is outstanding with this Web 2.0 site. The layout’s also very interesting. Google and other news sites normally list recent news by time, and in some cases there are biases toward their own platform. newsflashr removes the bias from reporting by using Alexa, a web traffic tool, to determine the order the news is reported in. While Alexa may not be the premier method of determining internet traffic, it should be more than sufficient, especially for this application.

The FAQ on the site also helps to explain the different color choices, as well as how their tag cloud works and how quickly news feeds are updated:

How often are the news topics updated?
- newsflashr auto-generates every 15 minutes resulting in a new display of the most popular keywords (topics) in the headlines. These topics are extracted from all the latest news feeds. Each category results in a different ‘cloud’ of top topics.

Why do words in the topic cloud appear in different colors and sizes?
- Words that match fresh headlines are colored in pink. The slider above the topic cloud can be dragged to highlight topic freshness from 1 to 7 hours ago. The size of the words (at right) is proportional to headline popularity (at left).

What is the Alexa rank?
- Alexa is an Amazon owned company that independently ranks the popularity (traffic) of web sites. The closer the Alexa rank is to #1, the more popular the site e.g. Yahoo’s website & is ranked #1 because it is currently the most popular site on the Web.

How do I submit a news blog?
- Please send us an email with the: (1)blog name, (2)url, (3)news feed (4)16×16 pixel icon (5)category (e.g. business, technology blogs). Good candidates should have a significant presence on the Web and a regularly updated & well-formatted news feed (note: old atom or rss feed versions won’t be processed … time to upgrade?).

How far back can I search news topics in the headlines?
- If you type in a keyword search, results between 0 and 7 days old will be displayed. Headline search results are preceded by a convenient summary matrix. Note that search results are focused on words that appeared in news headlines only.

As the popularity of newsflashr grows, expect a larger assortment of news feeds to be compiled by them, including blogs. Currently, newsflashr compiles blog feeds from the politics and technology circles. In time, I’d expect the other major headlines such as the business section (hint, hint) to accept blog feeds. Not only will this allow you to read undiscovered blogs in different headline circles, but it may even help expand your readership.
The biggest issue newsflashr has is the competition. I won’t lie, but Google News is pretty nice and may be difficult for some so used to using it to switch over. But when you have a product that’s faster, cleaner, and potentially unbiased (as media should be), it’s only a matter of time before it catches on.

If you have a few minutes and need to catch up on what’s hot in the world before anyone else, give newsflashr a quick visit.