Starbucks Closes Between 5:30 and 9 P.M. today

First, important news as you plan your commute or other activities for this evening: Starbucks Closes Between 5:30 and 9:00 P.M. today to Perfect the Art of Espresso

Next, the rant: This was buried on page 3A in the "Nationline" briefs column of USA Today this morning. This is important news, especially for business travelers and commuters, the latter of which comprise a large portion of a weekday news audience. Worse? I can't find the brief on the USA Today Web site at all -- not even via the Yahoo-powered search.

To be fair, I couldn't find it via a Google News search either, which to me says no other news organization has realized how helpful such content could be to their core at-work Web audience.

I had to go to Starbucks directly, and not even they had it on their home page as of 8:20 this morning. I had to go to the Press Room to find the announcement.

Would somebody please wake up and smell the venti triple latte, and focus on what the audience wants to know to plan its day?

In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com - washingtonpost.com

LoudounExtra.com is very nice on the front end, and chock full of data on the back end, but the user experience in between so far leaves me wanting more: In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com - washingtonpost.com.

That said, the overall effort is right on. While I could not yet find evidence of of iPod-downloadable restaurant guides or mobile late-night options, it does give me ideas for our own dining effort.

"Over the past several months, the six-person staff (and one intern) of LoudounExtra has assembled a restaurant guide by asking each of the county's restaurants to answer questions about their operation, contacted more than 130 houses of worship to find service schedules (and offered to upload podcasts of their sermons onto the Loudoun site), asked all county high school principals about their curriculums, shot panoramic photos of each school and collected statistics on each high school football player, among other data-collection tasks.

The information will be searchable and deliverable on a number of platforms, meaning users will be able to download the site's restaurant guide onto their iPods and use their cellphones to find restaurants open late at night."

<rant>
As impressed as I am with the description of what is being done by the Post in Loudoun County, the cardinal sin was committed in the article. It's an article about a new Web site, and there is neither a link to the Web site from the text of the article, nor is it in a prominent related links box that would make it as easy as possible on the user to click and go.

I don't get it. We are in 2007, right? The story is chock full of links to other places on the washingtonpost.com Web site. But the most important link -- the focus of the story, mind you -- is missing.

Please tell me I missed it. Please tell me that one of the pre-eminant Web journalism operations in the country pays attention to such details, and I am simply as blind as a bat....
</rant>