I noticed a nifty new feature on The Washington Post's website this afternoon.  Campaign Tracker uses information from a variety of sources, including campaigns and media to compile a database that stores information about events where the 2008 presidential candidates will be making appearances.

This feature uses a variety of techniques to keep things organized.  Campaign events are stored on Google Maps, which makes getting directions and pinpointing locations quite easy.  In addition, the Campaign Tracker allows users to filter events by candidate, date, and state, which makes sorting and searching the events simple.  

The Campaign Tracker is an interesting and useful tool, and it is something that you don't often see on newspaper websites. The Campaign Tracker is creative, and provides a new way at looking at the 2008 Presidential campaigns. 

The Washington Post seems to have a knack for creating this type of niche content.  In the 2006 Senate cycle, the paper built a database for storing and displaying political ads produced by all the various campaigns.  This feature, called Mixed Messages, provides WashingtonPost.com readers with a centralized location where they can watch and compare all of the political ads produced by campaigns around the country. 

The WaPo isn't alone in its endeavors, however.  The New York Times has gotten into this process by launching its database for campaign finances about a month ago, which uses a map application to show the fundraising  stats for all of the presidential candidates.

I would like to see more newspapers experiment with this kind of tool.  While it's definitely outside of their core competencies, I think that this type of coverage helps fill a niche where regular people otherwise have difficulty finding information.  By filling these gaps with tools like those the WaPo and New York Times have developed, these publications can be a prime source for specific news. 

Along with Slashdot, Fark is sort of the granddaddy of social news sites like Digg, del.icio.us and Newsvine. Launched in 1999, Fark lets users submit story links which are then reviewed by editors. The best submissions make the Fark homepage. Digg is essentially Fark (or Slashdot) with user voting in place of the editors. Fark is focused on offbeat news with clever headlines, and, after being around for eight years, still gets a ton of traffic and has an extremely active community of users.

I used to be a daily reader of Fark back in 2001-2002 and probably check in once or twice a month these days. The site hasn’t changed much over the years. The owners know not to mess with their formula or upset their community. Fark launched an extremely subtle redesign on April 25th, and to the surprise of no one the users seem to hate it. There have been two threads about the redesign, one attracted over 3,700 comments and the other over 2,000.

Here are some of the more amusing comments: (more…)

Amazon S3: Show me the money

The CEO of the photo sharing site SmugMug explains how Amazon S3 will save him over $500,000 this year. Amazon and others are in the process of blowing up the hosting business - pay attention to this stuff. Via Echo Ditto.

4 Hour Work Week Blog

Lifehacker style blog from author Tim Ferriss. Twitter and Blackberry addicts aren’t going to like it - Ferriss’ big thing is that we’d be more productive in life and work if we were less connected. He’s right.

Politics is flat

Seth Godin thinks the upcoming Personal Democracy Forum could be a one of those “seminal events that everyone remembers attending years later… even if they didn’t.” We got our tickets on Friday.

ABCNews.com Relaunches with Citizen Journalism

Steve Rubel has the scoop on a new design for ABCNews.com.

I’ve been saving interesting political videos in my YouTube account in preparation for a cheap “list” post.  I’m pulling the trigger today.  So here are the six most interesting political videos I’ve come accross in the first part of this year.

(6) John McCain sings “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran”..

(more…)

I received an email the other day from Brian Kroski, VP/GM Online at the New York Observer, a well-renowned weekly paper in New York City.  The Observer recently redesigned it's website, and I was quite impressed with the results.  

The redesign of the Observer has integrated many Web 2.0 features that we have discussed here at TBR. Here is some of the functionality I noticed on the site:

• Alternate Content Views.  The Observer provides its online readers with lots of different ways of getting their news. The site gives readers the option of reading articles according to the most read, most commented, and top tags. This is a great way to get readers involved with the news.

• Tag clouds.  The Observer online has many different tag clouds.  I think this is a great feature and I really wish more newspaper sites used tags.  Tags not only make it easy for people to find information they are looking for, but they also give the newspaper itself a great method for organizing its content.  The Observer has tag clouds on the homepage and every individual section of the site, giving readers lots of different tools for searching for content.  A fun feature that the site provides is their "head cloud", which shows the people that are most discussed about each day in the paper.
• Layout and Design.  I really like the design that the Observer came up with for this site.  It's easy to navigate, content is clearly divided into relevant sections, and looking at the site's pages doesn't give me a headache, as many other newspaper sites do.  The Observer was able to get away from the traditional "online newspaper vomit" theme that is pretty common among newspaper websites.  Their homepage provides ample content, but it is organized in such a way that it is pleasing as opposed to overwhelming.
• Bookmarking, bookmarking, bookmarking.  As many other news sites are doing these days, the Observer provides a plethora of bookmarking options on each of its articles. Currently, readers have 11 social bookmarking options, including (among others), Facebook, Newsvine, Reddit, and Digg.

