Wednesday, November 01, 2006

a radio station online mailbag as a search engine?

So my fav online radio station is called "the current" - its the Minnesota Public Radio alternative pop radio service.

Whilist perusing the site today and listening to the station, I found the mailbag and noticed that people were asking MPR some normal and not so normal questions - and the station was actually answering back, posting the most interesting questions and answers online. Take a look for yourself at some of the questions asked by Minnesotans and by listners around the world. Goto http://minnesota.publicradio.org/your_voice/mailbag to check it out and ask a question yourself - like maybe what ever happened to the early 90's Minneapolis band Zuzu's Petals? I know I'm seriously curious.

2 Comments:

At 2:11 PM, Blogger Julia Faith said...

I think it's a form of digital reference, albeit being served from a non-traditional source.

 
At 10:43 PM, Blogger Belle And Sebastian said...

It is basically people taking something not intended to be a general information seeking tool (it was intended only as a radio station information seeking tool) and asking it questions. It's about how people interact with their environment and the things that they would search for that are not related to radio on a radio station web-site and still expect an answer - and the fact that the station will actually seek to answer some of their questions. I think this is a rather unique and quirky form of information seeking on behalf of the user and interaction on behalf of the station. The fact that this site would do this helps to define it as an information resource beyond the ways that one might consider it.

 

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