Interface Final Project: Stage 3 – Presentation 1

presentation_1.ppt

Interface Final Project: Stage 3 – Narrative Description

My project will be a news media aggregator that will be divided into two categories of news feeds including subcategories of “real”/”important” news and the category of “frivolous”/celebrity gossip-type news. This aggregator only concentrates on American media coverage and will be a visual interpretation that studies the culture of American media and media coverage that will be available to everyone. It will have a similar interface design to Instant Messenger or a Mac widget in that it will be simple and user-friendly, and will not take up too much room on the computer’s desktop. One part of the interface will display a variety of news stories being reported in real-time which can be filtered by subcategory or topic chosen by the user, and the other part will solely concentrate on celebrity gossip media. It will act similarly to an RSS reader in that it will constantly update as stories are posted to the web (the actual news sources that will be aggregated is yet to be determined, but most likely it will be pulled from Google news and another news source). I would like each news story being fed to the interface to be able to visually show how many news sources are reporting on that particular story’s topic in addition to somehow displaying an estimated number of people reading or clicking on that particular news story.

This project is designed for media culture and technology “junkies” or anyone who regularly subscribes and reads RSS feeds, blogs, and is always up-to-date on the latest news stories for work or pleasure purposes. It will be useful to anyone who spends most hours of the day in front of a computer screen and enjoys exploring web applications and widgets for receiving a variety of news content and information.

It will be based within the realm of web technology and will also involve programming (the specific type is to be determined in later research) for aggregating the news sources for the live feeds, and for calculating the amount of news sources reporting each story and the readership for each story.

Outside of the classroom, people will be able to see my project not far from their own desktops! It will be a free download (just like AOL Instant Messanger) and will available to anyone who wants to have a running news feed on their computer desktops at their fingertips without having to open a browser window or search the internet for specific categories of news stories.

Through this project, I hope people gain a perception of how our news media culture works, with regards to identifying what American news media culture reports, doesn’t report and should, or reports unnecessarily and too often. I also hope to spark an interest for users to keep up with important news more regularly if they did not before, and to recognize the importance of staying educated and up-to-date on important topics that could impact our lives, thus, to become more culturally aware citizens.

Other related images/projects:

Maramushi Newsmap:

Google News:

Dapper:

Dapper is a program that allows anyone to create content feeds by extracting and reusing content from any website into a variety of different formats such as RSS feeds, widgets, HTML, Google gadgets, etc.

Interface Final Project: Stage 2 – Research

Anonymous. Decades of Historic NBC News Archives Released in HotChalk’s Digital Learning Environment Engages Students in Active Learning:Online Tool Features Over Sixty Years of Historic NBC News Archives. PR Newswire. New York:Aug 14, 2007.
– This article talks about a new educational multimedia resource provided by NBC that allows students to explore archives of news coverage that will help for various school courses. This is a good explanation of positive ways news is used for educational and learning purposes, and encourages younger students to be actively aware of what is going on in their world today and in the past. This could definitely be a guide to formulating news streams in a way that makes them more of an educational resource.

Delaney, Kevin J. and LaVallee, Andrew. Google News Offers Rebuttal Time; Articles’ Subjects, Sources Allowed to Post Comments; Verifying Identity an Issue
Wall Street Journal. (Eastern Edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 9, 2007. p. B.2
– This article discusses how Google would like to let news organizations post Google collected comments about articles on news organizations own individual Web sites. This provides an interesting perspective on the interactive aspect of online news resources.
Frankel, Max. Word & Image: What’s New. New York Times. (Late Edition (east Coast)). New York, N.Y.:Jun 18, 1995. p. A.20
– This article talks about the growing separation between “older” methods of news reporting and the steadfast modern methods of interactive news sources, and how because the news can be reported at real-time speeds, the competition for news reporting is growing and many sources are being overcome by online news streams. This information will be helpful in evaluating what news sources are the most widely used and why.

Garofoli, Joe. User-news sites offer more diverse stories, sources
San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Sep 12, 2007. p. A.3
– This article explains that interactive news sites can display a wide range of stories covered at once which shows the appeal to many users, unlike television and newspapers which initially focus on one or two main stories upon first glance. This helps give a positive analysis of this type of news streaming.

Grossman, Ben. Why ‘TMZ’ Just Might Work. Broadcasting & Cable. New York:Jul 30, 2007. Vol. 137, Iss. 30, p. 15
– This article explains that although the success of TMZ.com and TMZ TV solely focuses on celebrity gossip and news, there are many other sites out there doing the same thing and people are continuously wanting to know the latest news on celebrities. It’s a resource that’s highly demanded by many users. This is more back-up information for my investigation into why people often only follow celebrity news on a regular basis.

