Google’s experimenting with new search tools

Ars Technica has a review of a slew of new search tools that Google has put in Labs for people to pick apart.

-     “Alternate views for search results” - includes map, timeline and “more info”
-     “Keyword suggestions” - just like what you get on the Firefox toolbar
-     “Keyboard shortcuts”
-     “Left hand search navigation”
-     “Right-hand contextual search navigation”

2 comments January 30th, 2008

‘Readers owe you nothing’

How’s your top screen full look these days? Lots of ads, logos, tickers, promos, logos, anchor heads, whizzing this, rotating that? Got a nice in-your-face eyeblaster? Maybe a giant page slider? Cool!

OK. Maybe not. It’s as if we think our users owe it to us to wade through all that crap just to read the frickin’ news. All I want is to know what’s going on. OJR’s Robert Niles - a former newspaper reporter - sums it up: “Readers owe you nothing.”

They have no responsibility as citizens to read your reporting, and no responsibility as consumers to look at your ads. The have the right, and ability, to go about their lives without ever once glancing at your publication…

And…

You can, and should, design your website, or your newspaper or magazine, in a way that draws readers’ attention to your ads or in-house promotions. But when your design crosses the line and forces readers to look at ads they don’t want, you encourage those readers to look elsewhere, jeopardizing the readership levels that makes your business sustainable.

11 comments January 30th, 2008

CNN.com now linking non-IB affiliates

If you look at CNN.com’s U.S. News section and inside some of the stories, you’ll see some stations among the links that are not affiliated with Internet Broadcasting. Like WABC, for example. Looks like CNN.com is broadening its linking strategy to include all CNN affiliates. (Full disclosure: I work at KING5.com, which is affiliated with CNN.com, and we were linked inside a story today.)

Adds Brink in comments below: “CNN is developing a new relationship with affils and has been making calls to web producers, soliticing their contributions. They’ll place the links to the stories they like best on CNN.com. Kinda like Fark, actually.”

12 comments January 30th, 2008

MTV launches virtual skate park

First MTV debuted a virtual world called Laguna Beach. Then Pimp my Ride. And Virtual Hills, Virtual Kaya, The Real World and Virtual Newport Harbor. And now MTV and partner Makena Technologies have launched a… virtual skate board park. Sweetness.

3 comments January 30th, 2008

MSNBC.com’s nifty bridge inspection tracker

Investigative reporter Bill Dedman and the rest of the MSNBC.com team posted an original story today that discovered that more than 17,000 bridges in the U.S. went more than two years between safety inspections. MSNBC.com acquired inspection data for 100,000 bridges through a FOIA request, and then mashed the data with Microsoft Virtual Earth, so you can see the condition and inspection schedule for bridges along your route. Cool.

1 comment January 30th, 2008