| Ok...So I don't have a name for this idea yet, but I've been thinking that it's sort of a geographic picture database. It's pretty primitive, and I came up with it while trying to think of some of the problems I run into reading news stories. It's an idea that definitely works for internet news story-telling... When reading a story, even a local news story, I run into descriptions of locations that I've never been to or am not very familiar with. For me (and I'm assuming others?) this presents a bit of a problem. Once I can't visualize what the writer is actually talking about, I lose interest in the story and I find it hard to keep reading. Now, I've never seen this done (aside from proper nouns in a news story that link you to a specific website), but that doesn't mean much. I was thinking that somehow we could create a database that would link locations in stories (cross streets, landmarks, buildings, etc.) to pictures. And not just a snapshot, but those photos that let you turn 180 or 360 degrees so you can get a good feel for what and where the location being described looks like. I was trying to search for this on the internet, but it's kind of difficult because I'm not pitching the idea as a website. It would be a tool- there's that magic word;)- that journalists can place in their internet stories for readers to use as they choose. The NewYork Times links certain proper nouns and other nouns mentioned in articles to other stories (relative or not) in their archives. So while they use a link, their link promotes a different idea than what I'm proposing. The database I was thinking would solely be for pictures/images, and they would be semi-virtual;) Ok...that's my contribution for the day...j/k...but really let me know what you all think...even if this doesn't work, we could use it for a springboard for other things or add it to one of our existing ideas. This just happens to be the biggest lightbulb moment I've experienced during this whole project, so I thought I would share it. I still like our number 3 (Online Fact Checker/Plagiarism Exposer) and number 5 (Mood simulator) ideas...good stuff;) Jenna |
Monday, June 25, 2007
Another Idea we can pick apart;) Oh yea...and it's me, Jenna
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1 comment:
sounds good, but i think its already being done. It's certainly not difficult for journalists to add a location onto an embedded google map right now. The 3D picture archive might be good but we would need something really clever and different about it to use it though. I think a lot of our ideas are about making ideas that are already out there just a lot easier to implement. Not sure that kind of thing qualifies for the project. Char?
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