In early 2008, I started floating the idea of upgrading SF Usual Suspects to some of my colleagues. At first, we only considered making a few minor aesthetic improvements; however, after discussing the issue further, we came to the conclusion that you (our readers) deserved more than just a few minor upgrades. So, we took things a step further with a full Web 2.0 makeover. With our new site, we've introduced a new look and feel to the site while continuing to provide seamless access to daily political news and maintaining our same user friendly approach.
Some of the new features on the site include:
- RSS Reader
- Searchable Content
- Streamlined and Upgraded User Interface
- Images
- Customized Subscription Service
And More...
In the coming weeks, we will continue to rollout additional features that will enhance the overall user experience. The most notable feature being site tags, which will help develop our archive system into a much more robust and comprehensive database of political news/information. Moreover, the site tag upgrade will ultimately make searching through all related political content as easy as one click.
Our overall goal is to continue to deliver an accessible and professional resource that will serve as San Francisco's political homepage. We hope you enjoy the new SF Usual Suspects and - so long as you keep coming back - we'll keep delivering the results.
Sincerely,
Burnell E. Holland III
Editor-In-Chief
SF Usual Suspects
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"Finally." - A Letter from the Publisher
In the early sixteenth century, when I was still young, I had the idea that a centralized place for political news would well serve the political junkies who populate our town. Since Suspects predated the Web being generally available, I ran off the first edition as a blast fax, which soon evolved into an email-based communication, and shortly thereafter it landed on the Internet.
But in the intervening years since the sixteenth century (OK, OK, it was actually 1995) lots has changed. I've grown up and am no longer quite the whiz-bang early adopter gadgeteer that I once was. I'm starting to get old and crotchety and I complain about "these kids today" and I find myself yelling "get off of my lawn" a lot, which is odd, since I live in a condo. On the ninth floor. But my main point is, and I will get around to it eventually, that my once cutting-edge technological skills had grown a bit frayed. While I am the boss of faxes and emails and websites, I was not capable of taking Suspects into the realm of Web 2.0.
Fortunately, the world keeps making new smart young folks. And I've been fortunate that two of them have stepped in and brought their own improvements and style to Suspects. Jaime Salinas served as Editor in Chief for much of 2006 and 2007, and Burnell Holland has been running Suspects on a daily basis for much of the past year. And today, we unveil the latest incarnation of Suspects, which has some enhancements that we hope you will find useful and friendly. I'm grateful to Mr. Holland and our web designer Erika Clary for their work to put this together - and I'm eager to hear what you think works well, what needs assistance to meet its potential, and what you think needs to change back to How It Used To Be.
Though we're getting a technological facelift, we're not going to change the fundamentals of what we do - we're still going to aggregate the news about San Francisco politics and provide it bright and early, every day; we're going to aim to be snarky but not mean-spirited, we're going to expand to nine updaters from our current five (yep, I'm back on the clock), and we're going to try to keep Suspects a fun, fast-paced, comprehensive and easy-to-navigate place to start your political day each day.
And hey - thanks for reading Suspects. We appreciate you stopping by.
- Alex Clemens
