News By Name is a free, non commercial news site with "up to the minute news headlines collected from multiple news channels. Incoming news is automatically scanned for 'names' allowing for charting, archiving and email alerts by name, showing you who's hot and who's last weeks news".

If your work involves monitoring the news for mentions of particular people (the CEO of your organisation's closest competitor, key clients, suppliers), then this news aggregation tool may prove extremely useful.

Not only can you set up email alerts to be informed when those names hit the wires, you can also estimate the potential impact that piece of news is making, based on the buzz (or noise, or heat if you like) generated from the number of sources picking up on that item.

News By Name joins a growing number of news aggregators that are exploiting rapid advances in a range of content selection, filtering, grouping and visualization technologies aimed at helping users see what's important amongst the waves of news information hitting them.

Other players making inroads here include WebFountain, the joint effort between IBM and Factiva, which is developing applications that enable users to track and see the news 'buzz' around, for example, campaigning politicians, or consumer brands.

Relegence, albeit a much smaller player, is also meeting some success with its FirstTrack tool in the Financial Services sector. FirstTrack provides 'Heat Alerts' around specific, pre-defined events, or stock ticker symbols, or peoples' names, based on the relative amount of news being generated, as compared to a rolling average.

Both WebFountain and FirstTrack are aimed at the enterprise market.

News 'maps' are a more visually representative method of demonstrating the 'amount' of news being generated at any one time for a particular topic or event. Players offering news mapping applications, with free and premium options, include NewsIsFree, Stamen and Marumushi Newsmap.

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• Topical News Mapping : NewsIsFree News Maps
  Robin Good Recommends -- August 3 2004
• Chronological News Popularity: Stamen Time-Visualizes Google New
  Robin Good Recommends -- June 22 2004
• Newsmap
  MasterNewMedia -- April 1 2004