As such we will be posting updates in this section regards any new categories, features or staff.
Hopefully this will help keep those interested up to speed and also allow for some feedback. We do get a lot of suggestions by email but cannot always reply due to time restrictions, so again this will let us post on anything a lot of people have sent us mail about.
As a side note: We cannot supply celebrity contact details, act an agency for performers (even if you can sing, dance, act and balance a pint on your head) supply bulk orders of DVD (or anything else) or pass on messages to companies we run stories on.
Updates this week:
This week we have rolled out some changes to the extended news pages. You can now view these by day, up to 30 days back. This replaces the old method of listing every article in the category.
The new graphical format for the featured story (as seen on the main page and elsewhere) will gradually roll out to the entire site over the next fortnight. This loads faster than the old version and is easier for us to update. This became vital when we started carrying World News, which tends to change more often than entertainment.
In the Book category we have added 'Released This Week' and 'Recommended This Month'. We are hoping this will make it a bit easier to navigate the hundreds of book reviews added each month. Look out for a lot more excerpts shortly...
In World News we have added a top story option to Africa, Science and Nature and Health. This just reflects the additional resources we now have online...previously we struggled a bit with content in these areas.
In sport we are now carrying more soccer and UK/EU sports news...plus more photos. On the look out for a sports editor...so hopefully that category will see much improvement over the coming 6 months.
We have taken on two new site wide sources, one being DPA and the other Direct News. Both are semi-bespoke and give us access to breaking stories and photos from across the world on all the topics we cover. They also have better accuracy than some of our current wires.
Staff News
Cindy Locke, who used to write a lot of our celeb news, is about to have her baby so we wish her well with that...the first M&C birth!
Josh Tyler, who had been supplying some movie reviews, has now taken over the daily movie news.
Coming Up
Price Comparison - This feature will be added to our book category and later to DVD and music. Will let you compare prices across various outlets, updated daily.
Alerts and Newsletters - Well this is a complicated one as we now cover a lot of ground but we are hoping for some movement on this towards the end of the year. Let you track individual people, movies and topics. As well as the typical daily/weekly newsletters. We withdrew the old newsletter, as we wanted to start from scratch with something a bit more sophisticated.
Special Topic - We already have topics for likes of space or festivals but think a more flexible system is needed. Still in planning but the result should let us have stable topics and those with a lifespan. For instance Bird Flu and Oscars 2006 would expire but something like Global Warming might be fixed.... need to see.
Other than that we have some other ideas and content in the pipe that should improve the site.
As ever just drop us a line or leave a comment if you have any suggestions.
We do hope you get some use out of this sometimes-shambolic operation.
Best
JamesEditor
