Content Indexing & Navigation

The Next Newspaper Web-olution
In the wake of US newspaper USA Today recently unveiling a new version of their site with more cutting edge ‘new media’ features than any other, I thought it might be a good time to have a look at the challenges posed to newspapers by the onslaught of new media, what they are be doing about it and what they should be doing about it.
The Challenge
Undeniably new media (that is, the general availability of the Internet and the new types of publishing it enables, such as blogs and podcasting) has had a significant negative impact on circulation of newspapers. There are roughly two schools of thought over why this has occurred. The cynics would argue that it is because the ‘old media’ no longer has the trust of the public, and instead people turn to indie publishers, such as bloggers and podcasters, to provide information on what is happening in the world around them. A more moderate viewpoint would be that the Internet has lowered the barrier to entry into the publishing industry to such an extent that anyone and everyone can publish content (the long tail effect), thus inevitably reducing market share of the big players. It would seem that this view is the more sensible.
If newspapers wish to stay relevant therefore, they are forced to innovate in the realm of new media. Their future circulation is at stake, and if they fail to successfully capture market on the web they miss out on potentially millions of pounds worth of advertising a year. Hence the effort the newspapers are putting into finding a way forward.
What are they doing about it?
The biggest, and perhaps most notable addition to the newspaper’s content production is audio visual content (AVC). AVC refers to anything from podcasts to video blogs to video news reports. These are of crucial importance because of the value they provide to the consumer’s experience above and beyond that found in the newspaper.
The recently relaunched Times Online seems to be taking this the most seriously with the launch of an entire AVC section. They are currently providing over 10 different podcast series, and video content from their Iraqi correspondent and a car review show. Whilst the Times Online is making an admirable effort, my personal favourite newspaper podcasting effort is that of the Comment is Free section of the Guardian Unlimited website. I particularly enjoy their Media Talk podcast, to which I devotedly listen every week.
Another noticeable theme is the rise of user generated content (UGC). This is when users add any of their own content to a site, whether by means of a blog comment, uploaded video or anything else. This is an important trend for newspapers to be adopting for two reasons. The first is that users have come to expect the ability to add their thoughts to a story; provision of comments enhances conversation, and thus interest in the story and ‘stickiness’ of the site as users return to read comments in response to their own. The second reason is that UGC is ideal for any business looking to monetise content through advertising because it provides virtually free content, next to which can be placed fee-paying ads.
Almost all the recent newspaper Website relaunches (such as that of the Times and the Telegraph) have the ability to add comments, as well as more the forward-looking Guardian Unlimited, which has had the feature for some time. However, by far the most adventurous in UGC is the recent relaunch of the USA Today site. USA Today is building a fairly robust social network around their content, which allows users to comment, have their own avatar, ‘recommend’ (effectively digg) stories as well as a profile page.
Taking it further
Over time it is clear that the journalist will have to become an expert in all types of media. They will have to be able to easily transition from writing a story for a newspaper to producing a podcast interview to setting up and tweaking an installation of WordPress. Whilst many journalists will be struggling to be as technically proficient as this requires, I believe the necessary skills will develop over time.
The temptation will be for newspapers’ websites to become more and more like a combination between Weblogs, Inc and Digg, with loose editorial control and use of wisdom of the crowds to determine top stories. It is crucial that this is resisted, because to move in this direction would mean that newspapers would lose their unique selling point of quality, carefully edited content.
The challenge, therefore, is for newspapers to continue to innovate without losing sight of why they are important sources of news. If they succeed, they will continue to flourish, otherwise perish.
7 March, 2007
Kendra Initiative Cross-Media Summit for Content Discovery
The Kendra Initiative is hosting a Cross-Media Summit about Content Delivery next week, on Friday 9th March in London.
The full day event, running at the Frontline Club, is billed as “The Strategy, Technology and Business Case for Content Description, Visibility, Search and Discovery.”
The event is aiming to tackle one of Digital-Lifestyles hobby horses – In a sea of infinite content, how do you, as a willing content consumer, locate the content you want to use? As Peter Buckingham, Head Of Distribution and Exhibition, UK Film Council puts it, “The biggest threat is obscurity.”
The approach of this free-to-attend event is from the content owners perspective, looking at what is the weakness of current metadata standards; if they can be adapted to work better; if not, what is the appetite for more metadata standards for cross-media description?
