CNET's Big Picture
CNET has been building for years an internal hypertext network; mapping each article one to each other; mapping companies they write about. They made this article by article, going back in the past with links to relevant articles. It must have been a huge work; I think I'm not the one wondering which tools they used, if any. From my experience, one of the few engines that could deal with such data would be Autonomy; with their enterprise level search and DRE (Dynamic Reasoning Engine).
Since they created this matrix, the rest is just cosmetics. It's no surprise then, that after a website redesign, they introduce this cool Flash extension: the story's big picture. Take a look at this Oktober 19th's article: Andreessen: PHP succeeding where Java isn't, then click on the big picture link on the right, or just go to the full screen version. Clicking on a related story will focus on this new story; building together a Vortex of high quality related content (articles and company data so far). From a pure geek perspective, it's a wonderful innovation; I wonder if regular users will appreciate it.
