Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Altavista Redesign is more 'Portal-Like'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-constant-is-change dept.

GeHa & others called our attention to the new AltaVista main page that went live late Saturday night (EDT). Apparently the formal kickoff for the redesign is scheduled for Monday and will include a live Lauryn Hill Webcast. I wonder what entertainer Google would choose to help publicize a major site change. Any ideas? UPDATE by RM Sunday morning: the new page is aparently on again, off again until the formal Monday launch. IMO it's not as useful as the old one even though AV is making much noise about it.

18 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. It's still up, actually. by dannyboy_h · · Score: 2

    http://chinook.altavista.com/

  2. lack of focus by jalefkowit · · Score: 2

    What is up with all these big players losing their focus? Yahoo wants to have a branded version of everything you can do on the Net. Deja News wasn't happy being a world-class Usenet index, so they've revamped themselves into a sucky consumer portal. Now AltaVista has decided that the thing to do is to is to forget what they used to do well and instead do 12 other things poorly.

    On the face of it, this is irrational. The value of the Net was supposed to be precisely that it would allow people to focus on doing one thing well, and then the rest of the world would link to them rather than reinventing the wheel. Why does the world need Yahoo! Auctions, for example, when eBay exists and has a near-perfect implementation of Internet auctioning? Wouldn't the logical thing be for Yahoo to just link to eBay and focus on improving their index?

    The thing is -- that would be the logical thing, but we're not living in logical times. All this "portal" BS is a function of the Internet stock bubble. Yahoo IS focused -- on keeping their stock price high, not on the quality of their index. This means that they must jump on every bandwagon that comes along in order to keep all those nervous day traders out there from hitting "SELL" on their Yahoo stock. Same deal for Deja (which is in the process of going public) and AltaVista (owned by CMGI, a public company), as well as Amazon and many others too numerous to mention.

    The point is, someday this Net stock bubble is going to burst, and then we'll probably see logic take hold of the Net market and Yahoo! will focus on its directory, Deja on Usenet, AltaVista on searching, etc. -- assuming they survive the downturn -- but as long as crazy investors are willing to throw money at any company that's more focused on being buzzword-compliant than focused on their core business, this weird diversification will persist.

    --

    Read my blog.

    1. Re:lack of focus by daviddennis · · Score: 2

      The actual concern of Yahoo is perfectly legitimate, regardless of what its stock price is (or isn't). They want to keep you on their pages, so that they can display ads and get $ 0.005 cent per pageview. Yahoo users spend an average of somewhere around 30 minutes a day on the site, and they have around a pageview a minute, so we're talking about $ 0.005 * 30 = $ 0.15. So every minute they can keep you on the site through classifieds and auctions and what-not is a minute where they can make money by showing you ads.

      I've actually grown to like Deja's implementation of the ratings features. It's really pretty well done. Sadly, the puke blue and bile green colour scheme makes me shudder every time I enter the site. And I wish they hadn't changed the normal Courier or Times Roman in the message bodies to helvetica, which is barely readable under any Unix I know of.

      These annoying facts have caused my total visits to Deja to drop something like 80%. It's pretty sad, since I think what they're doing with the ratings is actually not half bad.

      Incidentally, www.epinions.com is doing a very nice job competing with Deja on the ratings category - check 'em out. I really like the "web of trust" and the "payments to reviewers" ideas. We'll see how they do.

      D

      ----

    2. Re:lack of focus by daviddennis · · Score: 2

      The real tragedy, of course, is that they're the only company but AltaVista with the huge archive, and when I tried both I seem to remember Dejanews (the old version) was far superior to AV.

      Unfortunately for your theory about loss of focus creating prolblems, dejanews.com started sliding downhill about a year ago (or maybe even more); each change of their user interface made the service harder and harder to use. I still remember my discussions with their very nice tech support chap, who said the idea was to make it easier for newbies. Well, I don't think there was a single grizzled old verteran user who didn't despise the changes :-(.

      I'm wondering how they do now with the average chap, their targets. Ratings seem to have been a reasonable success, at least judging by the number and variety that have been created. But the USENET archive is, as you said, saddled with a horrid user interface now. It almost makes me tempted to do my own archive, if I could afford the massive capital needed to do it :-(.

      D

      ----

  3. Portals are idiotic. by Kynes23 · · Score: 2
    Perhaps this is the old-schooler in me speaking, but I really detest portals. To me, they've always been nothing but another marketing gimmick aimed at keeping users attached to a single system. When the online services of old started dying, their proprietors needed a way to hold onto people... you can't let them wander around, not contributing to your revenue, after all.

    So what did they do? The portal was born. All the content of the old services, plus they don't have to provide you with dial-up access to see it! You just come on your own, look at their ads, provide them with demographic information... pretty sweet deal. For them.

    The beauty of the Internet is the unconnectedness of these things. Down with portals, and down with AltaVista for joining this insane movement!

