SearchEngineLand: Pages With Too Many Ads "Above The Fold" Now Penalized By Google’s "Page Layout" Algorithm
Friday, 20 January 2012, 14:13
“Google has announced that it will penalize sites with pages that are top-heavy with ads … The change — called the “page layout algorithm” — takes direct aim at any site with pages where content is buried under tons of ads.”
10,000 Words: BBC Redesign Attempts To Make Website More “Swipable”
Thursday, 22 September 2011, 11:32
"the BBC launched a beta site redesign today that accounts for “swipability,” the finger gesture most popular for navigation on smart phones and tablets."
Punkchip: Guardian interactive review: Flash vs. web standards
Wednesday, 24 August 2011, 17:32
Interesting demonstration of rebuilding a Guardian interactive originally built in Flash using only CSS.
HoldtheFrontPage: Welcome to your new-look HoldtheFrontPage
Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 12:58
"The online home of UK regional journalism news and jobs is boasting a brand new look today after the first makeover in its eleven-year history. … The entire archive of 20,000-plus HoldtheFrontPage stories has been migrated across to the new Wor…
New Media Age: FT website to match pink paper
Friday, 25 March 2011, 14:49
"The revamped FT.com site will show articles on a pink background – currently only the landing page is pink – and will also feature bigger graphics and videos, as well as 'more intelligent' linking on articles to steer readers to rel…
Adaptive Path: 5 impacts of Apple’s app store subscription model on experience design
Wednesday, 16 February 2011, 13:45
Brandon Schauer: "But what does the change mean for experiences and experience design? 1. Designing a good trialing experience will be critical; 2. Design services, not apps; 3. Loyalty is the critical metric for improving experiences; 4. Engageme…
NYTimes.com: Election Results on the iPad
Thursday, 9 December 2010, 15:39
"The 2010 elections provided a chance to develop a custom version of our election results site, specifically for the iPad. In building it, we learned a lot about designing for a new class of computing devices, as well as how to leverage several HTML5 technologies."
Information Architects: News on iPad, the Obvious Way
Tuesday, 23 November 2010, 15:53
"Today our first news project for iPad went online and we are proud like kids. Technically, it’s 'just'an HTML5 optimization, but it has been a demanding design process to get to the point of simplicity where it’s at right now."
News personalisation as it should be
Friday, 12 November 2010, 08:00
Online news was supposed to lead to “The Daily Me”, hyper-personalised publications where the homepage is magically tailored to each user’s interests. But with a handful of notable exceptions – particularly certain mobile sites – few news sites have implemented personalisation features in any significant way.
TheMediaBriefing, the new media news aggregator edited by my friend and former Press Gazette colleague Patrick Smith, is showing everyone else how simple it could be.
The site uses semantic tagging technology to (re-)categorise media news from dozens of sources. Each category created by this tagging process generates generates an index page, like this one for (my new employer) the Financial Times.
With one click, logged-in uses can chose to “follow” those categories that they are interested in. This generates a personalised homepage, called “My Tracker” that merges all the their “followed” categories.
The interface is familiar to anyone who has used Facebook’s Like buttons to add friends and topics to their news feed. It uses the existing category structure of the site, so it’s the sort of thing any news site could implement. It’s a surprise so few news sites do anything similar.
The only other similar feature I’m aware of is on The Sporting News, which allows users to follow individual categories on Facebook using Facebook Like buttons, and has claimed massive success in driving traffic from this. Are there any other examples out there?
The story behind Vogue’s iPad app – Features, Gadgets & Tech – The Independent
Friday, 5 November 2010, 11:16
"The iPad product has been produced by the magazine team without additional staff. Vogue's website operates independently and [Vogue UK editor Alexandra] Shulman, while praising the online team for its rapid response to fashion news stories, warns that the brand will need to delineate its various offerings. 'There's no point in putting behind-the-scenes videos on the website for free if you are trying to get people to look at them for £3.99 on the app,' she says."
Slate: Blogs and Web magazines are looking more and more alike. What’s the difference?
Tuesday, 19 October 2010, 14:52
"While Gawker is dropping the blog format, sites of magazines like Wired and The Atlantic are embracing it. (At both outlets, all articles, other than those that first appeared in print, are published in a blog-like format.) Or check out Newsweek, whose home page lists headlines and snippets in reverse-chronological order, just like at your friend's Blogger site."
AllThingsD: Forbes Gets a Facelift. Next Up: A New Body
Thursday, 23 September 2010, 17:28
Peter Kafka: "Forbes’s famously cluttered pages have been cleaned up (the print magazine has a new look, too) and that the whole thing looks, and acts, a whole lot like Facebook. That’s very much intentional, says [Lewis D’Vorkin]: 'We are putting news, and the journalists, at the center of social media.'"
WWD: Anna Wintour Weaves Her Web
Friday, 10 September 2010, 09:54
"The new vogue.com — created in conjunction with Code and Theory, the digital development company behind the streamlined Web sites of The Daily Beast, Interview magazine and NBC New York — has such elements as an oversize features carousel (which integrates advertisements) with images that are three times larger than before, a locking navigation bar (essentially a traveling table of contents), plus Vogue-inspired typography and lots of white space, or “breathing room,” as Caroline Palmer, editor of vogue.com, put it."
The Wall Blog: The Times points way with new infographics for the iPad
Monday, 9 August 2010, 18:13
"This is pretty cool, Applied Works is producing a number of interactive infographics for The Times’ recently-launched iPad app. It is another pointer to how some of the really great stuff we are going to see digitally away from the web."
