Alpha Channel

NBC Sports joins forces with msnbc.com

Danny DeFreitas — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT

We’re very excited to bring our users a new sports section.

msnbc.com and NBC Sports have partnered to create the new NBCSports.com. It can still be found by clicking on "Sports" in the left-hand navigation of msnbc.com, but once you do, you'll find a redesigned section that builds on the quality you're accustomed to.

What's new? More sports videos in a new video player, NBC Sports personalities including John Madden, Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Jerome Bettis and Johnny Miller, and special content from NBC Sports’ marquee coverage of NFL’s Sunday Night Football, Notre Dame, NHL, the PGA Tour and the USGA. We'll also have more fantasy sports coverage from Rotoworld.

We know changes like this can be hard to get used to, but we also know change is necessary to make improvements. We hope you agree that's what we've done, and we hope you'll tell us what else you'd like to see.

So fire away, let us know what you think!

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Phil Zepeda — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:16:00 GMT

About a week and a half ago we published an investigative report on bridge inspections. I was part of the team that worked on the related Bridge Tracker, an interactive map tied to a database that provides specific information on bridges that you would cross along any given route within the continental U.S. For you geeks out there, we had a proxy specially built to pass info from Virtual Earth to MapPoint, which contained a bridge database that we got from the government through a FOIA request. And yes, it’s all harder than it sounds.

Three months of blood, sweat and tears went into this project. I realize that’s a long time, especially in the news business, but we’re still learning how to do this kind of reporting effectively and efficiently. We’re still learning how programmers and reporters (two very different breeds) can work together to create compelling journalism.

Anyway, we think the Bridge Tracker is useful (of course!), but what really matters is what you thought of it. Some users said they couldn’t figure out how to use it, so we’ve made some improvements to the interface since it published.

Usability aside, though, let’s focus on the actual features of the map, like the “Route options” tab. Here, you can filter bridges by inspection schedule or status. Was this helpful? Did you use this tab? Did you even notice it?

A lot of work goes into these things and we often wonder whether it’s worth it — or how to do it better.

So what if we built a Bridge Tracker v2.0? What new features would you like to see? What would you change, and what would you get rid of?

How do you find out about breaking news?

Ben Tesch — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:22:00 GMT

There are plenty of ways you might find out about breaking news: you might happen to visit a website just as something is happening, you might be watching TV or listening to the radio, maybe you get a call or instant message or email from a friend, or find out through our breaking news RSS feed or Windows Live Alerts, or hear about it from us or another person on Twitter (have I mentioned we have several accounts on various topics on Twitter?). I found out about 9/11 from eavesdropping on a phone conversation while waiting in line for coffee. Like I said, plenty of ways.

Hearing about it is one thing. Finding out more about it might be another. If you hear about it on the web, maybe you turn on your TV to be up-to-the-minute. If you see it on the TV first, maybe you call a friend to tell them about it, or go to the web to read more about it. Needless to say, there are plenty of ways to hear about something, and plenty of options to learn more about it.

We are interested in learning more about what you do when these news events happen in order to better respond to how you get the news and then react to it. We are also interested in figuring out how new technology and web offerings could allow for faster awareness, the ability to better track a breaking news story, and perhaps get more focused and detailed updates as the news is happening.

Think of the last few times breaking news has happened.

How did you hear about it?

Where did you go after you heard about?

Did the topic of the news affect where you went to learn more about it? For example, if it was news about a celebrity, did you go to a celebrity gossip page first? If it was local news, did you first call or email someone you know that lived there?

Did you wish there was a way to more closely follow the breaking news as it's happening? Would you want to track breaking news and get little updates as they come out? How would you want to follow it: on the web? email? widget? phone? alerts?

Embedding elections results and other news on your website

Tony Patino — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:03:00 GMT

I'm hyped about the election process. Seriously hyped. If you asked my family, my girlfriend, my friends, my imaginary friends, and my pet goldfish, they'd tell you that I talk about it pretty much every day and they're ready for me to shut up about it already. Much to the dismay of all the aforementioned people, I have found myself thrust into a project here that has only fueled my polit-intoxication: Politics Widgets that you can embed on your blog, your Facebook account, or any other website for that matter.

Many of you are already familiar with our Candidates + Issues Matrix that allows you to rate your level of satisfaction with the positions of the presidential candidates. Another application that will become increasingly interesting as the primary season heads into Super Tuesday is our Elections '08 Leaderboard. This contest could very easily come down to delegate count if multiple candidates refuse to concede before the end of the race, and totals could change at the drop of a hat due to a certain candidates' efforts reinstate the stripped delegates of Michigan and Florida. Throw in the super delegates and it's anyone's guess where things will end up.

