Feature update: Flickr photos, Yahoo Answers, and targeted searches
When we did the design refresh on Autopendium a couple of months ago it was with the aim not just of freshening the look up, but using the space more efficiently so we’d have room for some of those features we’d been wanting to add.
The first was Flickr photos — which is simplicity itself. When you’re looking at a vehicle or marque or model, the system will simply show you the latest Flickr photos relating to that vehicle.
Similarly with Yahoo Answers. For those of you not familiar with Yahoo Answers it’s a way people can find out stuff on all sorts of weird and wonderful questions… including old cars. Sometimes they’re pretty lame, sometimes pretty interesting. Here are are current ones for the Volvo Amazon:
Another little new feature that’s actually incredibly useful is targeted Google Custom Search. This is a great feature that allows you to use Google to search only those websites that are directly related to the make and model you’re interested in. To use it, just enter the search term in the Google Custom search box on the vehicle/model page and go:
The result is something like this:
[For those interested in the details of how this works, Google dynamically searches only those clubs and websites listed as a resource for the model, which means instead of 54,000 useless entries you get a handful of relevant ones.]
Finally, we’ve now gone over the 150 mark in our classic car museum directory and have comfortably over 500 entries in the Autopendium classic car club directory (which helps make the Google Custom search work really well in general).