Hubbard, Caroline. Nschool strikes deal with CNN for Web content. Atlanta Business Chronicle. Atlanta: Oct 08, 1999. Vol. 22, Iss. 18, p. 3A
– A company that creates web sites for schools has collaborated with CNN to put CNN provided news (CNN Interactive) on their sites. This very much supports the idea of my project, in how it explains as a way to incorporate news into sites that appeal to specific audiences and will encourage and be a part of the education of those sites.

Industry News Media Relations. PR News. Potomac: Jun 22, 1998. Vol. 54, Iss. 24, p. 1

Jeff Wisniewski, Fichter, Darlene. Saying It Visually. Online. Medford:Nov/Dec 2007. Vol. 31, Iss. 6, p. 57-60 (4 pp.)
– This article talks about the ever-growing need for visually pleasing graphics and interactivity in informational sites visited regularly, and how the design of these sites needs to keep up with the amount of information filtered through and create a positive interactive experience for users. This article provides important information for me to consider for my project regarding the best ways for interaction design to be incorporated into news resources

Kennedy, Randy. News Flows, Consciousness Streams: The Headwaters of a River of Words. New York Times. (Late Edition (east Coast)). New York, N.Y.:Oct 25, 2007. p. E.5

- Talks about a permanant installation called Moveable Type that draws from news reported from the New York Times. The news is filtered through an algorithm and creates a dynamic porttrait of The Times through random selection of words.

Maramushi News Map
http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/
- This is an interactive treemap visualization that reflects the constant change of the Google News aggregator. It displays the cross-culture of news reporting constantly changing all over the world, and demonstrates the visual relationship between data and patterns in news media. It’s a prime example of how interactive design is incorporated into a new way of reporting the news around the world, all on one solo interface.

Noack, David. Read any good radio lately? Editor & Publisher. mediainfo.com.
New York: Jun 1997. p. 12-14+ (3 pp.)

- This article talks about how some news radio stations web sites started to print their radio shows in the late 90’s. This  allowed these stations web sites to look more and more like news sites, and soon became part of the basis for interactivity of news web sites. 

Powers, William. But Seriously. National Journal. Washington: Oct 6, 2007. Vol. 39, Iss. 40, p. 80 (1 pp.)
– This article demonstrates a quick overview of how so much of the important news losing out to trivial journalism. This gives a more in depth view to what is happening with the news today and may help me evaluate how to filter and visually arrange news subjects that will be targeted with my project.

Similar Diversity
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?index=490&id=490&domain=
- This is an information graphic made with Processing and VVVV that visualizes the holy books of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. The artwork of this graphic evokes works on an emotional level in the way that the domains illustrated by the religious holy books intersect with one another, that inspires viewers to consider their religious prejudices and conflicts. This same project could possibly be done with several domains of news coverage, and could show the cross coverage of what subjects the news sources that are considered to be reliable news sources are covering over a particular time period.

Interface Final Project: Stage 1- Exploring Domains

1. What’s news and what isn’t?

2. Why is there so much emphasis on celebrity gossip news than on what’s truely impactful news?

• Why does the press put shocking celebrity news (i.e. Paris Hilton’s time in jail, or the death of Anna Nicole Smith) ahead of other more serious and less frivolous news stories that would put more impact on our lives?
• Why do most people know everything about the latest celebrity gossip and less about our government activity and leaders?
• Is there a cognitive reason why most people are more attracted to frivolous current events than those that are more serious?
• Over-exposed and produced talent
• Entertainment business overproducing entertainment
• People listen to when celebrities expose themselves as activists and support an important news topic or campaign

3. How does design and technology make us more aware of and/or influenced by current events?

• Blogs [Jossip]
• RSS feeds
• Mobile web
• Podcasting

The Venn Diagram below illustrates the domains to be explored individually, in comparison, and conjunction with each other:

Social Networks and What the Press is Saying

Facebook and MySpace have been easy targets for commentary on the advancement of online social networking. Although there are many more social networks populated throughout cyberspace, these two seem to have the biggest reputations of causing a stir among the masses. Here are a few interesting online articles that talk about the ups and downs of these online communities:

