Innovative ways of visualizing the news

Anybody can create a list of links to top news stories. Same boring blue hyperlinks, different stories. But the news doesn't have to be displayed in the same way it was when the internet was invented. Here are some sites that make the news POP!

· Digg Labs' bigspy, along with its counterparts stack, swarm, arc and pics, are live, visual representations of the news and non-news being dugg on the site. The technology is also available as a series of screensavers so instead of searching for the news, the news comes to you.




· The Marumushi newsmap (which I have covered before, but I love so much) displays news stories in color coded boxes that become darker when the news becomes older.




· Newsknitter is more of a Ten Commandments, written in stone kind of approach to the news. Political news headlines are stitched into surprisingly cool (albeit nerdy) sweaters. Think Grandma + CNN.




· It has an antiquated feel and Buzztracker does the same thing better, but I still love NewsQuakes where concentric circles map out the news similar to the patterns of, you guessed it, earthquakes.




· Mappedup.com takes the newsmap concept even further with its ever changing map of the world in which yellow dots representing various locales mark the news and its location as its happens.




· Popurls displays the top links from social news sites like del.icio.us and Digg in one convenient page. Popurls.tv takes this concept one step further and displays the most viewed stories in the last hour, day and 78 hours. Most viewed stories are also displayed on a Google Map that refreshes every few seconds.




· Finally Textmap analyzes the heck out of any given new subject, providing relationship maps, popularity charts, heat maps, you name it. Its all very impressive.