Thursday's recommended reading

Written by Adrian Holovaty on October 10, 2002

Hypergene MediaBlog is a new blog "All about Participatory Journalism -- how audiences are changing the future of news and information." Great stuff, including something that looks familiar: Site reviews. I've added the site to my blogroll on Holovaty.com's home page, so you should be able to tell when the site is updated -- as long as they take the time to ping weblogs.com, which, I've observed, they only do on occasion. UPDATE, 1:15 p.m.: Chris from Hypergene e-mailed me to say the site will ping regularly.

The latest Hypergene MediaBlog entry reviews Google News and, among other things, suggests it should provide custom RSS feeds of search results. Google News in RSS does just that -- although, as Mark Pilgrim points out, the hacked service might not last long, considering Google's Terms of Service.

A recent E-Media Tidbits item, "Will New Quark Move Print Designers to the Web?", sparked some good discussion on WYSIWYG Web page editors and how useful -- or, in my opinion, terrible -- they are.

Dan Gillmor complains about an inept, unusable Web site.

The latest Small Initiatives newsletter lists "Things that make a good content search suite." I'm working on adding many of those features to my custom-built search engine, which (hopefully) will be released to the public.

A week from today I'll be in New York City for the Online News Association conference. I'll be on the Web databases panel, speaking about the Nursing Home Guide I put together a few months ago. If you plan on going, or if you live in New York and would like to say hello, drop me a line. I'm also looking for tips on what to do; this will be my first trip to NYC.

Comments

Posted by Jay Small on October 10, 2002, at 9:49 p.m.:

Adrian,

When in NYC, go have a drink in the lobby of the Royalton hotel -- very chic and you will probably see some right-coast celebs in there.

I don't know where ONA is having the conference, but I'd assume one of the Midtown conference hotels -- any of which would be an easy subway ride from the Village or Soho. A sub-ride to either part of town is a guarantee you'll find lots to do, eat and see just by walking around.

Any decent hotel concierge can get you last-minute Broadway tix at a discount if you're not too picky about which shows you want to see.

I haven't been back since before 9/11, but people I know who went all decided to stop at Ground Zero and told me how awkwardly quiet the whole lower part of town is these days.

I found Ellis Island more compelling than the Statue of Liberty, but that's just me. :-)

Enjoy! While you're there, I'll be just to your north in Cambridge, Mass., at a completely different conference...

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