  4. Make your own portal by falser · · Score: 2

    Something that I've been accustomed to doing is making my own "start" page, with my most used links, quick sumbit forms to the search engines I need, a clock, and other stuff like grabbing headlines from /.!. Having it load up locally, is a lot faster than visiting a portal site (which are often fairly lengthly) every time you start Netscape, no banner ads, no marketing schemes, no annoying windows that pop up everywhere...

    Portals are annoying, I can't even comprehend how any of them actually make money except for Yahoo.


    "the voices in my head say crazy things"

  5. text only Altavista by two_can · · Score: 4


    http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?opt=on&en c=iso88591&text=on
    Above is the Link I use, this removes almost everything except the search function.
    there are various settings you can set if you hunt for them.

  6. Re:what's so great about google? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

    Google uses a new type of algorithm to rank the relevancy of pages based on how many other pages link to it. It's not just the fact that it runs under Linux - it's the result of a some pretty sophisticated new ideas on how to best search the web.

    Check this out for more information in what is going on with search engines.

  7. The Only AltaVista Page You'll Ever Need by Tom+Christiansen · · Score: 2
    Goodness, but silly /. has bugs. Sigh. Here I hope is the right version. If this fails, I surrender. As far as I'm concerned, this is the only Alta Vista page you ever need to keep around. Ignore their tripe.
    <FORM ACTION="http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query">
    <INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=pg VALUE=q>
    <INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=text VALUE=yes>
    <INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=kl VALUE=XX>
    Altavista: <INPUT NAME=q>
    <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE=Search>
    </FORM>

    Although I don't, you might see spamverts in the response. These are trivially deleted with any spamvert blocking proxy.

  8. I really wish by JohnZed · · Score: 2

    that large websites would all post the equivalent of a colophon. You know, an explanation of how and with what the site is built: backend programming methods (EJB, NSAPI, mod_perl), design tools, web server, database, etc.
    It's always fascinating to see a little bit of a publisher's design philosophies in the colophon for a book, and I think that goes double for a web site.
    --JRZ

  9. Re:Altavista new look by m3000 · · Score: 2

    I saw it for a little bit and got the source of it and threw it on a Geocities page. So here is what is basically looks like:

    The New Altavista

  10. Re:unreadable fonts by daviddennis · · Score: 2

    In a word, yes. :-(

    Sites are increasingly using Helvetica/Arial or something similar, and it renders under Linux as a truly ghastly font that should have never been let out of the foundary.

    I don't know why they are - I think it's really ugly, and it's painfully tough to read, too. Even in Windows, I don't think it looks that hot.

    It's fairly well known that serif fonts (such as Times Roman or Palatino) are easier to read than sans serif (like Helvetica). But Helvetica looks more "modern", and I guess looking more "modern" is more important than actually being legible.

    D


    D

    ----

  11. Re:Altavista new look by mbauser2 · · Score: 2

    Word at the Open Directory Project is that the "new" AltaVista has been popping in and out of existence all day. Presumably, this represents a failed attempt to test the new site without showing it to the public.

    (According to CNET, there was a beta version of the new AltaVista at beta.altavista.com, but it was taken down when CNET phoned AV about it. Obviously, whatever AV's doing to hide the new page from the public now isn't working quite right.)

    --
    Proud to be / Smiley-free / Since Nineteen / Ninety-Three
  12. Chilly Willy by Seumas · · Score: 3
    I'm sure Google would choose the likes of Chilly Willy the penguin, of cartoon fame. Or perhaps the old penguin from the penguin and polar-bear duo of Arctic Circle fame (I haven't seen one of those restaurants in years. Mmm. And remember their Fry Sauce? Oh, now I'm hungry.).

    I'm so damn tired of every company putting a 'portal' online. I just want a page that I can search for things with. I don't want the same re-hashed AP/Reuters newsfeed that every other website has. I don't want the stupid celebrity-chats, java-games, weather, maps, webmail, shopping venues or discount long-distance phone deals.

    Give give me a damn field to enter my keywords in and a button to click.

    Everyone wants to corner every part of the market. What happened to 'Do one thing and do it well'? I'm not so lazy that I can't type a new address to go to a seperate webpage. If I'm on a search page that is done well (Google) and I need to catch up on the day's news, I'll take the two seconds to type in another URL.

    Marketing hacks and corporate clunkheads seem to think the average web-surfer wants to stay on one webpage forever and have everything they need on that one page. I find that as tacky as going to Castco and seeing the cars and home entertainment systems on sale. If you are buying a car or a stereo-system, go to a car-dealership or a stereo store -- where you can find quality items from people who specialize in them.

    I'm not going to buy my car in the next aisle down from the canned-food and I'll not get my news from the same place people search for pr0n.

    To be a successful online service, you do not need to spread yourself over everything. You do not need to plaster your site with a thousand banner-ads. You do not even need to register with a search engine. Just do what you do, like what you do, and do it well. People will notice it and appreciate it.

    My website, for example, was just something I threw together while I was telecommuting and learning Perl. I figured I would take the site down within a few days once I had learned how to read and dissect the script. And here I am a few months later with a very successful auction site for a very specific group of people. No search engine, no Reuter's news, no banners or advertising, no costs to anyone. And I've never even registered the site on a single search engine. (That's what robots.txt is for anyway, duh!)