Metadata standard are all very well, but often live within a bubble of non-implementation. The need for metadata-creation tools and how to persuade the industry to use them will also be covered.
We spoke to Daniel Harris (mug shot above), founder of Kendra, “It’s all about making things work, making the open marketplace work together. We’re really pleased to see how many people are coming along to it, creating a universal meta data.”
“As with all industries that involve connecting people, some people [involved in this] gain from there being a problem, but people are seeing that they can work outside their industry sector. This is a cross-industry problem that we’re trying to solve.”
So far around fifty people have signed up including representatives from important players such as Patrick Attallah, CEO, ISAN (International Standard Audiovisual Number); Keith Hill, Head of R&D, MCPS-PRS Alliance; Mark Stuart, Principal Engineer, Pioneer Digital Design; Iain McNay, Board Member, AIM (Association of Independent Music) and Chairman, Cherry Red Records; Rich Lappenbusch, Director, Microsoft Entertainment and Board Member, DDEX (Digital Data Exchange).
Being tech driven, those not able to physically attend will be able to hook in via Instant messaging and Skype.
The event will be free and sponsored by Makeni.
Kendra Initiative Cross-Media Summit for Content Discovery
1 March, 2007
Google Breaching Belgian Copyright: Judge
Belgian courts have ruled that Google is in breach of copyright.
The case was brought by Copiepresse, a copyright protection organisation that was representing 17 [UPDATE (thanks Michel) French-speaking] Belgian newspapers, complaining that both Google’s search and News service were in breach.
Their complaint is that their news pages are being cached by Google, thus, in their view, offering free access to their valuable content. Google’s argument is that they only display a headline and a short part of the content and also point out that they drive huge amount of readers to the newspapers Web sites.
This action was first launched last August in the Belgian courts. Google lost the case and was directed by the judge to remove the offending articles from the Google.be site and corresponding news service and post messages to their home pages. Google appealed the decision and lost yesterday.
Copiepresse is also pursuing similar action against Yahoo and MSN and it’s reported that they are in touch with copyright groups in Norway, Austria and Italy.
It is understood that Copiepresse is pursuing Google for payment for access to their content. Google has stated that this will not happen – not surprisingly as _every_ other publication, worldwide, would be asking for the same.
Google respect both robots.txt and metatags that enable any Web pages publisher to exclude them from being included in the Google index. As Google’s Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs, points out, if asked, Google will remove content if requested.
Confused
We’re very confused by the ruling. How do these publishers think people are going to find their content without a search engine pointing them? Sure, their regular readers will still visit their home pages, but their potential readership will not be aware of the quality of their writing.
Copiepresse
14 February, 2007
Microsoft Live Search Shuffles Out Of Beta
Microsoft is officially launching its updated next-gen, ‘Live Search’, search engine today as the company tries hard to catch up with market leaders Google and Yahoo.
Microsoft is currently languishing a distant third behind search engine kings Google, currently hogging a hefty 45 percent of all search engine queries in the US, with Yahoo notching up 29 percent of the market compared to Microsoft’s mere 13 per cent.
From today, Microsoft will start replacing the current MSN Search engine on MSN.com with its new Live Search branded label, which features a souped-up image search service, better local search, a redesigned user interface and new tools for refining query results.
We can’t say we particularly liked the new AJAX-tastic interactive interface – it may well be technically cleverer than Google’s, but we’re fans of keeping it simple, thanks.
In line with its rivals, Live Search will also feature a new social search service called QnA, where surfers can pose questions and get answers from other users.
There will also be new options to view full-size photos in image search results and more “bird’s eye” aerial images in its local search service (another Microsoft project now shedding its beta label in the US and UK).
Derrick Connell, general manager of the Microsoft search business unit, explained that the new Live Search feature will be implemented progressively across different MSN host servers.
Microsoft’s new search engine – with its Google-a-like super-simple homepage – has been in public beta testing since March at Live.com, which is also shaking off its beta status this week.
These updates reflect Microsoft’s mustard keenness to grab a juicy slice of the search engine market, with search engine-based advertising proving to be a fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar earner.
Live Search
12 September, 2006
Camouflage Your Online Searches With Lostinthecrowd.org
Unspam Technologies has announced the launch of a new website – lostinthecrowd.org – that sneakily helps keep Web searches private.
