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.