Youthpad – Page 10

The New Hindu

The Hindu is probably one of the most old-fashioned major newspaper in India. While all the others have moved on to the “Yay us! We have full-colour newspapers!” bandwagon, The Hindu staunchly refuses to give anything other than black & white. And with its strong focus on South India events even in the Delhi edition it says a big “FUCK YOU” to all ‘naarth Eendyen’ newspapers like Times of India and Hindustan Times. Without a doubt, it’s the best copy-edited, best written, sane and sober newspaper in India. The effect of all the roofies that the editors at Hindu took seems to be wearing off – they have discovered the Internet! “Oh look, this Facebook thing is ossumz!“

"I wonder if this will look good on the op-ed page"

So The Hindu decided to give its website a major upgrade. The old site is still lurking around at thehindu.com – in all its 1990s Internet glory; the new website is at beta.thehindu.com. This redesign has been done by Mario Garcia Jr. Mario Garcia Jr, in case you haven’t heard of him in Hindustan Times, where they brag about getting redesigns done from him on the umpteen number of times it has ‘changed’ over the past few years. Journalism outsourcing professionals in India have been out-Bangalore’d by a Floridan! As someone else puts it, “Future contestants of Mastermind might like to consider “Indian Newspaper Design” for their specialist round. The answer for all 10 questions is Mario Garcia.”

Consider what we have had to deal with so far. A cursory look suggests that the designer of the Hindustan Times website had an Uzi pointed at his head while he was designing the website, with some sub-editor saying “Naach Basanti, naach” in the background while yet another editor shouted “I want like, every, goddamn news article section to be on the front page. It’s so cluttered that the basic idea behind this is “Let’s put a link every 1cm and hope the user clicks something, even if accidentally.” And then HT editors keep wondering on their blogs as to why they aren’t earning revenues through ads. If guys like these stay around a bit longer, journalism will be dead.

Times of India‘s website is a tad better than Hindustan Times. Their delight knew no bounds when ComScore (quite probably made a mistake and) declared that TOI’s site was the most trafficked in the world. Maybe it was the whole subdomain thing which bamboozled ComScore, because I kinda find it hard to believe that with the number of Internet users India has, TOI’s site got more visitors than any other newspaper website in the world. TOI’s site design is a bit better but still somewhat cluttered.

Coming back to The Hindu’s redesign – what I wanted to say was “This is fantastic!”. The design is really clean. Everything is arranged in a proper fashion – heck, they even placed the ads properly rather than jamming them anywhere, anyhow. When you land on the website, you eyes scan easily through the content without getting overwhelmed with information. There are flashing scrolling tickers and animated jumping monkeys to distract you. Also, The Hindu has decided to implement with a ‘web first’ policy – which means that from now on their reporters will publish their stories first on the website, then in print. Most other newspapers keep breaking news to a minimum, opting to publish online only very important breaking news via dispatches from agencies. Hindu‘s idea, if it takes off, could mean a day when the online version of a print newspaper – that too one of the more traditional ones! – is given more importance. Why this makes sense is that fresh, original content being posted on the website first, a lot more people might be interested in reading news there – thus increasing potential for ad revenue. I don’t know about other, but I for instance only check online news sites in case some major event has happened and I want new news updates – or in case I need to link back to a news story. And with an uncluttered interface, chances are that readers will stick around longer and read more of Hindu‘s content.

Douglas Adams, in his essay What Have We Got To Lose, was right on target that the future of media is online. Years after he originally wrote this article, its astonishing to note that most people associated with news media still think the same way, websites are still made with the same thought process like the early days of the Web that DNA has described in the essay. I urge you to read his arguments on why digital media makes sense for everyone – even media house owners once they get it.

Originally posted at Youthpad.

Burrp!