When you use a search engine, your search enquiry is associated with a unique identifying “cookie” stored in your browser’s cache, and this can be easily accessible to prying eyes (or, in the recent case of AOL, made available to all and sundry on the Web and now fully searchable here ).
Over time, these records can provide an in-depth record of your surfing habits and provide snoopers with information you’d perhaps like kept to yourself.
Of course, routinely clearing the cookies from your browser is the safest option, but Lost in the Crowd takes a different approach by automatically placing random queries through the search engines you use from your tracking cookie.
While it won’t stop your search queries being indexed, it will help camouflage your activities as Eric Langheinrich, CTO of Unspam explains, “It’s as if you had a bunch of monkeys running searches on your behalf. While search engines would still see your real searches, it would be hard for them, or anyone who may subpoena their data, to separate those searches you care about from those the monkeys randomly typed in.”
“Your identity, in any meaningful way, becomes ‘lost in the crowd,” he added.
Langheinrich said that Unspam has no intention of making any money out of the service, citing that the site’s sole purpose was to focus people to the issue of online privacy.
Although we can see this coming in useful in some situations, we’d always recommend that users make a habit of regularly cleaning out their browser’s history (in Firefox, it’s Options -> Privacy -> History), or use the truly excellent freeware cleaning application CCleaner (Windows only, www.ccleaner.com)
www.lostinthecrowd.org
23 August, 2006
Google Splashes 4 New Tools
Google took the opportunity of their annual press briefing at the Googleplex to inform the assembled hacks of four new applications. The theme they were trying to push was ‘honest we _are_ a search company.”
In no particular order, the new apps are …
Google Notebook
Yet to be launched, but supposed to be making an appearance next week. Used when you skip around Web sites and want to gather bits and pieces from them such as text, URLs and graphics. These will then be stored online and you can choose to make them available to others.
Google Trends
Ever wanted to have access to the information that Google gathers on all of the billions of searches that flow through their simple search box? Yes, you’re not alone, we’d love to as well. This is the closest that Google is going to let you get to it. Type in a search term and you’ll get a plot of how popular the term has been with peaks highlighted on particular news stories.
There’s also a feature to compare two search terms, our favourite so far being good vs evil (glad to see good winning). Breakdowns that can be further explored are cities, regions and languages.
Google Co-op
Adds user knowledge to the power of Google’s search engine. Individuals or companies will add their particular knowledge to sites or searches that they share with people who subscribe to them. Those who you do subscribe to, will appear in your google search results.
This is what we’d long imagined. It’s an expansion of the idea of blogging where people gather knowledge and share. Could become the most significant announcement of the set, marking the next stage in search.
Google Desktop 4 & Google Gadgets
Not surprisingly the fourth release of this app that indexes all of the content on your machine, including what you get up to online. When this first came out, we realised that Google had beaten Microsoft as they’d become the way to locate your document on your PC, side-stepping Windows Explorer.
Everyone and their wife appear to be knocking out different versions of Apple’s Dashboard or Desktop Widgets. For examples Yahoo bought Konfabulator (arguably ‘the original’) and then gave it away to the Yahoo-faithful.
Like Yahoo, Google are making them programmable, so code-fanatics will be able gain global fame.
Either this is a me-too product, which is pretty unlikely, or one step further into Google taking over Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop, by placing apps on the desktop.
Google Trends
Google Co-op
Google Desktop 4
12 May, 2006
Yahoo Tech Shopping Site Launches
Search engine big-boys Yahoo have unveiled a shopping site for consumer electronics backed up by expert advice and user-contributed reviews.
Shoving their size nines into a market long dominated by CNet Networks, the new Yahoo! Tech shopping and advice Website will offer hundreds of thousands of products with user ratings and reviews.
Spod-free advice, no anorak required
Yahoo is hoping that by offering a site free of the spoddy techno-jargon of gadget enthusiast sites, consumers will warm to their no-nonsense, straightforward approach.
“What we are trying to do is to make it simple to choose and use the technology that is easiest to use,” said Patrick Houston, general manager of Yahoo! Tech, formerly editor in chief at CNet.
“We built Yahoo! Tech for people who might not have the time nor inclination to learn about bits and bytes,” he added.
The magazine-style site will use Yahoo’s tried and trusted community tools to help users find information about products and prices and share their opinions with friends, family and other consumers.
Using an attractive and simple interface, products can be sorted and filtered by price, brand and expert rating with the option to compare online prices for the best deal.
