Inform.com is a news aggregator that lists news stories from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal alongside stories from popular blogs such as BoingBoing and Daily Kos.

The site, launched by Inform Technologies LLC in mid-October, currently has about 100 blogs in its system, but the company is working on including more, according to Julian Steinberg, Inform.com’s project manager.

“We 100 percent encourage bloggers to contact us to include their blogs,” Steinberg said. “We don’t want to be the arbiters of what blog content comes in.”

Additionally, the algorithms utilized by Inform.com categorize the text of news articles by common semantic elements. A search for “John Roberts,” for example, yields more than just articles with those words included in the text. Instead, “John Roberts” is a defined topic as the Supreme Court chief justice.

The site is run almost entirely on these mathematical algorithms with only the Top Stories chosen by a human editor.

Another unique feature is each story’s Discovery Area, which helps users find related stories without doing further searches.

“It allows you to dig deeper into the news” Steinberg said, adding that it is “an example of the next generation in online news reading.”

Also included in the news searches are results from registration-required and paid-content sites like the Wall Street Journal. Stories are viewed in a frame on Inform.com, and the content within the frame is exactly how it would appear to readers if they had accessed it through the publisher’s site. So, if a user is not registered with a site, a registration prompt will appear before continuing on to the story.

“What we’re trying to do is increase their readership online,” Steinberg said. This allows people to “discover content that they wouldn’t have come across before.” Inform.com hopes to attract publishers this way by increasing their traffic while keeping their brand loyalty.

Currently, the site lacks a tool bar but Steinberg says that it should be fixed by the end of the year. The company also intends to add extras such as a video search and play and what Steinberg calls “passive personalization options” which will suggest content based on the reader’s preferences, likening the site to “TIVO for news.”

Current TV, launched by former vice president Al Gore in the beginning of August, is the hippest way for citizen journalists to move from the Web to TV. It is “an open forum for ideas” that “capitalizes on advancing technology,” said Sarah Gore, Al Gore’s daughter and a volunteer at Current TV.

The interactive nature of the project has a huge potential to change the media scene, Gore said, particularly if the targeted 18-34 demographic gets involved. “The intent is to expand the opportunities for more people to tell their stories,” she added. “Hopefully, [Current TV] will help raise the quality of journalism on the whole.”

This “open forum” is open to anyone with a camera and Internet access. Stories have to be short (hardly any run over 8 minutes) and non-fiction, but otherwise, there are no restrictions. Current’s Web site has directions that are helpful for those with no experience and cover topics such as choosing the right equipment, compressing files for submission and signing legal release forms.

Stories are uploaded and submitted into one of three broad categories including Current Journalism, Pods or Labs. Once a story is submitted, it is posted in the screening room as a “pod” where online users view them and “greenlight” the ones they like. Those with enough greenlights get broadcast on TV.

“The news media at this point has been built on the idea that you need a cameraman and a big crew … and having this outlet will encourage more people to experiment who may not have before,” Gore said.

Current TV uses fact checkers as part of their screening process, but they also rely on viewers and the community of Internet users to police themselves. “Overall, people who are picking the content are really mindful of not picking anything offensive or untrue,” Gore said. “The public at large does a good job at investigating things on their own.”

The most common misconception about the new network is that it is a counter to Fox News, but Gore insisted this is not the case: “People who watch Current already see that there is no slant. [My father’s] great hope is that Current becomes an open forum for ideas … conservative or liberal.”

Al Gore is currently the chairman of Current TV. Although he has some journalism experience, television is a new venture for him.

“My dad was instrumental in getting [Current TV] started, but he is very mindful that he doesn’t have experience in television. He’s stepping back to let people who have experience make this network happen,” Sarah Gore explained.