Visually “mapping” news stories
As a user bounces through the day’s news, it would be aggregated by variables such as news type, date of submission, etc, and these would be sorted (but collected together) into media types: video, text, sounds/podcasts, mashups. These would then be visually linked together similarly to 6pli and Visual Thesaurus. But the layout needs to be smoother and cleaner and softer. Perhaps Google could provide the data for the actual links while the site does the visual representation of the media’s separation on the ‘net.
Basic visualization (starting with the big story of the day)
* Big story in the center, or have its enclosure be bigger, or both.
* Items closest to big story are first media directly related to the story (according to description above)
* Next layer of items is less related news
* Etc.
Advanced visualization: What got the story here?
* There would be an option to turn on “history mode”, which would allow the user to see the story’s development across a pedigree timeline.
* It would appear to the left and be grayed-out, since we want it to be noticeable and where we normally perceive time to be going)
* It’s a pedigree not only because of multiple pieces of news causing a story, but also because multiple pieces of media can tell that part of the timeline
* Interesting to see what happens when there is speculation.
Different items are news to different people, so let them choose what media sources and forms are included. This means there could/should be a device for updating SL news, Facebook news, MySpace. This is for the Online News Association, right?
Let there be keyboard shortcuts.
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2 comments:
I see this is a daily version of the first idea, and perhaps answers my question of how big are you going to let this visual mapping get. One idea I like about this one is the concept of greying out ideas that are less relevant. The concept of history mode to enable the timeline feature is also strong. Not a lot of feedback here, but I really think a combination of idea 1 & 2 would strengthen both...
This is a great tool to use and blend with the first idea. The two together would make a great medium for people to follow news stories. Love the features.
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