Monday, November 19, 2007

Another new blog, and an open thread

Another new QC-related blog has started up. Its continuing the tradition of long-dead historical figure running blogs, we now have Thomas Paine, and his Davenport Growing Paines blog. His first two posts are very well-written, so hopefully we've got a keeper here.

I've added a link on the link bar, but otherwise the blog can be found at http://davenportgrowingpaines.blogspot.com/


The QCTimes had a few things that made me laugh last night.

Rogue cell phone in Iowa continuously calls 911 -QCTimes
As you can see in the screenshot to the right, this used to say "rouge cell phone." A commenter pointed it out, and it was changed.

Iowa's three biggest cities are fairly according to analysis -QCTimes
For one... fairly what? The title of the article(at least as of 1:13am) is missing a word, and I assume the missing word is "safe". When you read the article, you find out that the AP has somehow forgotten the existence of Davenport, and refers to Sioux City as Iowa's 3rd largest city. Unless 15,000 people moved into Sioux City yesterday, or some horrible catastrophe lowered our population by over 10%, I don't believe that's correct.

Don't worry though QCTimes.com, you're still my favorite local newspaper website.

8 comments:

Matt said...

that "rouge" headline had me cracking up as well. it seems as though you can spot little ditties like that a few times a week with the online edition. i had a feeling staff are constantly being deadline-rushed in the industry (pushing quality control to the wayside) but i don't read any other local newspapers online, and i have no idea if those types of mistakes are commonplace or we just have some bad editors/copy proofers in our neck of the woods. sometimes they make me laugh, but sometimes they irk me because they're so obvious.

the thing about the Times online that i have a larger beef with is the new site design. i kindly wrote in with some helpful "beta testing" tips for them - telling them what problems i had as a mac 10.4 user who surfs with safari. staff were very nice and quick to respond to me, but it doesn't seem like anything i addressed has been debugged and fixed. i can't interact with the events calendar, use any of the tabbed portions of the "local," "state," etc sections, and i can't log in without going through a long, drawn-out process.

QuadCityImages said...

I'm not a big fan of the new design either. I liked being able to get to pretty much anything in one click from the main page, and now that's not always possible. For example, to read more than the top few business articles, or letters to the editor, you have to click a tab, and then click on Business News or Letters. Unless I'm missing something.

When I access the site on my cell phone, I either have to open the Site Map to get to other sections, or just google search for "QCTimes business," "QCTimes letters" etc.

They claim that they did all this to unclutter the main page, but it still looks plenty cluttered to me, with less usability.

Anonymous said...

ok. I have a first date tonight and I need something to do. I dont want to get stuck at a dinner with nothing to say. Would the festival of trees be totaly lame? I already think it's kind of lame...
Mondays are tough. Is there anything going on?
I was hoping for a hockey game.

Anonymous said...

I was just went to the new blog site "Davenport Growing Paines." It was a very interesting read folks. I encourage everyone to visit the new site that QCI has provided a link to.
Thanks QCI!!!!

Lisa said...

Random thoughts:

I might have missed that typo, assuming that Motorola had just unveiled a new phone: The Rouge. Looks like a little round compact and has a mirror where the screen would go.

Take a date to the Festival of Trees. Why not? It's a Monday -- and with plenty of different displays to look at, you won't want for conversation starters. Later, you could stop by Below Brady or Boozie's for a drink or bite to eat.

Lisa L.

Matt said...

date ideas -

mini golf

ice skating

go to happy joe's and tell the propietors it's birthday fun for both of you, so they do that whole announcement and horn-honking tomfoolery (they still do that, right?). hopefully the dirty lies work and you score free sundaes and everyone cheers for you.

maybe get a jump on hilday shopping together? (could be odd)

no matter what age you are, play some sort of clean version of truth or dare in a public place. meaning, you could dare or get dared to go dance in front of people you don't know at the mall or something. or you're at the Figge or Putnam, asking paintings or exhibits "Did you take my hat? Did ya, punk?" mutual public play like that breaks down first date jitters.

just a simple walk on the riverfront. it's overcast and seattle-ish, but not too cold out tonight.

Timothy said...

Howdy folks-

Tim from the QC Times here... Matt, you're still having Safari issues? Please contact me on the side. Safari 1.x is still a problem for us, but you shouldn't have that if you're a 10.4 browser.

QCI - you can click on the plus sign next to any tab to reveal it's sub-navigation. The idea behind the new navigation is to make it 'stick' when you perform an action, rather than the agility test of a drop-down menu.

Site redesigns are a pretty subjective endeavor, and you can't please everybody. Believe me, we hear about it. Overall, our traffic has remained remarkably constant (it's gone up a bit, actually), and that's a good sign that people have accepted the change. Mostly what it boils down to is that we have interrupted people's browsing habits - something that we try to tread lightly on. Not in Matt's case, however... again, please contact me.

In regards to typos - yes. The site is more geared towards breaking news than the printed product, and you will occasionally see typos as a result of the speed to post. It's a different medium with different conventions, and we will make corrections as we spot them (or have them spotted for us).

QuadCityImages said...

The biggest reason that QCTimes.com is so much better than QCOnline is the availability of articles, both past and present. Here's hoping you guys don't back away from that business model.