    My point is not that my site is so special, but that you don't have to become a commercialized sell-out to do well and you do not have to offer every service under the sky. Find something you like and stick with it. Word-of-mouth turned Fight Club from a ho-hum box-office feature to a number-one hit. It can do the same for your site.

    Best of all, if you really care about what you are doing, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Let CBS and Tide throw a million dollars at a web project that looks and behaves like every other portal in the world -- you can have something unique to offer for a few bucks.

    Speaking of which, could you imagine a project manager with any corporation presenting a website project that can be maintained for $20 per month?

    The previous reasons are also why you come to Slashdot for your tech news and gossip instead of finding it burried in the back of your local newspaper, written by some washed-up entertainment editor who's greatest technical accomplishment was booting up their iMac.
    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  13. Link Farms . . glow your own by Money__ · · Score: 3
    I vividly remember when Yahoo.com was a great little index. Simple, quick loading, up-to-date, a joy to use. However, the trend seems to be that once a search engine gets noticed, they start doing things to track and keep users on the site. They add links that point back to there own "content" (which isn't really content at all, but just another step into the hierarchy) after 2 or 3 clicks down. the user is finally shown what he/she came for, but in the process, the user is shown a steaming heap of on-domain links. This exasperates even the most uneducated user.

    For example, this is the link-o-bar across the top of the page from yahoo.

    Yahoo! Auctions - bid now! Coca-Cola, Dragon Ball, Halloween, Britney Spears, Pokemon... Shopping - Auctions - Yellow Pages - People Search - Maps - Travel - Classifieds - Personals - Games - Chat - Clubs Mail - Calendar - Messenger - Companion - My Yahoo! - News - Sports - Weather - TV - Stock Quotes - more...

    [head spinning] Britney Spears, Pokemon ..I'm gonna hurl. . .

    Each one of these demographically focused links is pointing back at the main page to prevent "leakage" (the term used when a user actually gets what they came for, and leaves the site). What's more is even *external links* are 'pass-through' links for (tracking reasons) so the user doesn't really know when they are leaving the site.

    Alta-vista started out as a text only robot running on Alpha. It was fast and effective. slowly, little by little, they grew it into a link farm that is distracting and annoying to everyone. Another little trend I recently noticed , while clicking through my.CNN, is using pop-up windows that turn off the navigation and location tool bar. While it's very interesting, it forces the user to stay on-domain (because there's no nav bar) and the user doesn't know where the content is coming from (because the location bar is gone). But anyway, I digress. Back to the issue at hand.

    Google is starting out the same way. A superior indexing robot generating links that are fast and effective. This week, Goggle added 2 links on the main page. Mark my words . . over the next 6 months, you'll slowly see more and more (mostly on-domain) links added to Google until it to will become a towering heap of babble.

    What we users want is a link farm that actually points to content! That's why /. is my portal. That's why It's under my HOME button. That's why /. is an indispensable information source.

    A link farm that 'gets to the point, and points to the get'

    Now.. if only someone could build a general user link farm on the /. model?

  14. Re:But why bother? (text only Altavista) by mcc · · Score: 2

    Boolean statements and partial word completion. Google does none of these things, and altavista is about as good as any search engine of it's type i'm aware of. If google can't find it it's nice to be able to still have a simple layout on AV. Altavista's text-only section, yahoo and google all have their places depending on the specific search term..

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  15. Re:unreadable fonts by daviddennis · · Score: 2

    Correct, and that - of course - was my point.

    It's true that sans serif fonts are in fact easier to read in large sizes and at a distance. That's why many people use helvetica in headings and times roman as body text, which I think generally looks pretty good (or rather it would, if the Linux helvetica wasn't so ghastly).

    D

    ----

  16. Re:what's so great about google? by Money__ · · Score: 2
    Is there something special about google that makes it such a hot topic on slashdot? Or is it just that it runs on Linux? I think that's a pretty lame qualification for a search engine, if that's the case.

    That is not the case.

    Here's a quote from http://www.google.com/doing_business.html Google offers an advanced patent-pending technology called PageRankTM to deliver the most relevant results. PageRank ensures that the most important, relevant pages always come up first and that your users will always find what they are looking for. The PageRank algorithm was developed at Stanford University by leading computer scientists for more than three years before the company was formed.

    My understanding of the algorithm is that it uses the pointing text in the hyperlink as key words for rating relavance. For example, If you have a site expelling your thoughts (about the spooky resemblance between Britney Spears and Pica-chu and why they're never seen together), if 50 people point to your web site with a "britney" link, and 100 people point with a "pica-chu" link, you're site gets rated as highly relevant pica-chu. As a result of this rating system, the engine is 'self moderating' and very scalable.

    The other thing that rocks about google is there isn't any junk to distract the user. And yea... ..and ummm...it hapens to run on the worlds most powerfull operating system ;).