All you have to do is click "Grab It" and you can quickly and easily post this little guy on your blog or website. After any state holds its primary, the data is automatically updated for you so there is no need to constantly re-grab or manually refresh the data. Just think of the action you'll see on this widget come February 5th. I'm positively giddy.

Then there's this one, which you can set to display any candidate + issue combination, including randomized candidates and randomized issues, when the widget is grabbed and embedded to your site. Got a favorite candidate you'd like to promote? Want a way to quickly sum up their stance on an important issue while giving people a chance to voice their opinion on it? Spark off some lively debate with one of these.

I think the point of these widgets ultimately is to allow users to keep tabs on stories and events that they find compelling in a way that fosters greater interaction and community. What sorts of stories and topics, if any, do you find compelling enough to keep track of on your personal sites or communities in this manner? I can easily see how this could be used to keep track of compelling photo galleries, a running tab of video game and movie reviews, finance calculators, the possibilities are endless. What do you think?

Finding hidden treasure

Lisa Wilkins — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:35:00 GMT

I’ll admit I’m not the biggest sports fan. I know that the Super Bowl is coming up (football, right?), at hockey games you watch the puck, and that Safeco Field has the best views of the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound (only because I wasn’t watching the Mariners game I attended). But when msnbc.com’s Whine of the Week article plays the world’s smallest violin for well-paid sports-babies, I can’t get enough! So how did I become a Whine junkie in a section I rarely tread? Well, admittedly, I do work here in site UI design, so I sort of need to know where everything lives. But as I said, I’m not a sports fan, so where would a non-sporting, design-geek type find the very entertaining weekly Whine?

This is where you, our esteemed readers, come into play. What drives you to crossover into a topic you would have never gone before? Did you discover the Answer Desk by John Schoen accidentally or are you savvy with our business section? How about accessing yesterday’s Nightly News netcast or clips from this morning’s TODAY show? Did you see that 150-inch flat screen television in our special coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show?

We want to know when, why and how to best showcase our exclusive content only found right here at msnbc.com.

Take a look at these design explorations below. Three of our features and coverage of a special event (the Consumer Electronics Show) are shown.

Do you enjoy the “sample platter” of varied content from across the site in one area?

Sample platter #1 (click to see the full-size version)

Sample platter #2 (click to see the full-size version)

Or do you prefer to exploring each category’s content to peruse the news and maybe find something that strikes you along the way?

Categorically correct: (click to see the full-size version)

Good or bad, we like to hear how you look at the news.

Designing at the speed of news

Kriss Chaumont — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:35:00 GMT

For Iowa’s big night, I was the designer in charge of helping our two cover editors make the best cover-grids they could make and troubleshoot technical issues they might encounter. Turns out that I barely earned my free pizza that night because no matter what surprise political win or early candidate speech was thrown at the editors’ wire-feeds and TV screens, they were ready for it!

One editor focusing on the current cover and one anticipating the next move worked like a charm! Aside from a couple minor tweaks, I was just there to admire what I thought was impossible to achieve less than a year ago: editors making light-speed changes, big and small, to a visually complicated cover without the intervention of a designer.

The media editor was able to constantly switch to better photos as they became available. It was amazing to watch everyone in the newsroom pulling together to beat the competition and deliver up-to-the-minute coverage, and I think we did just that. In terms of layouts, there was a bit of planning, too, and it was really helpful to have pre-made layouts to choose from in different situations. Looking back, I wish we had changed the overall layout a little more often throughout the evening. But for a first time dealing with constantly breaking live coverage for a whole evening, we can’t be too picky. There’s always a next time.

We have a new tool that takes screenshots of our cover every time it’s changed and, as I was reviewing all of the different versions of that night, I was pretty surprised at how alive it really was the whole time. One of our media editors (Thanks, Meredith!) made a small animation with all of them for us to get an idea of what kind of work goes into the cover. Wow! Photos are changing left and right, getting better and better, headlines are being tweaked, deck shortened, mistakes fixed...mistakes? What mistakes? All of that so that when you come to our site, you see the best we can possibly offer at that minute. Take a look at it and see all of the changes that occurred in the span of a few hours and think that when you came to our site, you only saw one or two snapshots of those and probably took it all for granted.

So until this year, what we had at MSNBC and other news sites was the freedom to change our lead story five, even 10 times a day. For all-evening events, such as caucus nights, we could switch the lead a couple times but we really had to focus on the big story. We were not able to put the light on interesting moments of the evening because it just wasn’t technically possible to do it well and barely worth doing it anyway for only 10 minutes.

Times have changed. And that night, as we looked at our competition working in an almost static past, our coverage was alive, always new and updated. Like the others, we always had our lead story in a prominent spot, but we had much more to offer: live coverage as it unfolded, with live video, live photos, live updates, live live live!

Is this what you want to see from us in the coverage of an event, such as the Iowa caucus? What are your thoughts after watching the animation? Is all this worth it to you?

