Tuesday, December 08, 2009

New Google Service


The New York Times has an article in the Technology section describing Google's new Living Stories project. This "new approach to presenting news online by topic [was] developed with The New York Times and The Washington Post," and will be offered to all newspaper publishers if it proves to be a success. According to the Times article, "Living stories is a much-enhanced version of what some newspaper Web sites already do, grouping articles and other material by subject matter." At present, only eight broad topics are offered; for each, a summary is provided, and then a "timeline of major events and some pictures, followed by the opening sections of a series of articles, in reverse chronological order." I don't know whether Living Stories will bring more traffic to newspapers' websites, which is one of the goals of the project, but I think it has great potential as a research tool. The organization is logical and intuitive, and should be appealing to students.

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