Critique

The NY Times website has a whole bunch of interactive and helpful, web-friendly features. the top has tabbed pages for the regular homepage, My Times, you can view what's in today's paper, you can watch videos and watch the most popular stories and look through the Times' topics. The site also has a menu on the left side with all the different topics in the paper such as the World, US, NY/Region, Business, Technology, Sports, Science, Health, Opinion, Arts, Style, and Travel. There’s also links for job searching, real estate, auto and all classifieds.

In collaboration with Monster.com, the NY Times website has an entire section for people looking for jobs as well as employers looking for workers, and they NY Times has a blog link on this page for Shifting Careers. Also, there are stories having to do with the job market linked on this page as well.

The real estate page has a search for homes, stories about real estate and international real-estate, as well as multimedia features and a Q&A section for all the burning questions there are today about the housing market.

The times topics page had a link to something I’ve been really interested in, the tina fey as sara palin skits. (Hysterical!!!)

The website is very well laid-out and very comprehensive. Things are very easy to find. There's a search field on every page so that you can always have a place to go to find something on the site. The main page has all the major stories on it- usually with up-to-the minute updates. The major stories that are posted have a stamp of when they were updated in red lettering right next to the byline.

The CNN websitealso has tabs on the top of the page for different categories on the site. There are categories fro the World, the US, Politics, Crime, Entertainment, Health, Technology, Travel, Living, Business, and Sports. There’s also, right underthe main topics a “hot topics”link, where it shows the most viewed topics on the site. The main page has photos and a video section as well as popular news that you can go to. There are the most important, newsworthy stories on the mainpage, like updates on the bailout plan and the latest newsas well. The latest news links also have, like on the NY Times site, red text saying how long ago it was updated.

There are also, of course, the most eye-catching stories in some of the different sections of the site. There are also links to blogs and a box for personalizing your local news for your CNN page.

There’s a section for CNN TV where you can see what programs are on CNN and view the schedule, look at the headlining news and listen to CNN TV. There are also updates on the most important things that are coming on the CNN channel, like insight on the Palin vs Biden debate coming up on Thursday. You can also watch CNN live on the website. When I was on the Site, it had live coverage of the OJ Simpson trial, and live video of Michelle Obama in Colorado.

CNN also has the IReport section, where viewers and readers can “take control of the news” and share stories they find with CNN.

The politics section on CNN prides itself on the most current and up to date coverage on the election. There are boxes with the top political stories on CNN, as well as past videos of the first presidential debate and top videos in politics.

There’s a section called “Election Center2008” that has links to the debates, conventions, election tracker, elections 101, issues and the forum on the site. There’s a countdown to the election as well as links to more election news and more political commentary on the candidates. There’s also a box where you can download CNN podcasts and look at the CNN Daily Humor with political cartoons that you can look through as well.

The Perez Hilton Blog is laid out almost like any other blog. There’s his blog fields, where he posts updates of things he finds online. His posts are filled with pictures that he likes to alter himself, as well as videos and his own perez commentary. You can also comment on his posts and forward a post to someone you want to read it.

On the left column of the blog there’s a link to send tips to Perez Hilton, in case you think he should change something about the site, as well as a link for advertisers in case they want to pay perez to put their ad on his site. There’s a “starseeker” search bar, where you can jump to stories about your favorite celebrity, or search for keywords relating to something you’re looking for. You can also search for articles by date, and you can download the Perez Hilton Podcast. Hilton has a link for his online store, where you can buy crazy shirts and accessories from the PerezHilton store.

Perez also has on the right hand column of his blog a window for “PerezTV”, where you can watch videos that Perez posts, like music videos, or vlogs that perez makes himself. Underneath all that is advertising that he sells to make money on the site.