September 6, 2002, 12:43 PM ET
Friday's recommended links
Online Journalism Review has an article about "Web shells" on news sites -- that is, packages of links to related data to put journalism in context. Seems kind of obvious to me, but not many sites do it.
Editor and Publisher reports the Belo media chain will offer qualified political candidates free Web space on Belo Interactive Web sites, along with free TV airtime. Very cool. I'm wondering, does it stop there? Will Web design services or templates be provided, or will candidates have to do it themselves?
Via I Want Media: According to a press release, The San Francisco Chronicle will begin offering their content in audio form. The night before work, you select the sections you'd like to read (er, hear) and specify your commute time. In the morning, your CD writer will have written an audio CD of the news, just in time for your commute. The feature expected to launch in November. (Also see the News.com story.) Bravo, experimentation. What I want to know is, who or what is going to provide the vocals? A glorified Doctor Sbaitso?
Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman has thoughts on different types of external links: "The Web needs some kind of interface enhancement to distinguish between kinds of links, connote endorsement or lack thereof and help the reader determine which links are interesting."
Blogite is a new mailing list dedicated to discussion of weblogs -- blog features, bleeding-edge technologies, brainstorms and other technical talk. I highly recommend it. Although blogs are the topic, many of the technical ideas tossed around here apply to any site. (And face it. News sites are very similar to blogs.) Check out the archives for a sample of the discussion so far.
September 6, 2002, 12:22 AM ET
The horror of rewritten home-page URLs
I'm reading Jakob Nielsen's Homepage Usability, and one of the points Jakob stresses to death is the importance of clean, memorable home page URLs. A snippet from the book:
Once users locate a website, a simple homepage URL helps them quickly understand that they are in the right place, whereas complex URLs can make them wonder if they're indeed on the correct page...It is especially startling when users enter a simple URL and get to a site, only to have the URL they typed replaced by a long, scary-looking URL.
Although I think Jakob can be somewhat militant, I agree completely on this point. It's jarring and bookmark-unfriendly to have a URL change in front of your eyes. It's like having the carpet pulled out from under you.
I found a few news sites that do this and have listed them here. The URL I typed in is first, and the rewritten URL is second.
Redundancy Department
- suntimes.com -- suntimes.com/index/
- espn.com -- msn.espn.go.com/main.html
- seattletimes.com -- seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/
- nationalpost.com -- nationalpost.com/home/
- miami.com -- www.miami.com/mld/miami/ (And other RealCities sites)
- phoenix.bizjournals.com -- phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/ (And other bizjournals.com sites)
- philstar.com -- philstar.com/philstar/index.htm
- hollywoodreporter.com -- www.hollywoodreporter.com/hollywoodreporter/index.jsp
- bbj.hu -- www.bbj.hu/user/index.asp
Owned-By-Somebody-Else Department
- 7online.com -- abclocal.go.com/wabc/ (And other ABC TV Web sites)
- ajc.com -- www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/ (And other Cox sites)
"No, Please" Department
- anchoragepress.com -- www.anchoragepress.com/index.cfm?redirect=yes
Let's-Just-Give-'Em-An-IP-Address Department
- eldia.com -- 200.26.107.200/
Somewhat-Scary Department
- hammondstar.com -- www.zwire.com/site/news.asp?brd=1423
- bermudasun.org -- www.bermudasun.bm/cgi-local/home.pl
Especially-Long-And-Scary Department
- thestar.com -- [a reeeeally long URL]
- jpost.com -- [a reeeeally long URL]
