NYTimes In Outline
Dave Winer got inspired by the revelation that the New York Times maintains a hierarchy of keywords that show up in the HTML source of their web pages. Dave, who's done outlining programs for a long time, came up with a great new way to look at the Times: in outline form, clustered by keywords.
It's a compelling shift in how to view a newspaper, and I hope it catches on. Even when I go to the front page of the Times online, I scan all the headlines to pluck the ones that might interest me. Sometimes, that's because the headline is compelling or catchy, but usually it's because the subject is clearly one I'll be interested in. Food policy, wine, whatever. The outline view gives me a) a chance to jump right to the topics I want, perhaps finding articles that I wouldn't have spotted from a scan of the web page, and b) a gestalt view of the news of the day. Check it out.
posted by Derrick @ 10:41 AM
1 Comments:
There are so many advantages to the print newspaper format.
For example -- I can take in a HUGE amount of information in a second or two by glancing over two spread-open newspaper pages. Then I can immediately zero in on anything interesting and take in a subhead. Then I dig a little further by checking a photo, caption, pullquote, etc. if I'm still interested, all without clicking and waiting for new pages to load.
Plus there's the serendipity factor -- by flipping easily and quickly through an entire newspaper, I run across articles that I didn't know would interest me -- something I could never do by preloading a bunch of interests for an online version to present to me.
So I kind of like this idea of outline view and hierarchical keywords. I can't yet see how it will be pleasing to me in particular, not from this first glance, but anything that makes it easier to skim and zero in, and preserves that serendipity factor, is a good thing.
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