Thursday, March 27, 2008

geosearch.metacarta.com MetaCarta Geosearch News: A good start for a universal geo-interface for news.

Once again news organizations will be looking over their shoulder -- this time at MetaCarta's Geosearch News service, which launched Mar. 24. (More about this at Journalism.co.uk.)

The more I play with this service, the better I like it.

The red page icons on the opening page are something of a red herring. They're just the main headlines. A search for "Birmingham" brings up a whole lot more from my home town -- and interestingly, not Birmingham, Alabama, meaning the site has worked out that I'm in the U.K.

More interestingly, a keyword search provides a global picture of what's going on with, say news on the environment. How else would I have discovered a story about logging in Indonesia?

You can combine places with keywords, and change the date range of your search (the default is last 24 hours).

There's a lot of room for serendipity here, but a few weaknesses. Most obvious is lack of RSS feeds or the ability to bookmark. Right now, if you want to follow a place or topic through this service, you'll have to keep checking the site and, worse, repeat your search. A lot of extra work.

Secondly, its current sources are limited to Reuters, AP, and Guardian.co.uk. News organizations should be helping to make their content more map-friendly to get in on this service.

Related to this, so far locations are currently quite generic on this service -- apparently based on text recognition. Imagine what MetaCarta could do if it tapped into geotagged stories from local newspapers such as those of Archant?

E-mail this item | Add/View Feedback (1) | QuickLink this item: A140360



E-Media Tidbits Archive

View items published between:		and
	(MM/DD/YYYY)		(MM/DD/YYYY)

MAIN | Back to Top