I posted this open question on my Linkedin website and I got some interesting answers:

Answer 1: “I think there are two parts to the answer. A daily edition recapping all the stories prior to printing and all the traditional stuff-sports, classified, etc.

And then an online version that updates at least hourly.”

Answer 2: “Local Newspaper needs definition as in the past succesful local media cater to local geographic population
-On line and local seems at odds (re access)
-refine market segmentation may be needed

Else “local” newspaper would have ALL of he ABOVE
Quick, frequent Updates, Blogs, Local flavor services, features, hot spots reviews local buzz inclu government and civic,discounts and deals etc and hopefully a lot more reader, viewer interaction - Web 2.0.”

Answer 3: “Local events, political news, editorials, readers grievances which should reach the civic body authorities and demand explanations/responses, weather, sports, classifieds, deals/discounts at restaurants…”

Answer 4: “An online local newspaper should have a very need centric approach. It thus needs to provide plethora of home grown information. The news should be of kind and type, should be relevant and drawn out of context as well as prevailing situations. The online mode has to be discussion oriented with discussion boards and contributory features. The online medium should have mass appeal with kaleidoscope of features for people in the entire age bracket. This would only enhance the utility of the newspaper as it would be read by the masses and not just a class or section. The language needs to be simple as the idea should be to provide “informational content and not a fanciful editorial content”.

The local online daily should have lot of interactivity inbuilt in it. The daily should cover city specific highlights from all the strata’s. It should have the flavor and the material of the city. You should think of incorporating collaborative tools, should also be more open source. Think of a newspaper where “you can create and contribute to the process of news making”. You should also think of using filters and scanners to collect quality news. Also if the local online daily is made accessible to more number of people through various resource channels and touch points, will induce people to amplified consumption.”

Answer 5: “News updated at least hourly, features, editorial, local services, classifieds, offers readers’ comments on news/features and something that makes me want to return to read you rather than buy a local paper.

My local paper offers daily news, so I’d want a more frequent update from an on-line paper. I’d expect more interactive (web 2.0) type features as well such as being able to comment on news and features, maybe a connected forum to discuss local issues or the opportunity to contribute comment pieces myself perhaps via a blog (draft comment pieces could go to an editor for approval first).”

The last one was from my formed colleague Sarah who laughed-out-loud saying “I should by the local newspaper, why need a website?” kind of comment. I disagree. Digital goes way beyond with what can be done online, and print can only complement that.

Anyway, thanks to all who wrote back with very detailed comments, I have already used that for my research, and yes, check out the ‘journalism in the changing world‘ newest posting about exactly that, local, local, local…    journalism?

We’ve recently launched a new campaign to stop people delivering and using phonebooks: i.e. yellow pages, thompsons, and all the other paper directories you get delivered at your door but never use it. So how much of this is costing to produce, deliver, recycle, get rid of…

Join the campaign to save the environment - Say No To Phonebooks!

And yet another SEO basics document posted on the net I just stubmled upon. It has been published today so I guess it must be the newest basics in the SEO developments. Best to send to your coleagues who claim to know much about SEO but actually forget the basics and get stuck in SEM and SES and all that jazz. An yes, and one search factor such as links pointing to the site has been ommitted from this document so please bare this in mind when you read it. It is probably because the site owner can only control certain things to improve SEO and links in and out is a topic for another time.

A friend of mine (lawyer) based in the States just joined a group ‘Monocle’ on Facebook which reminded me to buy the latest issue of this uber-sophisticated intellectual magazine about culture, business and international lifestyle. It is the most blogged about magazine of the year, because the content is great.  I’d definitely give it 5 starts for editorial judgement which is so hard to find lately due to us bloggers and users creating content as opposed to hardcore journalists. Monocle is created by intellectuals for intellectuals and it is not web 2.0 so content is based on purely editorial judgement. Anyway - an interesting blog about the Monocle website design, and I am off to buy a print copy now.

While defining the new UI strategy for our site, the team came up with different design propositions to redefine the search experience on the home page and the results page. The idea is to add more complex tools to help users actually simplify the search experience. I am not going to talk about the tools here yet, but having a few different databases to search (and they are not easily merged in a results set!), the user stumbles across many unidentified fields of data that are irrelevant to him/her but relevant to the simple search keywords in some shape and order - Who/What and Where. So, from this came the Advanced Search discussion.

Prompting users to actually think about what they search before they enter keywords, is something that we want to try and test. The search task is somehow related to the browse task. We are trying to connect the two by giving users the option to 1) search within categories/channels and 2) browse the results that appear in a taxonomy-like categorization.

How to make the advanced search more popular and a core function in the search UI without making the user think too much?

Now read this great article about ‘advancing’ the advanced search.

Here is a nice article about our 192.com Best Places Facebook application.

As part of our work with the Salvation Army’s Family Tracing unit 192 Business Services was featured on today’s Missing Live programme on BBC see Major Kinsley do a demo on 192 Business Service live on TV.
Our screen shot is on after 19 minutes.

One of my recent work projects has been the development of the application called Best Places for Facebook. It is a product that uses our business database, classified in 5 categories (restaurants, pubs and bars, hotels and clubs) and our UK maps.

The team involved developers in Belgrade, QA tester in UK, system admins… and the use of external APIs (incl Facebook and Maps). This time we built a product from scratch without specifications or previous designs. The application went through cycles of iterations, bug fixes, both form UI and dev point of view. Drip by drip, we were adding requirements, testing it live and changing it.

I hope you find Best Places useful as you can plot your favourite places in UK on the map, share them, or read reviews from your friends. . We will be adding additional useful features in the future, this is just the basics. The soft launch has happend just 10 minutes ago…