In addition to these features, The Observer allows comments on all of its articles and blog posts.  Unfortunately, not much discussion has occurred on the site so far, but I imagine this will change as the redesign gets more publicity.  I tested the commenting feature by responding to an article, and my comment appeared immediately.  So it seems that the Observer has done what many papers are unwilling to do: relinquish some aspects of control in order to really open a site up for discussion.

On the downside, the site does not provide any video or user submission features. I don't see this as a big problem, as newspapers are, after all, sources of printed content.  Just as it's better for political candidates to refrain from blogging than to have a "bad" blog, I think it's better for newspapers to stick to what they know –print content–rather than attempt a multimedia program and do it poorly.  It's important for newspapers to know their limits and do the best they can with the resources they have.  So cheers to the Observer for maintaining its integrity and not trying to expand too far beyond its reach.

Also, the site seemed a little slow to me, with the time between viewing different pages longer than it should be.  This got a little annoying, but wasn't a big problem. 

Overall, I think the NY Observer has come up with a great online program.  Many other news publications can learn from this weekly's redesign.  

You can read more about the paper's redesign here. 

What do you think? Use our commenting feature to write your own mini-review of the New York Observer website. 

Launch Flash Review

When I was 7, my father finally broke down and bought our first color TV and I wouldn’t stop screaming for days, I’m told. Well, that feeling was nothing compared to the crazy joy we all felt over here when the McCain for President web team presented us with a new colorized version of their campaign site yesterday. To be honest, though, when Edwards spiced his site up, I sprained both wrists from all the high-fives.

This latest version of the campaign site seems only a bit forced to me. If I had gotten as much criticism for the black and white scheme as the designers originally did, I might have used this opportunity to throw some color in as well. With that being said, let’s take a look and see how we did.

The structure of the site is more traditionally laid out and in the header, a circus-style banner is revealed to proclaim The Announcement is coming today. So, immediately the tone of the user experience is changed to produce some excitement, where we last had nothing but grave statements and ghosted stars and stripes. The header was so militaristic, in fact, with the black and white flag and the Silver Star McCain logo (now in color!) that the added old school banner gives it a WWII feel. Maybe this is intentionally nostalgic but probably not.

Below is a lot of new content and all of it in full color. The generous real estate used for the campaign announcement looks good here and the photo used is upbeat rather than overly serious. A gigantic blue button begs me to Read The Speech, which I respectfully decline. Below all of that swagger is another chance to read the speech, an opportunity to donate and some supporting articles from the day, including (did you read ahead?) a link to read the speech. The Get Involved section is the same standard fare as before, and is of course numbered for my convenience. The middle third of the home page is Straight Talk Express-centric. A slick video full of sound bites reminds us that the bus is coming, and to the right of this is a well enough designed, side-scrolling calendar of bus events. A quick click on the modest “more” button takes me to the Straight Talk Express page (a web 2.0 overdose of shiny floor reflections and Photoshop filters). Below this is a poll about water-free urinals, congress and the World Toilet Summit and some mostly regurgitated filler content.

So, perhaps we can assume that the McCain team kept the site in black and white until he officially announced. I think they’d like that, so let’s. What the hell?

This is an improvement over the initial launch of course and the black and white gripes will finally come to an end. It was a weird couple of months though, and I wonder if the branding took hold a little stronger than anticipated.

• Launch Flash Review
• View Previous McCain Site Review
• View other Design Reviews

Forrester Research just released an interesting study led by Charlene Li about social technographics that breaks up web users into distinct and defined categories so that marketers can target their efforts to inspire action.

These categories include: (more…)

Update 2: They have tweaked the design and it is now less busy and has one big lead graphic. Although they are changing it every few minutes I think.


Update: The McCain campaign has launched their official campaign blog as well.

Original Post

Looks like the McCain team revamped their website in recent days. I think it is better from a usability standpoint.

