

What do you think of this news mapping site? I made it myself - combiclickwise
http://www.trackthisnow.com/

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bwh2
A few thoughts:

* It seems heavily skewed toward non-US sources. I'm in the US and did a search for Obama. It showed 1 result on the map. This made me think the site doesn't work very well. Strangely, the location of search results on the right don't correspond with the map.

* The search button is ugly

* I don't understand the country filters. You should hide those behind an "Advanced search" link

* Sometimes, the map shows the western hemisphere on the right half, eastern on the left. This was unexpected.

* When I click a map marker, nothing happens. It's a Google Map, so I'm expecting Google Map behavior, which is an info window to popup on click. Similarly, I get an alert error when trying to double-click for zoom.

* The fluid map width works well on my widescreen monitor.

* The progress bar is a good idea

* The design is generally clean and pleasant. One thing worth testing would be how many users don't even see the articles on the right because that's a typical spot for ads. I suspect moving the results to below the map may work better - particularly if you add the info window popups.

* The thumbnail images look distorted. They also need spacing added to the right side.

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combiclickwise
really appreciate the feedback. I have already started working on it. The
search button was ugly (changed now) yes.. I am yet to work out how to show
the country filters well. in any case i think it is a good idea to group it
into an advanced section

Clicking/double clicking was confusing people. have corrected the behavior now
(zooms when you double click) The results appear on the right on mouse over
not click. i didn't realize that users may not realize this. One of the
problems of being too close to the project is that i loose perspective (of how
it will look to a new user)

The thumbnails have been corrected

will love it if you had another look

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bwh2
Nice work

* The new search button is much better.

* I would switch the news articles to change on click, not mouseover. The distance between map marker and news link is too far; too many other markers can accidentally be moused over. This is most obvious when mousing over a marker that is surrounded by other markers (typically like Swiss results). Plus, when you click, you expect something to happen, not so much when you mouseover.

* You should make the fonts a consistent size between the input fields, select fields, and their labels.

* The Facebook like button is a little lost in the top right. I would consider putting it just below the bottom left corner on the map.

* The thumbs look better. I would still pad them 3-5px more on the right. Then make the title text flush with the top of the images.

* Your bottom banner ad jumps around depending on the length of article results. Presumably, you'll want to change that.

* But all of these things kind of play 2nd fiddle to having more markers appear on the map and making the article results seem more closely tied to the map results. The example of searching "Obama" and only seeing one marker on the US is the kind of thing to fix.

* BTW, good job on making the page load fast.

