Some information about a new site from Roddy:

NewsinChinese.com takes RSS Feeds from Chinese language news sources (currently Xinhua, but hopefully the range will expand in the future), annotates them with pinyin and English translations using the Adsotrans database, and then displays them in an easy to read format. When a user comes across a character or word they are unfamiliar with, they can hover their cursor it, and a large friendly pop-up appears, with large-font characters, pinyin (with tone marks, rather than numbers) and an English translation.

Primarily, we aim to make Chinese news much more accessible to Chinese learners:

- We take the news out of the Chinese news portals packed with flashing ads
onto a clean, easy to read page, and make pinyin and translation information
available instantly, without even the need to copy and paste into a dictionary
program or site.

It is possible to comment or ask questions about articles, and also to update
the dictionary database which it runs on (a much expanded and refined version
of CEDICT, put together by David Lancashire of the Chinese-English translation tool Adsotrans.com).

Roddy also maintains the Chinese language and culture forum Chinese-Forums, the group blog of foreigners writing in Chinese Chuyubusu, and a more personal blog with the excellent name of Dreams of White Tiles.