Nifty ... considering so many newspapers still put up registration walls, it's hard to imagine them being quick to embrace things like FB Connect quickly, but they really should. This is a perfect example. - Adam Ostrow from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Sarah, this is a nice writeup. Thanks very much. I am the professor who directed the class that developed News Mixer. A few other points that your readers may find relevant: (1) For more information on News Mixer and how it came about, check out: * my posts about the project on the PBS Idealab blog: http://www.pbs.org/idealab... * the class Web site: http://www.crunchberry.org (2) The code behind News Mixer is open-sourced and available on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p.... We are hoping that others will "stand on our shoulders" and continue to develop this project. (3) I want to be sure the students get credit for this -- this was their project, not mine. So kudos to Brian Boyer, Angela Nitzke, Joshua Pollock, Stuart Tiffen and Kayla Webley. (Info about them is at http://crunchberry.org/the-tea....) Note to news organizations: All of them are either graduating or will be graduating by March. - Rich Gordon from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Sarah, this is a nice writeup. Thanks very much. I am the professor who directed the class that developed News Mixer. A few other points that your readers may find relevant: (1) The site that is launched is really a demonstration site. We are expecting the Cedar Rapids Gazette to launch a site for real users based on this code in 2009 sometime. (2) For more information on News Mixer and how it came about, check out: * my posts about the project on the PBS Idealab blog: http://www.pbs.org/idealab... * the class Web site: http://www.crunchberry.org (3) The code behind News Mixer is open-sourced and available on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p.... We are hoping that others will "stand on our shoulders" and continue to develop this project. (4) I want to be sure the students get credit for this -- this was their project, not mine. So kudos to Brian Boyer, Angela Nitzke, Joshua Pollock, Stuart Tiffen and Kayla Webley. (Info about them is at http://crunchberry.org/the-tea.... - Rich Gordon from FriendFeed MT Plugin

In my haste to add my comment, I left one of the student team members off. He is Ryan Mark, and he (like colleague <a href="http://sixthw.com">Brian Boyer</a>) is an experienced programmer/developer who came to <a href="http://www.medill.northwestern.edu">our journalism school</a> on a Knight Foundation scholarship that's intended to bring computer programmers into the world of journalism. Ryan and Brian spent the past year studying journalism at Medill and then participated in the New Media Publishing Project class (with four other students) in which their team conceptualized and built News Mixer. Ryan blogs occasionally at http://www.ryan-mark.com. We're still looking for coders who would be interested in studying journalism and then participating in another innovation-oriented project like this one. For information about the scholarship program, check out http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/admissi.... - Rich Gordon from FriendFeed MT Plugin