So I was thinking about the whole passive news feed thing again and I thought, how bout if I could just get my news by looking out the window? Like I get the weather? Well I dont have any windows with any kind of view so its not very useful to look out the window but what if there was a place I could go to and look at a virtual view from a really nice view and get all the information I need from that angle?
This is really more of an interface for delivering news than it is a way of reporting but I think it would be pretty cool. You would have the whole city out in front of you and by clicking on different elements of the picture, different overlays would pop up and give you the news on that aspect. Color coded arrows or something would pop up in different areas to clue you in on where a particular story happened. So instead of having a frantic front news page with every story crammed in and vying for your attention, you would initially just have a view of the city. Current weather conditions and time of day would be reflected on screen. If there was a major fire or something in town you would also be able to see the virtual fire plume. Planes and birds and helicopters would fly overhead. Freeways would reflect actual traffic, fireworks would crackle on holidays, flags would blow in the wind, etc. I would want the default screen to be something that can be left up like a screen saver or a second browser window, like for my second screen. Something pretty but also highly informative if I want it to be.
Hovering over different neighborhoods and clicking would bring up a similar miniature version of them but restricted by that areas borders, maybe a 3/4 angle to get more of the actual geography in. Similar arrow-news system and overlays would be used on the more local level as well. Clicking on actual stories would pop up the text and pictures with an option to have the stories read as audio. you should be able to browse and queue up a few stories to be read while your doing something else pretty easily. Maybe show the story's pictures as a slide show if you want to look over occasionally.
I think that this as an interface can work in combination with our other ideas. It doesn't solve the news gathering dilemma but I think it creates a cool place to show stories off. You could integrate citizen journalism as an overlay option or as the main method. Community pictures or videos can be integrated as well. Features can be done according to topic, but thats a whole nother issue I will possibly post up later. Lemme know if this fits our project parameters and what you think in general. I think that flash would work brilliantly but doing big flash programs is hardware intensive so maybe java would work better in this case. I'm also not sure I can learn enough of either within a month to actually make a working model of this. Also if anyone has seen ANYTHING like this lemme know. I know that the Rob Curley was doing something similar on his weather page by using the actual city as a backdrop but I think this goes way farther, in the same vein.
2 comments:
I think its a pretty cool idea, but a lot of news stories don't leave much of an impact on the physical landscape of the community; how would stories like the "G-sting" or the university medical center budget crisis be expressed in this this format? I was also wondering about stories that impact multiple areas of a town or even the whole town? I guess you could have a different type of interface for these types of stories but did you have any particular solution in mind?
Well the arrow thing is basically just a tool that you may or may not use. The Law/or whatever filter would show the G-string trial and would probably point out the federal courthouse or that strip club in the view. Stories would still be sort of separate from the main view, it would just be a tool to get people to go to the site and explore different areas of the city and local or hyper-local stories. Big stories and features would need a different sort of visualization, depending on the story.
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