| REVIEWS
Cruising
Cyberspace
Web
Site Pick Of The Month
By Pam Wegmann
Did you rush out
of the house this morning without a moment to look at the day’s main news
stories? Was your morning too hectic to read today’s paper?
You can still catch up on the day’s news at your computer once you settle
behind your desk at the office. You’ll find our local metro newspaper,
The New Orleans
Times-Picayune on the Internet at
www.timespicayune.com
Although you can
get most of the same local, regional, national and international stories
at this site that you find in the daily print version, it is not the easiest
site to navigate. This site has a number of issues that make it less user
friendly than it should be.
The top half of the
screen contains the newspaper’s logo and uses valuable space that promotes
its business rather than the user’s information needs: how to subscribe,
advertise, and the classifieds.
The path to news
coverage sits below within a frame that consumes the bottom half of your
computer screen and that is really Nola.com, the T-P’s Web community site.
Looking for serious content, the flashy graphics visually overpower the
button bar where links sit for news information. Overall, the
site is just too busy for the eyes.
When you manage to
find the muted content buttons sandwiched between the flashing banner ad
and the colorful pictures and graphics, you will find one good feature.
When you put your cursor on top of one of the content link buttons, its
sub-category links automatically appear in a pull-down like menu. This
saves you a click to see what is contained on the sub-page.
However, this nice
feature also has a flaw. Because of the frame, those lists on the
pull down menus that are lengthy are cut off and the items on the bottom
of the list are not visible. This is especially true for the News &
Biz button, which is the one most business people would probably use.
Links that will get
you to some serious content include News & Biz, which provides news
stories, traffic and weather, the Money section, AP wire stories, and stories
from the various parishes, which in newspaper lingo is “zoned coverage.”
The Home page link
will allow you subscribe to as many as thirteen
e-mail newsletters
on topics such as breaking news, prep sports, and weekend information.
There are also buttons
for Local information (maps, white pages),
Sports, Living,
Entertainment, Forums & Chats, live Cams, and Marketplace, where you
can find coupons, auctions, classifieds and yellow pages.
One of the most glaring
weaknesses of this site is the lack of archives of previous stories. Most
major newspaper Web sites offer the ability to search through back issues,
even if they charge a fee for doing so. The lack of searchable archives
hinders considerably the value of this site.
If you want to use
the site to find out who’s playing at Tipitina’s this weekend, it will
serve your purpose. But if you want to find out about trends in a
local industry, forget it. In its present form, this site is more
of a community gathering place rather than one that can meet the needs
of the businessperson seeking serious information.
Knowledge is Power!
:-)
March, 2001
Questions/Comments
can be sent to pam@info-matters.com
or faxed to 504.738.0016. You can also reach Ms. Wegmann at 504.738.0070.
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