I never use Google News to get news on more than a micro-topic, but I have searches saved in-browser and in-reader that provide niche content (e.g. for certain types of cell phones). For that, it works well. But, Google News would be about 3x more handy if it had a -duplicate operator.

When an AP story crosses the wires, every small town news paper and TV station posts it. My once perfect HTML or RSS listing is now full of 10 identical stories from useless sources. And don’t even mention the fact that every single TV station has an identical looking horrid website. Substitute the anchors and it’s complete boilerplate.

How would this operator work? If it’s a Reuters story, have the link go to Retuers. If it’s AP, pick a major national source (USA Today, Yahoo!, MyWay).

Right now on one of my searches, the first page of results is all one story, and from such great sources as:

• Fort Wayne News Sentinel
• Wilmington Morning Star
• Worcester Telegram
• WTOP

Useless. With -duplicate, it should have one link to a reputable national source and then move on with the other stuff. I have to modify my searches to weed out this stuff, or dig through SERPs to find a national source.

I’m not a Democrat. But I’m going to keep a close eye on the Iowa caucus tomorrow. Why? It’s a tie. Who will win? Not Sharpton. Not Clark. Pretty much anyone else.

Some real dirt has come out on Dean and Kerry. Both love to show off pancake skills [Dean | Kerry]. If the race was up to flap jacks, Dean takes it.

I’d personally like to see Wes Clark win the DNC bid. He’s a crazy. Dean is too, but I’d like to see his email list cry before the election. By the way, Clark does breakfast too.

Update: Wow. Dean even paid his wife to come out to Iowa for a few hours. He’s serious about the election.

Why not celebrate the new year with a 2004 almanac* and a steak? Sounds good to me. Make that 2 steaks. One for me and one for Japan.

* It’s the book of terrorists everywhere…

If you haven’t seen the markets lately, they are really going crazy. The NASDAQ is back over 2,000. The Dow has 10,500 in its sights. I’m even the proud owner of a little XM (I should really sign up now). Good times all around. But I’m just one of those bulls :).

It looks like George Bush caused mad cow disease*… (Postscript: he made a dedicated page on the Bush link. Heh.)Tisk tisk. But on a more serious note, don’t eat the brain or the spinal tissue of cows and you’ll be just fine. That won’t cramp my style. I’m just glad I am not into any food stocks/futures. Eek.

*Read the comments…

Update: Would like to point out that while this is the big end-of-the-world story, with vegans dancing in the streets, thousands of people died in the UK due to a few day cold snap. Less than 200 have died worldwide BSE tainted meat. Ever. Now, continue to freak out.

Update: And now 20,000 - 40,000 have died from a minor (California’s quake the other day was 2x as powerful) earthquake in Iran. I say we get together and vote this “natural disaster” guy out of office.