It's OK; you can admit you scan headlines. Between email overload and the rate of news, it's difficult to stay current. One fast way to stay current with technology news is to use Daily Rotation. It provides a quick way to see headlines from over 300 content providers in several different layouts. And yes, you can select which news sites to monitor.

There are plenty of websites that provide technology news. Many of them require memberships. Others are so littered with ads that you wonder where the content is. In contrast Daily Rotation just offers headlines. It's a simple interface that allows you to quickly scan down one or more columns to find headlines of interest. As expected, clicking a story's headline takes you to the full story on the site.

Selecting Your Technology News Content

One appealing aspect is the site provides technology news headlines from over 300 sources. The information providers range from mainstream content providers such as C/Net, InfoWorld and Wired to specialty providers such as ResearchBuzz.

When you first access the site, you get the default configuration presenting 20 or so content providers and the current top 10 headlines in a two-column layout. At the top of the page, you'll see a line for new visitors stating, ?To get all the headlines you want, click here.?

Clicking that link opens the alphabetical source list. If a tech news provider doesn't look familiar, you can move your mouse over the name and a brief description appears. Alternately, you can click the entry and go to the provider's home page.

Selecting a provider is as easy as checking the box next to their name. Once your selections are made, scroll to the bottom of the page and click ?Press here To Save Headline Choices?. Your selections will show on a review page. If everything is correct, click ?Set preference now?.

Tip: Your headlines selections are saved in a cookie. If you have programs that routinely clear cookies you will want to preserve this one. Otherwise, you will have to do the selection process again.

The advantage to this system is you decide which providers to include. You can go crazy and select many news providers or be selective and only choose a few. The providers cover topics ranging from cell phones to video. You're not restricted to Windows sites either as there are plenty of other operating systems such as Mac and Linux.

There is also a beta feature that allows you to add your own sources, but it requires you create an account with user name and password. You can type in a URL such as www.timeatlas.com and the site will find the relevant feed if available. These personal feeds display at the top of your headlines page.

Additional Daily Rotation Preferences

At the top of the page is a Set Preferences button. This will advance you to the settings section where you can select the number of columns, font size and background color. New content providers are also highlighted in this area.

While I appreciate the site's lean design, there are two items I would like to see added as preferences. One is to show a date along side the news provider's title showing when the content was last updated. Some of the sites I've selected don't update regularly. The other is to allow me to set the color for visited links.

If you're a headline scanner, you'll appreciate the content and convenience of this site. You can easily scan countless hundreds of headlines in a short time. I find the service ideal on those days where I have little time to browse the Internet, but want to make sure I'm not missing something critical.

Additional Information

URL: www.dailyrotation.com