Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Online With Enhanced Web Site and Search Technology from Funnelback
Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) Online With Enhanced Web Site and Search Technology
Fast Facts
1) Direct Link to ABC News Radio at top of pages
2) Direct link to “ticker” of stories as they enter the database
3) Standardized and rebuilt page design, faster loading
4) Direct links to sections devoted to video, audio, and photos
5) Large collection of Podcasts
6) Numerous uses of tabs for easier navigation
7) Tags assigned to all stories. Where these tags come from (writers? editors? users?) is not explained.
Users can assign their own tags and save content for reading at another time. They can also personalize the look of the ABC News home page.
9) In-line media, no need to move off of page
10) Create keyword-based RSS feeds.
10) Search technology from Funnelback
+ Search All ABC Pages (over 3 million pages) or limit to one of the following:
++ News, Everything Except News, Recipes, Images
++ Advanced Interface Available
++ Spell check. Great Barrier Reeef asks did you mean…
++ Sort results by relevance (default), date, title, URL
+ Clusters on the left side of the page offer refinment suggestions by type, site, or topic. Example. Reminds us of what might find when using Vivisimo on USASearch.gov where you can cluster by topic, agencies, and sources.
++ All pages are cached.
++ Some news results allow you to view results on a map from Google, Live.com, or Yahoo. Example.
You can also find more results based on distance from the story. For example, 25km. We noticed that in some cases a link saying “show in map” is visible on a results page but clicking it returns, “no geospatial information found for this document.” What we did find was also very general. A story about the Sydney, Kingsford Smith International Airport, marks Sydney on the map but not the actual airport. Still, cool idea and something we are likely to see more of from all of the major players. Similar to what Northern Light was doing seven years ago and MetaCarta is also doing today. Btw, in some cases a link to the map can be found embedded in the actual text news story. Example.
++ In some cases, we noticed the search refinement box moved from the left rail to the right rail and had an orange background.
+++ A List of ABC Search Categories
Useful, especially to see what types of searches are available.
See Also: ABC News Broadband
Source: ABC
Technology
Funnelback is a 2006 spin-off from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Dr. David Hawking* is Chief Scientist. Funnelback also used on Australian Government primary site and Australia Stock Exchange web site. Complete client list. Funnelback used to be known as Panoptic.
* Btw, on a search note, Dr. Hawking’s publication page is home to large amounts of interesting reading about search.
For example: Does Topic Metadata Help with Web Search?
26 pages; PDF.
by David Hawking and Justin Zobel (Published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology; )