In 2007, I made a blog post about a website called ZipAZap, which used to provide TV listings. None of the service providers back then – including Tata Sky or Dish TV – had any good electronic programme guides (EPGs). Hindustan Times and Times of India often get listings wrong, drop channels at their whim and whore out ad space to promote their own channels, so I came to rely upon ZipAZap for TV show listings.

Those were days when our TV connection used CAS. Our provider was Wire & Wireless India Ltd (earlier called Siti Cable) which to this day hasn’t come to terms with the fact that I’ve switched to Tata Sky; like a jilted lover I keep getting calls from W&WIL once in every few months telling me its a ‘regular check-up call to ensure our customers are happy’. Yes, I’m very happy with Tata Sky, thank you [click]. Tata Sky provides a comprehensive EPG, but you need to tread carefully. Of late, they’ve started adding the words ‘hilarity ensues‘ to every other movie listing, which effectively kills any desire to watch that particular show. (Psst…for those not in the know, ‘hilarity ensues’ is the standard text Hollywood adds to any movies which they know is crap and deserves nothing more than a direct-to-DVD release.)

A few months back, ZipAZap rechristened itself as What’s On India. It went from a sensible-looking page to a so-called programme guide which looks as if an Excel spreadsheet has been crapped on a web page.

Pictured - How to crap an Excel spreadsheet onto a web page (click the image to see how far the shit-hole goes)

By the time a page finishes loading, the TV show I might be interested in would probably get over. I really don’t understand what the need for this ‘makeover’ was. On top of that, programme details are provided in annoying little hover menus – I seriously get pissed off with those since in most cases you have to keep your mouse cursor impossibly still. (Reminds me of radio sets in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy universe.)

I finally found a replacement a few weeks ago called Burrp.com. Burrp! is primarily a local search kind of site focussing on restaurant details / reviews, but tucked away in a corner of the site is Burrp! TV.

Burrp! TV did what ZipAZap got right the first time – and then made it even better. Scrolling to future time in ZipAZap involved loading the page again but on Burrp this is done using Ajax. You can switch forward/backward as much as you want smoothly. The interface is simply elegant and functional. Shows are colour-coded according to type. If you create a (free) account, you can even set your favourite channels to see a customised view (like I have done). Or you could browse by genre using the dropdown box at the top / links in the footer.

Clicking on a show title shows you brief details about it and allows you to set free SMS reminders. If the show is a repeating show or if the movie in question will be shown on some other day too, then Burrp! will tell you that too – which is quite handy! Say you come across a review of a good movie which is coming on TV tonight, but don’t have time to watch today. You can check Burrp! to see if its repeating on any other day; if yes, then you can find out the time/date and set an SMS reminder for it.

You can even set favourite recurring shows. Burrp! database stores information on which TV shows are part of a series, and once you set a series as a favourite you can set up SMS alerts for the whole series. You can choose how long before the show start time you want to receive the SMS, and I’ve found that Burrp! never skips an SMS delivery. SMS is useful, but in case you don’t want that you can opt for email alerts instead.

Specifically for movies, clicking on a movie title (after you’ve clicked once in the schedule view) takes you to a detail page where you can read a short blurb on what the movie is about (minus the ‘hilarity ensues’. Are you listening, Tata Sky?), cast, IMDB rating (helpful!) and even trivia related to the movie.

Search feature on Burrp! actually works, unlike ZipAZap’s couldn’t even find shows which its own listings were showing. Moreover, I haven’t found a single Burrp! listing to ever to be inaccurate. At certain times there are movies with the same title, but released on different years – may not even be remakes but movies with completely different plot-lines. I’ve had instances where Tata Sky’s EPG picked the ‘wrong version’ of the movie title in its EPG, but Burrp! got it right.

Oh, and BTW, Burrp! is not associated with Yahoo! in any way. Let me assure you of that. 😛 Despite! What! Anyone! Else! Might! Say! Or! Think!

My rating for Burrp! is 10/10. This is one web service which has got everything right – functionality with a beautiful design to boot.

Originally posted at Youthpad.