How do you share?

Jim Ray — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:15:00 GMT

It’s a concept that we all learned as tykes in the sandbox with our first red wagon or dump truck: it’s good to share. Now, in this fanciful web 2.0 future (though I’m not yet convinced that web 2.0 has grown up all that much since kindergarten), sharing takes on a whole new meaning. A host of social bookmarking and networking services allows anyone to save, post and describe links publicly and amongst their friends, on sites like del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Digg, Facebook and Newsvine.

As we prepare to rethink the story pages that make up the bulk of msnbc.com, we want to know how our readers use (or don’t) these types of social sites. Most sharing sites have special interactive bookmarks or browser plug-ins that help users save web pages as they surf. Some sites, including many of our competitors, even sprinkle their pages with icons encouraging users to “Digg this!” or “Facebook that!” My favorite collection of share this badges comes courtesy of Add This.com, who have abstracted the concept into a widget - that’s right, there’s a cottage industry for adding social network icons to your site.

Now comes the part where you share with us. Do you use a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us or Ma.gnolia, a social networking site like Facebook or a social news site like Digg or Newsvine? If so, how do you add (or digg or seed) content to the site - with bookmarklets or browser plug-ins? If you do use one of those social sites, do you ever click on icons embedded in a web page itself?

And those of you who don’t use a sharing site, what do you think of those icons? Are you annoyed by all of those extra, unexplained icons on the page? Do you just ignore them? Do they make you curious about what all the fuss is about - curious enough to sign up for a site like Digg?

Let us know what you think in the comments. We’ve got our own ideas about putting social network badges all over the place, but we want to hear from you. We can be an opinionated bunch about design, but we keep a pretty open mind. I’ll follow up in a few days with some thoughts and responses to the comments you leave.

With you, not for you

Ashley Wells — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:07:00 GMT

New homepage – check

New video player – check

New Nightly News site – check

Vacations – check

So what’s next? Everything else. Only this time, we’d like to make changes with you, not just for you. Think of this blog as where we all meet up, in that:

We’ll post our early thoughts on everything from page design problems to new site features and even entirely new sites.
You tell us what you do and don’t like in the comments.
Later, we’ll follow up with another post, often including mockups and prototypes—real behind the scenes stuff.
Your comments will again help refine our work.
When we publish changes or launch new features, we’ll post how they’re working out.
And we’ll turn again to the comments for help with any problems post-launch.

Working together just sounds more fun. So if you’re in, bookmark us. Or get our feed. Or memorize alphachannel.msnbc.msn.com. Or just look at the bottom of the msnbc.com homepage soon for the latest post. But do come back often. We’ll make it worth your while. Totally.

Embed our video on your site

Stokes Young — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:48:00 GMT

NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk embedded with Marines in Fallujah last week. Starting later today, you'll be able to embed her report (or any other msnbc.com video clip) on your blog or site, like this:

Click the "Embed" button above to see how it works. Just copy the code to your clipboard and paste it where you want it, and you're good to go.

We also have a few more video updates. Some of you have asked how to use the MSN Video player instead of ours to view our clips. Here it is: http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&brand=msnbc.

Still coming for our new video player are search, rollover caption bubbles and some performance tweaks. Thanks to everyone for your feedback on the new player.

We read every mail and post, and continue to work diligently to improve your viewing experience.

Update: Thanks to Andy over at beet.tv for his post: http://www.beet.tv/2008/01/broadcast-journ.html. He notes that he's unable to resize the embeddable player, and he's right. We decided to come out the gate at 425x339, without a scaling function. We will offer that functionality in a future release.

The latest site updates

Ben Tesch — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:34:00 GMT

Home is wherever you find yourself
To help find you way back to the homepage of our site, a "home" button has been added to the beginning of the breadcrumbs on every page beyond the homepage. The msnbc logo in the top left and bottom left of the pages should always get you there as well.

Fly-out navigation improvements
I know it sounds sort of strange to say that being less responsive is better, but this may be one case where it is true. One of the complaints we heard a lot was that the fly-out navigation was a bit too quick to appear when you move your mouse over the links. We've added a slight delay to the fly-out, so that if you brush across the links the menus won't instantly appear, but if you keep your mouse over the links for a moment, the menus should appear.

And if you don't like the fly-out menus, there should be a "Disable Fly-out" button at the end of the blue list of links. We have received reports of the menus disappearing when you're trying to move over to a link in the menus, and are working to improve that so it doesn't happen as well.

Plenty of other updates
We've done quite a few tweaks under the hood to make the site load faster and look better, and to warn you when and if things aren't displaying properly. We are also working on some new interesting ideas for customized content such as stocks and sports scores which we will talk about soon, but if you have any particular ideas or issues that you want to mention, please do.