The default In Quotes choices, not surprisingly, are John McCain and Barack Obama. You can switch out with anyone from George Bush to Bill or Hillary Clinton, even Condoleeza Rice and Nancy Pelosi. And it’s not just limited to the U.S., either — a top-of-screen option lets you toggle over to an edition featuring British, Canadian, or Indian leaders.

In Quotes has a handful of obvious issues that you can click on — abortion, economy, health care — but it also lets you specify your own terms. You can then scroll through the list of quotes or hit the “spin” button to get a random one selected.

The site is a fun way to sift through political coverage specific to topics and candidates of your choosing. It doesn’t, of course, provide you a full spectrum of any person’s views, since you’re seeing only selected snippets from individual stories. A service such as The Boston Channel’s candidate comparison tool does a more all-encompassing job of laying out the candidates’ overall stances issue-by-issue (at least for the U.S. presidential campaign). As long as you use In Quotes with the understanding of what it can and cannot do, though, it’s an interesting tool that adds another layer to the political news experience.

Now, for our idea. The foundation is there. Next, we’d like to see the In Quotes Blogger Edition. Take the same concept, but switch out the players and the topics.

Just imagine the fun side-by-side comparisons could you drum up:

Here’s hoping Google decides to open source the code.

Related posts:

1. Google’s Sidewiki is a bad idea – very bad
2. Google launches another content play: political news aggregator
3. Google Testing “Preferred Sites” Search Customization Tool

Our first Q-Rewind stop is in November of 1998, when a couple of dudes from Stanford set up a small search engine. The home page looked a little less high-tech than what we know now.

Click on either option there, though, and you’d get these spiffy-looking first editions of the now ubiquitous product:

Now, to be fair, the then-dominant Yahoo was looking pretty hot back in the mid-90s, too. Here’s the cutting-edge search look of October 1996:

Speaking of cutting-edge, over on the browser side, the Mozilla home page was sporting a sweet Atari-style design around December of ‘98.

And just for kicks, we thought we’d see what DuncanRiley.com was up to in its infancy.

Whoops, still in the womb there. Let’s fast-forward just a hair, about one month ahead for the real deal.

You know, this is kind of like the modern equivalent of looking back at old photos from the 80s. Good times.

Anyhow, enough rewinding for one day. Back to the future, my friends…until next time.

No related posts.

To listen to the Duncan-less recording, you can listen below: