Latest news on a Timeline

How did I do this?

What you see on the screen is a mashup. The data from various news sources such as Google News and Reuters is fed into an aggregation application Plaxo. In fact, it supports a number of social web sites, for example Pownce, Del.icio.us, etc. The result is either a widget that you can embed into your web page or an RSS feed. It is the latter in our case.
Another component of the mashup is Timeline widget. It allows one to visualze an XML data file on a timeline. Its data format differs from the output format of Plaxo. A special script converts the latter format into the former.
If the same story is found a number of times in the feed that means this is an important piece of news. Depending on this parameter, an appropriate icon is chosen. For example, navy color means that this news is worth glancing over only, whereas red indicates a breaking news story.
I would appreciate your comments sent to ale...@gmail.com.

References

Programmagble Web - Mashups, APIs, and more!, http://programmableweb.com/
Columbia Newsblaster, http://newsblaster.cs.columbia.edu/ - click on any article and then on Track this story's development in time. Thanks to Svetlana Stenchikova.
Sky Life Italia - Most important news of 2007 on a timeline, manually selected.