When reading blogs, it is hard to know if the posts or articles you read are reliable, or trustworthy. Techcrunch has a post on NewsCred, a site currently in private beta, which aims to clear up who is credible and who’s talking trash online.

Right now NewsCred behaves like a mix between a news aggregator and Digg. Users can pick from a number of major news sources to customize their main feeds, or they can sort sources by credibility. After clicking on a story, users can choose to either “Credit” or “Discredit” the author or the article itself. These ratings are averaged across all users to determine the trustworthiness of each article, author, and publication.

I am not in favor of a system like this. Newscred is not actually doing anything to clear this up, but leaves it to their audience, meaning that others will tell me if I am a credible author or not. Excuse me?? Yes, you have read it right. So why don’t we simply use digg and say that if you get a certain number of diggs, you are a trustworthy author?

Because that wouldn’t be fair. And so is NewsCred. Nice initiative, not realistic.

Only a few days back, the deadline MS put on the Yahoo! bid passed. MS outed several threats towards Yahoo last week, but no action followed. With the current rumor from Yahoo! wanting to turn into a social network, a smart move in my opinion, and the apparently ongoing talks to Newscorp about a possible takeover or partnership, one can only wonder about the future.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! is not sitting on it’s ass. Besides the rumored social network integrating all current apps into one, Yahoo did a trial using google’s advertisement program and it was a success. So what are the possible scenarios?

1. MS still does a hostile takeover and Yahoo! disappears as a brand. MS benefits greatly but the internets cry.

2. Yahoo cuts a deal with Newscorp or Google, or both and survives as a brand. The deal with Google is beneficial for both and MS cries.

My 2 cents? I don’t think MS will go through with it. Maybe even MS understands why the internets don’t want MS to buy Yahoo and sees that a lot of customers will move to Google after a takeover. I certainly hope so.

More about the Yahoo story:

Techcrunch interview with Mark Mahaney

Good overview of possible scenarios

CNET announces strategical partnership with Yahoo!

Radionomy is the latest in social networking, and although the idea is not entirely new, it is kind of refreshing to see. So what is Radionomy? Basically, it offers everyone the ability to create a radio channel using the conten available on the site. But that is not the best part. A very exciting feature currently in private beta is uploading your own audio material and creating a radio channel using that.

Radionomy says you are allowed to play copyrighted material you do not own, as Radionomy will pay for playing it. The site says it will generate money to do so by advertising on your radio page. And it is that which could make Radionomy a killer site, as the copyrights keep a lot of people from broadcasting music in public. Exciting!

Radionomy is here.

A few reviews and other articles about radionomy are here:

Brusselstravelguide

Nu.nl (dutch)

Telegraaf.com (dutch)

Radio-fr.com (french)