They abandoned the black and white scheme (which was just a little too foreboding) in favor of some color. They got rid of the little video rollover effects that would surprise and annoy visitors. They are giving people the option to read some text instead of going with a “watch video or go away” approach.

However, it is a little too cluttered for my taste. I’m a fan of sites with one overriding message/graphic as the lead piece everyday (Edwards, Clinton, Obama). Also, McCain’s picture is strangely absent from the top half of the site. We’ve gone from having too many pictures of the candidate to having none at all “above the fold.” I’m sure they’ll work some McCain pictures into the flexible space on the left at some point.

What do you think?

I saw an interesting tidbit on Forbes.com this morning related to our discussion of newspapers, hyperlocalization of news, and the internet.  Mark Whitaker, "editor of Newsweek from 1998 to 2006 and now vice president and editor-in-chief of new ventures for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI)", did a short interview with Forbes.com and gave some insight as to ways news outlets can battle declining circulation and take advantage of increased interest in online news.  Whitaker identifies three specific items that I think sum up the task at hand for online newspapers and magazines:

• "Break news no one else is breaking".  For local papers, I interpret this to mean focusing on local content.  For national outlets, find a niche and stick to it.  General interest publications are going by the wayside—newspapers need to find a unique angle in order to succeed.

• "Have writers who have a distinctive point of view that you're not necessarily going to see someplace else."  In layman's terms, let your reporters BLOG freely!  Don't limit them with paranoid rules and regulations .
• The third item "has to do with user experience. Traditionally, one of the things that people have loved about their favorite magazine was the way it looked and felt. What everybody has to do online is try to create a
  user experience that makes people fall in love with their site."  This is self-explanatory.  Most newspapers and magazines need to redesign their websites to offer modern functionality and better overall experiences that will make readers want to come back time and time again.

It was great to hear from someone in the media business that actually "gets it".  I thought this three-pronged approach was refreshing because it condensed a pool of complicated ideas into three digestible goals for newspapers.  

Here is my personal list of the best/most useful Wordpress plugins I’ve come across during my two plus years using the platform.

(10) Google Site Map Generator

This plugin automatically creates a Google-friendly sitemap, making it easier for Google to find your content. SEO folks say this stuff helps.

(9) WP-Cache

This plugin creates static versions of your Wordpress posts and pages, dramatically decreasing the server load require to deliver content. You must have this installed to prevent failure if you get Dugg or Slashdotted.

(8) PodPress

This is great for podcasting. All you do it upload your mp3 and this plugin automatically embeds the audio file in a cool Flash player and gives users the option to download the file as well. (more…)

I had an interesting conversation this weekend with a journalist for the Opelika-Auburn News. A friend of my roommate, this journalist (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) is a sportswriter who covers Auburn University sports and maintains a blog on the newspaper's website. We got to talking one night and I decided to take the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions about his thoughts on newspaper blogs and websites.

We have spent a good amount of time talking about newspaper blogs here at TBR (see Todd's post from November) , and have come to the general conclusion that newspaper blogs just aren't that good.

I now realize that newspaper bloggers aren't the ones to blame. After talking with this journalist, I realize that newspaper bloggers are slapped with a variety of restrictions that significantly limit them in their blogging endeavors.

For example, this journalist told me that he isn't allowed to link to any other newspapers in his posts, either as source material or for the purpose of expanding discussion. He said that the general feeling among editors is that "people will follow the link and never come back". The same restriction applies for both local/Alabama papers in the same market as well as national news outlets. This journalist told me that while not linking to other local papers is somewhat common sense, refraining from linking to major news sites, such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN, or the New York Times, limits the information he can use in his blog posts and is incredibly frustrating.

I understand that newspapers might be weary of "sharing" their traffic and audience with other sites. But forbidding your bloggers from linking to external sources is just plain silly. It's commonly known that links are like a form of currency to bloggers. When you you link to other bloggers and external sources, your audience automatically increases. My journalist friend noted that while the newspaper allows people to comment on his blog, "no one ever comments". Maybe this is partially due to the paper's "no linking policy", which clearly limits a blogger's online network.

This journalist I spoke with said that he really likes to blog. In particular, he enjoys the freedom that th blog gives him, as he can address topics that he otherwise doesn't get a chance to write about. He also said, however, that maintaining the blog is becoming increasingly frustrating: because the paper puts such strict restrictions on his blog, there is a minimal response from the community. Without the conversation created by links and comments, this blogger sometimes feels like his blog is "just another column". Clearly, maintaining this newspaper blog would be more rewarding both for this journalist AND the newspaper he works for if it gave the author and audience a true opportunity to connect. 

