Topix.net

Some of the founders of the Open Directory Project (aka DMOZ) just launched an automated news aggregation service. The Company Information page says:

These algorithms read every story as it is released and then categorize each one into one or more of the more the 150,000 'topix.net' pages that we created. Currently, the Topix.net web page inventory consists of separate pages for the 30,000 US cities and towns, 5,500 public company and industry verticals, 48,000 celebrities and musicians, 1,500 sports teams and personalities, and many, many more.

How this is supposed to be better than Google News remains to be seen.