Where consumers are looking to spend money, advertisers are always ready and willing to slap up enticing banner ads, and Hewlett Packard, Verizon Wireless and Panasonic have already signed up.
Content
Yahoo will be populating the site with content from “trustworthy publications from around the Web who may or may not be official content partners,” as well as their own staff editors and writers, and Yahoo! users.
A weekly video clip called ‘Hook Me Up’ will dish out ‘geeky wisdom’ to haul heel-dragging technology Luddites into the bright electronic age, aided by Yahoo’s ‘Emergency Makeover Technicians.’
The company is also reported to have licensed reviews from the “Dummies” series of How-to books, Consumer Reports, PC World and PC Magazine.
The new Yahoo! Tech is currently focussed on the U.S. market, with Houston saying that there are no imminent plans to expand into other countries.
http://tech.yahoo.com/
2 May, 2006
Cingular Go Mobile Content Mad with NCAA Games
The US mobile companies are finally, really getting hold of delivering content of all sorts to mobile phones.
Crisp Wireless are working with Cingular on the (deep breath now), Cingular MEdia Net NCAA March Madness Portal and Bracket Challenge (gasp).
It provides 3G mobile phone access to lots of content. The particulars worth mentioning being …
- a virtual leader board which can be played against others on the network
- video highlights two-minute video clips covering all 64 games will be packaged and delivered to the handsets of Cingular customers twice-daily during each day of the tournament.
- For the first time ever, will give wireless users the power to make, track and manage their tournament bracket entirely from their wireless handset.
As with all things to mobile phones, we’d love to see the figures as to who actually pays for access to this. A barrier which has yet to be consistently cracked.
Cingular NCAA
Crisp Wireless
14 March, 2006
Wikipedia Hits One Million Articles
The English version of Wikipedia has now notched up more than one million articles, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, the fellas who run the free online encyclopedia.
Comprised of articles largely written collaboratively by its thousands of users, Wikipedia lets readers get involved by contributing their own articles or modifying existing entries, not always with the best intentions in mind.
Wikipedia’s reach is truly global, with versions of the encyclopaedia currently available in 125 languages, containing a total of 3.3 million articles.
The lucky millionth article (on March 1st) was an entry on Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, written by Ewan Macdonald, a Wikipedia contributor who posts under the tag, Nach0king.
Writing on his Wikipedia homepage, Macdonald admitted that he’d been coveting the honour of the millioneth post: “While I am, of course, delighted at being the one to hit this milestone, I must confess that, along with many others, I timed my contributions tonight to give me a chance at being the lucky one.”
With the million-article mark passed and the Wikimedia Foundation estimating that new articles are coming in at a rate of 1,700 new articles every day, our back-of-a-beer-mat calculation reckons they’ll be hitting 2 million sometime 2009.
Started in 2001, Wikipedia is now the largest reference website on the Internet and along with text articles, the English Wikipedia includes graphical timelines, subject-specific portals, four hundred thousand images and hundreds of full-length songs, videos, and animations.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia: Jordanhill railway station
2 March, 2006
Yahoo! Launches Go Services
Yahoo is launching a new service aimed at making it easier for users to connect to Yahoo Internet-based services through multiple Web-connected devices, including mobiles and TVs.
Announced by Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the new Yahoo Go service consists of the Yahoo Go Desktop, Yahoo Go Mobile and Yahoo Go TV interfaces,
Each of the interfaces is optimised for the screen of the specific device, with Yahoo Go automatically serving up the appropriate interface.
So long as the device is connected to the Internet, users will be able to access their personal Yahoo content such as photos, email and address books.
Stating the flaming obvious, Semel commented: “We think the Internet is not a Web page or desktop, [but] an infrastructure and delivery vehicle for communication, experiences, entertainment and any kind of data you use on the Internet.”
“The next generation is about ease of use and open platforms that connect the Internet to any device that you all will be manufacturing. Yahoo is in the perfect position to be a great partner to all of you who are working on devices in the future,” he added.
Yahoo! will be rolling out their Go TV service in the next few months, with the service enabling users to access various other Web based services for TVs, including local movie listing search and personalised MyYahoo! functions.
If you’re a heavy Yahoo! user, we can see the attraction of the new Go services, with the universal internet database ensuring that personal info is synchronised across all your devices.
Even better, the remote storage concept means that your data will be safe if a device is misplaced or stolen.
Yahoo! Go.
10 January, 2006