Hearing this story from my buddy was really disheartening, and speaks again to the point we've made repeatedly that newspapers need to ditch their outdated, top-down models and open the floor to discussion. It will be interesting to see if redesigned and restructured sites like USA Today have an effect on the way most newspaper do business online.

Since writing the 16 Ways The News Media Can Use Blogs post, I've thought of a seventeenth way.

News organizations, particularly newspapers, can publish dissenting voices of editorials on their websites. Not everyone on an editorial board — like judges (including the most famous at the Supreme Court) — agrees with the board's statements, but at least judges write dissenting or concurring opinions expressing why they disagree with a ruling or agree with a decision for different reasons.

Blogging differing opinions from the editorial board will not only provide a deeper and richer statement from a news organization that wouldn't make to print or air, publishing such content helps organizations avoid the tempting, yet staid, option of simply republishing articles from the dead tree version or aired pieces on the Internet.

Got any other ideas on how the news media can blog?

While perusing through Facebook today I learned about a new conservative website — MajorityAP.com, The Majority Accountability Project — that is slated to go live on April 23rd.  It aims to track the Democrats in the House of Representatives and hold them accountable for their actions.  Hill veterans and site co-founders Mike Brady and Mike Giuliani will cover and present investigative reporting on, according to the Facebook group description, "house votes, campaign financing, district activities, policy positions and public statements" that would otherwise not gain mainstream media attention.

As we have noted a few times recently here on The Bivings Report, the Democrats have dominated the Internet and that Republicans should counter their digital presence.  Interestingly, that's a major motivation for Brady and Giuliani to launch The Majority Accountability Project.  In a press release on David All's blog (and during their YouTube video site introduction), Brady explains that:

Last year, and even now, dozens of organizations, blogs and internet-based groups were engaged in comprehensive research on the Republican House majority - poring over legislation, travel vouchers, FEC statements, and financial disclosures - quickly disseminating that information throughout the nation and, quite often, driving a great deal of the mainstream media coverage. We think this majority needs that same level of scrutiny. 

Apparently, Brady and Giuliani hope to help spearhead the conservatives' counterstrike. 

It is interesting to note that research fleshed out on the Internet attracts the news media's attention, and for the most part Democrats have benefited from this development since their activists are productive and energized.  If Brady and Giuliani hope that their site counters sites like Daily Kos and The Huffington Post, they better actively build a community around The Majority Accountability Project and allow bloggers and other on-line content creators to freely and easily link, cite, use, and reference findings published on the site.  This will allow the Project's influence to grow as people spread its findings throughout their Internet networks.  Further, some on-line advertising is contemporaneously cheaply achieved.

The one thing that baffles me about this project is the name; will Brady and Giuliani change the name to "The Minority Accountability Project" when the Republicans regain control of the House?  Or do feel that Democrats aren't worth attention when they're in the minority?

From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet

The New York Times takes a look at the Twitter phenomemon. Does this mean it is over?

Participation on Web 2.0 sites weak: Study

A very low percentage who visits sites like YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia actually upload or edit their own content. “The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation’s couch potatoes — voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer’s statistics show.”

Rick’s Ruminations: Full Feeds

“I think the primary justification often given for partial feeds - that it will drive higher clickthroughs back to the publisher’s site - is off-base. As people subscribe to feeds, they subscribe to more feeds. And that means they’re consuming more content, which means that each click out of the feed reader is taking the reader away from more content. In other words, feed reading is consumption-oriented, not transactionally focused.”

When is a Blog in Public Meant to Remain Private?

During the Viriginia Tech tragedies, reporters searched the social web for first person accounts of the shooting. In the process, they made public figures out of people intending to write soley for their family and friends.

PBwiki and the United Nations have partnered to integrate a wiki into the United Nationals Global Compact which was started in 2000 to serve as a forum of social actors (non-government organizations, companies, trade organizations, governments, etc.) who commit to 10 central principles concerning human rights, labor standards, the environment, and corruption.

The Communication on Progress Reviewing Project wiki has great potential. Beyond its potential of facilitating collaboration between participants on how they can better adhere to the 10 principals by, for example, sharing successful or unsuccessful strategies, it also can add more transparency to the organization. (more…)