Robert_Charlton - 2:36 am on Apr 20, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm tending to view it as a work in progress... though perhaps one that's been rolled out way too early.

The "Local" results, eg, are noticeably untargeted. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area (in California). Though it might make sense to serve me up a sidebar of "California news" (the same stories that are displayed in the Local section), there are in fact no top state stories included... only Los Angeles local stories, drawn entirely from the LA Times.

It makes no sense, eg, for them to think that I'm going to be interested in the Cherry Blossom Festival in Monterey Park, local LA political gossip, or a beach closure in Laguna Beach.

The most notable feature on the Top Stories page, IMO, are the video thumbnail windows (115 px wide.. larger than normal for thumbnails), which start playing when you mouse over them... no click required. They don't resume from where you left off if you move your cursor, though. For that feature, you need to click and open the player.