What the hell is Google Gulp?
]]>A vigorous debate on copyright should include some discussion of the ever-extending copyright terms, excluding many great works from the public domain. This is often where the p2p advocates go with the argument. But really, at the front line of the legal battle are music producers that force feed mass market radio stations with 50 Cent, and on the other side the Grokster users downloading primarily Porn and Britney songs. Frankly, I wouldn't mind either one of these players losing. Unfortunately they may be the ones deciding whether the knowledge and art of a hundreds of years are kept from millions of people who would benefit from them.
Anyway, what got me thinking about this topic was these hillarious exchanges between a Swedish Bittorent site and a few industry players. I especially like the replies to EA (Electronic Arts):
]]>Center for Digital Government
2004 Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards
King County's in 4th place this year.
Some common themes among all of these sites. Audience based navigation, personalization, search, and online services.
]]>Fairfax County uses the Taxonomy of Human Services developed by the Referral Federation of LA County. The state of Connecticut has what seems to be a home grown Taxonomy, though the lack of breadcrumbs makes it hard to tell where you are within the taxonomy. Their are some drawbacks (like occasional awkward navigation) but you can really tell the difference in overall usability.
The other noticeable trend that these two sites suggest an audience centered navigation at the top. Both have some general audience categories on the top page like: "working & living," "doing business," and "visiting." Then separately they list off the offices like the Council, Executive, etc.
I wonder how this works for organizations that serve multiple audiences. I also wonder how much control the actual agencies have in their own placement within the taxonomy.
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Federal E-Government Satisfaction Nudges Upward]]>The Index found that search is consistently one of the highest impact satisfaction drivers (or "elements") in a user's overall impression of the e-government experience. For over 90 percent of sites measured by the ACSI, search is a high-impact element. Search also tends to earn poor ratings.
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Search Mandatory On All U.S. Government Web Sites by End of '05According to a just released memo (PDF) from the U.S. government's Office of Management and Budget, all publicly accessible federal government web sites and main entry points must have search capabilities by the end of 2005.
"In some circumstances, mostly for small Web sites, agency officials may still rely on site maps or subject indexes, the memo states...some Internet experts also warn that building a better search engine is no panacea. "Search is, in many ways, second choice for most users," said Larry Freed, chief executive officer of ForeSee Results, which sponsored portions of the ACSI poll. "Most users would rather navigate the system."