• How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web’s Hottest Platform

• Facebook is Not Worth $15 Billion

• Study: Facebook users easy targets for identity theft

• Firms more likely to block MySpace than Facebook, Barracuda study says

• New Facebook ad system raises privacy concerns

Several interesting points were made in all of these. “How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web’s Hottest Platform” talks about how Mark Zuckerberg, the creater and founder of Facebook, turned this online community into a rapidly fast growing company worth millions of dollars. Zuckerberg envisioned Facebook to become the next Google-like internet tool and wanted to see it exceed the growth of MySpace – it’s biggest competitor. It grew to be the spotlight of big name corporations such as Yahoo and Microsoft as the next “IT” thing, in the world of internet gadgets. He also gave himself a bad rap as a “cocky youngster” by turning down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo to buy the site, after Yahoo’s worth began to deteriorate, even though Facebook was in need of an uplift. In the end, Facebook has advanced itself without being bought-out and is now widely used not only by it’s originally targeted college-age users, but by high schoolers and adults as well.

Zuckerberg did not originally created Facebook as a means of making new connections and friends, but by making a “social-graph” web map of real relationships. Lance Ulanoff of “Facebook is Not Worth $15 Billion” says that he regularly uses Facebook to reconnect and keep up with friends, although he finds the overall worth of Facebook and the site’s various applications to lack any real value. He finds the “poke” application to be childish (a poke is when you can basically let a member know that you are thinking about them without making any verbal exchange between you or the member you’re poking), and usually only gets on to confirm friend requests or alerts from friends. He hasn’t had a “eureka moment” and doesn’t think that Facebook is as grand as it’s made out to be. I honestly think that Ulanoff’s review comes from an extremely narrow point of view and perhaps he doesn’t have a strong need for many of the Facebook applications, and just the basic site is enough for his usage. He fails to comment or compare Facebook to any other online community that does have a “eureka” aspect, which should make this article fairly invalid to most readers.

I have enjoyed using and will continue to mainly use Facebook of any online community throughout my life. I’m not completely trustworthy of nor interested in making new connections with strangers in an online community, but being able to reconnect with old friends, maintain contact with current friends, promote my career and interests, and see what people I know are up to on a regular basis is the biggest perk of Facebook for me. I’ve found many of Facebook’s applications to be extremely useful to me. The Facebook marketplace deemed to be more effective than Craigslist when I was selling used furniture last summer before my move to New York. I’ve started using the Facebook event application more than Evite.com as it makes it easier for me to send out quick party invitations to friends without having to make a list of email addresses, since most of my friends are Facebook users. The Zuckerberg article says that many adults are entering the online community world with Facebook because of it’s “staid and conservative structure”. I couldn’t agree more with this comment, as I’ve found the interface and user-experience to be no-frills, friendly, and easy to navigate, not to mention I find that Facebook has a relatively fast processing server. The ads are not overwhelming, nor are they distracting or get in the way of my site use or navigation. If I didn’t want to use the plethora of applications that it offers, I would easily be able to ignore them and just use the basic service.

On the contrary to the perks of Facebook, I do agree with many of the statements regarding identity safety in the article “Study: Facebook Users Easy Targets for Identity Theft. This story brings up an instance of where Sophos research fabricated a Facebook profile for someone and sent out 200 friend requests of which 82 were accepted. None of the users who accepted the request knew this user (obviously, since it wasn’t a real person), but the majority of them gave out personal information to this user or had personal information on their profile that a stranger shouldn’t have any access to. The point of this article was to say that people tend to let their guard down when on Facebook under the context of a friend request. This could be because friend requests seem to be pretty tame and welcoming, and when someone wants to be your Facebook friend, it’s sort of a confidence boost that maybe they saw your picture and thought you were attractive or just thought you looked like a nice person to be Facebook friends with. This concept has been dubbed the “Facebook ID probe”. This can be a major problem for people who list their employers on their sites, if a strange “friend” asked for personal information from you and knew your work and who else worked under your employer. There have been several instances where someone I didn’t know asked me to be their Facebook friend. A few of those times I’ve accepted the requests because it was a person to went to my college or turned out to be a friend of a friend, but there have been a few times where I’ve accepted the request just to be able to see the profile of that person to check out how they would have known about me. Most of these times, if the person turns out to be someone completely random, I’ve deleted the person from my list of friends almost immediately. Overall, I would NEVER post anything personal beyond my email address on my Facebook account and there is no reason for anyone to post their addresses or any other personal information on there. Giving out any personal information to a “friend” you just met in an online community site is flat out stupid, and I think that stuff should not necessarily be aimed at just Facebook. It can happen on any online community big or small. I think that at this point, considering the concept of meeting people online has been publicly widespread since AOL 1.0, this is just everyday streets-smarts and Facebook doesn’t need to be the only site slammed for this downfall.

