A closer look at Spiegel Online's time machine

Some time ago, Spiegel Online, Germany's leading news website, launched its ambitious portal on contemporary history, einestages.de. The idea was welcomed everywhere, although the navigation was considered to be too complicated. The masses of photos are difficult to access (why isn't there a real slide show functionality?), and beside (sometimes too) sophisticated texts, I miss some short catchy statements.

The latest innovation on einestages.de is the „einestage.de-Zeitmaschine“. This time machine application shows how historic content can be accessed visually: Imagine you rush in a space shuttle through the universe: the years fly by, and masses of photos that stand for contemporary events pass your way. Technically, the flash solutions works quite well – in case you have a fast computer and the latest flash version. Of course you can set your starting time – either you start the flight nowadays or 100 years ago. The speed can be controlled by the track wheel.

So far so good. This time machine seems to be a smart idea to arrange historic content via expressive photos, giving inspiration to events you haven't known so far, satisfying a certain play instinct.

It really sounds perfect at first thought, but obviously it is not so easy to handle. To be improved: the link between the photos flying by and the real content: If you find a photo of interest, you can only click on it. A new site opens that shows the photo and provides some basic information such as location, date and relevant tags. But: neither title nor explanation what it's about. To access a short description, you have to click once more. But by getting into details, e.g. clicking through the slide show or reading the related article on einestages.de you leave the time machine. So if you want to continue your flight, you have to restart the application. You can't go on the point where you had left the time machine.

In brief: the time machine is a fascinating idea which picks up a human dream. The application is visually attractive, playful and full of inspiring content. But: Once more we get aware of a central challenge of visual journalism: to provide a close link from the attention-catching photo and the real content. One photo may not always suffice to immerse users into meaningful contemporary events.

For me, however, flying through the times with the einestages.de time machine would be even greater if some brief content snippets would be provided just one click away. Of course, everyone wants to maximize page impressions. But in this case, I fear the einestages.de time machine would be reduced to a playful gimmick and not to an inspiring way to discover contemporary history.

Brockhaus survived war and revolution, but surrenders to the web

On October 1^st 1808, young book merchant Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus bought all rights to publish the „Conversations-Lexicon“. The Brockhaus encyclopedia became a backbone of German education and culture, a national symbol like Goethe’s „Faust“ or Beethoven’s 9th symphonie. For almost two centuries the fine leather spines of the Brockhaus editions with their golden characters were a must in the living room shelves of the German bourgeoisie.

This week Brockhaus CEO Ulrich Granseyer announced that after more than 200 years the 21^st printed edition was the last. Instead the complete Brockhaus (30 volumes, 24.500 pages, 300.000 entries, price of 2.670 Euro) will be available online and for free by April the 15th. „We had to accept that people are searching on the Internet“, Granseyer explained the dramatic step.

Brockhaus survived wars, revolutions and the iron curtain. In 1943 during the Secod World War allied bombs destroyed the headquartes in Leipzig. Ten years later East German communists seized Brockhaus. For 40 years East and West Germans had their own Brockhaus – the capitalst one published in Mannheim, the communist one published in Leipzig. Brockhaus survived it all. Now it had to surrender to the web and to wikipedia.

As a knowledge aggregator and provider the web is faster, more convenient, more interactive and – of course – more visual than print.The change of strategy comes late. The Encycloaedia Britannica was the first to accept the fact, that there is no future for this type of a printed knowledge base.

Bertelsmann, largest Brockhaus competitor in the German market, decided to go a different way. The day Brockhaus announced the end of the printed edition Bertelsmann‘s encyclopedia subdivision Wissen Media launched Spiegel.Wissen, a knowledge portal that combines the lexical data from Bertelsmann with articles from Spiegel archive and – yes – Wikipedia. Only one day later a beta version of Chroniknet went online, a picture portal, dedicated to collect the private picture stock of Germans and compile an archive of visual private history.

For it‘s portal Brockhaus will offer up to four million pictures they licensed from photo agencies. The portal will also contain permanentely updated info graphic content. The business model? Brockhaus hopes for sufficient ad revenue. But media planners are quite sceptical, whether Brockhaus can generate enough reach to become an attractive place for big brands.

Talking about the future of traditional media Brockhaus rises one alarming question:Who’s next?