| URL | OSNews.com |
|---|---|
| Type of site | News |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Current status | Active |
OSNews is a computing news web site with a focus on operating systems and their related technologies that launched in 1997. The content is managed by a group of editors and the owner. The managing editor of OSNews is Thom Holwerda (joined in 2005). David Adams is a publisher for OSNews, and also contributes regularly. Eugenia Loli-Queru, the former editor-in-chief of OSNews, resigned in June 2005. She took on a more passive role in recent years as senior editor. Adam Scheinberg is the webmaster of the site. He wrote version 3 of the site in 2005, which added user registration, and version 4, a complete and total rewrite of the codebase. Version 2 of OSNews was written by Eugenia in August 2001 when she resurrected the site after long periods of inactivity.
Besides the main site, OSNews detects hundreds of mobile browsers and handsets and redirects them to a specially formatted cHTML version of the website at mobile.osnews.com. Eugenia Loli-Queru, the author of this script, open sourced it in 2008.[1]
The editors contribute news items and manage the submissions of news bits, articles, editorial comments and reviews that are submitted by readers, in addition to writing original articles. OSNews serves daily 275,000 page views on average (statistics from Oct 2005).
Like other technology news sites such as Slashdot, it has a free user/subscription model, and allows viewers to add commentary to articles. In 2005, OSNews published version 3 of the website, which includes an all-new commenting engine. Instead of reporting comments to moderators, this system now relies on votes. Readers can vote comments up or down, and readers can set a score threshold, which can eliminate the down-voted comments from view. Late 2007, version 4 was launched which completely overhauled the backend of the website, and was later followed by version 4.1[2] which added a brand new theme and look to the website.
On February 12th, 2007, OSNews' managing editor Thom Holwerda published the 1.0 version of the OSNews Style Guide.[3] This style guide is licensed under a Creative Commons license so that other websites and/or publications can use and adapt the guide to their liking. OSNews is one of the few of its kind with such a style guide.
In January 2008, OSNews' managing editor Thom Holwerda launched Focus Shift,[4] a webcomic based upon the various news items OSNews carries. The Focus Shift webcomic was updated tri-weekly, until it was discontinued in mid-2008.