It's been fascinating to read everyone's responses to NewsBlogger, I'm really amazed at how many people are concerned that this is going to lead to wide-spread homogenization of the web. Well sure, if somebody just links to a news article, it will be as lame as when somebody links to any other URL without adding their voice. That's what makes any post interesting: the commentary about the thing the person's chosen to link to. Why is Davenetics great? I get a lot of the same headlines in my Inbox via email from Wired and the Standard, but it's Dave's commentary that adds value. It's why I read his newsletter every day. Same thing with Memo. Lonely links offer little value to me, but when someone wraps that link in personal commentary, and shares thoughts and experiences, it becomes a unique snippet of information that I can't get anyplace else.
Another response that gave me a chuckle was the belief that NewsBlogger is catering to the lazy, and encouraging laziness, within the web community. I'm always surprised by the assumption people make regarding energy expended. Time expended != value or quality. Are the links you dig up from disparate news sources inherently more valuable because you spent two hours locating them? Not if they're from CNN, BBC, or any other widely-available news source, and not if you don't add your commentary to them. Is your trip to the grocery store some how better if you walk there, rather than drive? I don't think so, it's what you create when you return home with the ingredients that matters. There are two parts to this process: getting the information and then doing something with it. There seems to be an assumption that gathering the information is valuable and a good use of time. Why not pour the energy into the other side of the equation? The side on which you add your unique voice to the link you've located?
And of course, one more thing to think about: NewsBlogger isn't for everyone. It's for people that like to write about news. You're not going to see a huge increase in news articles and commentary on megnut now that I'm using NewsBlogger because I don't usually publish that sort of stuff here. But I do use NewsBlogger to publish technology and business-related links to our intranet, and having a tool to do so saves me a lot of time. Am I lazier because of it? Hardly, now I have more time to develop and enhance the web apps I love to build.