Just in Case

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1. Information overload
This is kind of based on a premise of what a Magazine might look like if it were completely made for the Internet and it was maybe 5 years in the future. Mostly evolution of current ideas that are already out there so this might not make a good project. Its also sort of based on a single website rather than a tool that many websites could use. Right now were thinking of having a main page that's completely focused on multimedia presentation of stories. So for instance, your page would simply consist of a wall of pictures that attempt to sum up the stories being presented. Hovering over pictures would give some more information and maybe cause it to animate or change a bit. Clicking on the image will start a sort of interactive slideshow and enlarge so you can see it better. The slideshows themselves would be arranged in linear fashion with a possible narrative track or text depending on the authors decision. Slides could be composed of pictures or visualized data (graphs and such) or 3D maps that you can spin and zoom of where the stories took place, pretty much anything that can be done visually. It would hopefully be better quality audio and picture resolution than youtube since it wouldn't have to deal with video. The source of content could include users and full commentary functions could be applied. So basically youtube for slideshows, it could also establish some kind of standard slideshow medium like .mpg for videos, and you could compile the slideshow though an online tool and record audio and such without leaving the website. Focus would obviously be toward documentary type presentations, could also serve as a repository for academic slideshows (not sure who else loves the Research Channel but it's surprisingly pretty cool [its just a bunch of academic slide shows]). Like I said, somewhat of an obvious step so it might not be appropriate for this project but it doesn't exist and I'd like to see it.

2. Facebook/ Myspace/ Social Network News Categorization System
We thoroughly discussed whether this would qualify as original or appropriate to the project. And we concluded- Maybe. This would not be a tool to help people present news or information in a different or new way but instead would simply function as a system of connecting people to news. Those connections themselves could be mapped and analyzed as a feature of the system or individual stories but on the whole this would function as a news acquisition tool. The focus would be on bringing relevant news to people who might not otherwise be interested. Most likely it would work kind of like google's adsense- and I think that google news uses a similar algorithm to hook people up with news- but would incorporate people and relationships into the equation. So it would take into account what kinds of things interest yourfriends or what they have read and liked or disliked and try to produce a communal sort of news page where you can discuss with friends certain stories or topics. Discussions would ideally be conducted among people you know or who are within your social (or academic/professional/etc) networks. So you wouldn't see all the comments that a story got(although you could probably have the option), but just those made within your community. In my experience people tend to be slightly more civilized and reasonable among friends andcolleagues than in a general anonymous forum.

3. Online Fact Checker/ Plagiarism Exposer/ Summarizing Compiler type tool thing
The main problem with this one is that it would be difficult to do. It would either rely on writers to break their stories into variable data types and quick summations or would require a very sophisticated language interpreter to do the same type of thing (which I dont think exists yet). The more difficult part would be analyzing contextualization, which might be easy for a person but impossible for a computer program. The tool itself would be a system that compares various stories from different sources and analyzes the differences in style and character or tone and more importantly tags and categorizes omissions or additions of individual facts or data. So, due to technology restraints this would rely on journalists themselves breaking their stories down into computable variables or an army of analyzers doing it for them. The end of the process might produce a veryconcise break down of stories and provide users with a lot of media analysis in the process. Of course, some stories might not be divisible in such a way. So this is still kind of a squishy idea that were still working on.

4. Locational News/In-Your-Face Interface updated*

So we are updating our Locational News idea to include our inteface idea thing which follows- for pictures scroll down through posts to appropriate thread.

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.

--original-->
News has always been categorized and distributed according to location. So were still figuring out the originality aspect of this idea but basically our idea is to bring it to a critical mass level and start to cover new types of stories with hyper local news and make it easier to aggregate.

So here's Hepi's original idea and how we interpreted it in our group. (Since I'm not sure I understand it myself yet)

News stories generated to you via your physical location (on your laptop, cell phone or pda). Kinda like Chicago crimes, but with news stories good and bad. It'd be useful for finding events, and knowing when certain things have happened and it could indicate the potential interest or impact stories in your proximity would have.

Not sure if it's possible anymore with all the privacy software out there, unless you type in your zipcode or something. I guess IP address can do it for you. Seems like it would be more of a feature though like at the side of the news page- here's what happened on your block- who got arrested, who sold a house, which restaurant is good, etc. could be a nice element in the whole interrelated content thing though.

I am intrigued by Hepi's idea of physical location news....I picture it being like a tour of a city with information each place you stop....could be great for tourists. If not, then it would be a great feature to add with the Flicker/Second Life (map with proximity news).

Sorry to toot my own horn, but I really like my first idea. The only thing is I think it maybe more of a cellphone/pda type application because of the GPS/tracking capabilities of these devices. However there could also be a database, that's accessible online, that people in their homes could use to check out the news in areas they are going (or just out of curiosity).

5. Mood simulator/ Storytelling graphic enhancer type thing
I'm a little confused on this one too! It was sort of last minute and I probably didn't catch all of it but here goes.
My explanation probably sounds very simplistic but basically it would be a program where the website would change its look and style according to the type of story. I think this is based on the the idea of how movies or pictures or text can set a mood where the story fits into and cues the viewer about what they should expect or what kind of environment they should imagine. So this would be way of changing the atmosphere or mood according to the story. It could be just simple colors or something more complex. I'll try to get more info on this idea since I'm not really sure about it but yeah, probably needs a lot of work.