News Lab - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

NEWS lab was the research and development section of the NEWS.com.au

News Limited

News Limited is one of Australia's largest diversified media companies. The publicly listed company's interests span newspaper and magazine publishing, Internet, Pay TV, National Rugby League, market research, DVD and film distribution, and film and television production trading assets.News Limited...

website, based in Sydney, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

Overview

The lab lets users comment and rate a number of internet products being developed by NEWS.com.au. The collated feedback is used to assist with alterations to the products' design or function before being released to other websites within the group.

The 14 November 2006 launch coincided with World Usability Day 2006, a global event designed to raise users awareness in regards to product usability.

The lab was closed and the URL deactivated in 2007.

Company Structure

NEWS Lab is the R&D section of NEWS.com.au, the Australian breaking news website run by News Digital Media. The lab concept was created by Charles Brewer and Graeme Merrall and managed by Sigrid Kirk, Group Publisher, News Digital Media.

News Digital Media (formally known as News Interactive between 1998 and 2006) is the Digital Media division of News Limited, the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch's

Rupert Murdoch

Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....

News Corporation

News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...

.

Richard Freudenstein, formally COO of BSkyB, was announced as the Chief Executive of News Digital Media on 10 July 2006. He formally took-up this position on 10 October 2006.

Lab Products

The 4 products launched with the lab were:

NEWS Map: a Google map mash-up

Mashup (web application hybrid)

In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services...

of NEWS.com.au stories placed onto a global map. The data is processed via MetaCarta

MetaCarta

MetaCarta is aprivate company providing geographic solutions since 2001. Their headquarters are in Cambridge, MA with additional offices located in Washington DC; Houston, TX; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and New York, NY.-History:...

to extract Longitude

Longitude

Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, and denoted by the Greek letter lambda ....

and Latitude

Latitude

In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...

and then a KML

Keyhole Markup Language

Keyhole Markup Language is an XML notation for expressing geographic annotation and visualization within Internet-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers. KML was developed for use with Google Earth, which was originally named Keyhole Earth Viewer. It was created by...

file produced

NEWS Cloud - a tag cloud

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.