Another interesting point about privacy issues on Facebook from “New Facebook Ad System Raises Privacy Concerns” brings up the ways marketers are targeting Facebook users. The new system relies on user-provided details for marketers to target their ads which may violate privacy laws. These social ads combine actions taken by a user’s friend – whether it’s a purchase, review, or service – with an advertiser’s message. These ads appear where they regularly show, like on a user’s news feed or designated ad space. The issues that come up with this are that whether or not the user is consenting to the endorsement. The article states that “…individual users’ identities will be appropriated for the benefit of Facebook and advertisers alike.” Another interesting statement is from Daniel Solove, an associate professor of law at George Washington University law school, [ who says that] “[it] might be assuming that if a person talks about a product, then he or she consents to being used as an advertisement for it. It is wrong to assume that just because a user visits a Web site or rates a product highly or speaks well of a product that the user wants to be featured in an ad.” It seems to me that Facebook advertisers are taking a hint from but doing the opposite of what Gmail is doing with streaming links on the email client interface whenever a gchat or email content mentions something that the user enters. Instead of showing the user products or services specific to that user that they may have hinted at through a Facebook action, the system is not letting the user know that they’re technically being watched and used for advertising purposes. I definitely consider this an infringement on privacy and Facebook advertisers should consider other ways to target their ads to Facebook users.

The article, “Firms are More Likely to Ban Facebook than MysSpace”, says that the Barracuda web monitoring system has found that when corporate firms block one online community site from their web access, most often MySpace is the one that gets canned rather than Facebook. I couldn’t agree more with this. MySpace exposes more of people than Facebook does, and people tend to go off the deep end of exposing themselves on it, more than on Facebook (not to mention the site tends to be SO SLOW and is terribly designed!). The site also has so many intricate aspects that can be very distracting in a workplace and give a real blow to employee work productivity. MySpace is also heavily driven by ads and promotions for movies and other areas of entertainment which can stray the user from following their original plan of contacting a friend and head toward a sensory overload of MySpace ads. Although I’m on MySpace, I’m not a big user and don’t regularly update my site. I’m just on there because I have some friends that are only on MySpace and I like to find musicians and listen to free music on the MySpace music part of the site. With Facebook, even though I am guilty of going on the site while at my past job, I did find it to be more appropriate for the workplace due to it’s somewhat more conservative nature, than MySpace.

In closing, there is a lot of commentary, good and bad, on the plethora of online communities out there. You just have to weed out what you can deal with and what you don’t want to deal with when picking or sticking to your site of choice. As for me, I’ll always be a big user of Facebook. It was my original entry way into the online community world and it has never let me down. Yes, I’ll probably stay on MySpace for a few of it’s advantages, but overall, I don’t think I’ll ever permanently make the switch to only using one or the other.

Social Network Triangulation in the Late Night Shots online community

Late Night Shots is an interactive online social networking site that allows its members to explore their city’s “social landscape and bar scene”. There’s a community for several cities including Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. It’s a closed network in which membership is by invitation only.

I was invited by a friend to join this site while living in Washington, D.C. Although I didn’t go on the site too often or create an entire virtual online social circle for myself, I did become more aware of frequented restaurants, bars, and events in the D.C. area based on my preferences of the types of places I like, connect with friends, connect with friends of friends, was entertained by forum rants posted by hill staffers, and get an overview of the young professional “mover and shaker” social events that were going on around town.

Below are a few screen shots of interactive areas of the site that promote triangulation among individual users and groups:

1. Members can view the most visited bars around town and see where the best hotspots are, and where the most socializing is occuring; therefore, members can visit these bars and interact with other Late Night Shots members:

2. An overview of the most recently spotted members out on the town:

Members will spot other members out at bars and will tag them so that they show up on the “spotted” list. These people don’t necessarily know or talk to each other; it’s sort of like a secret admirer game:

Members are spotted using the Hunting Range application. With this system, a member will spot their target, go to their target’s site and add that person to the member’s Hunting Range. If the target also has the member on their Hunting Range list, the interest is considered mutual, and the member and the target will be notified on Thursdays by 8pm that they are on each others lists. This can lead to the formulation of relationships among users.

On a members homepage there is a Notifications section that allows the member to see how many other membrs are hunting you, how many are in the members range, and how many matches have been achieved.

3. Forums are another way for individuals to share thoughts and common interests that could lead to the creation of groups within the site. Groups are usually by invite only, as well:

4. Members can register an event they are holding or would like to promote in order to encourage other members to come or tell non-members. This could encourage non-members to meet other members that may invite them to join the site, and encourage triangulation among members who attend a common event:

This is the form that a member sends to a non-member who the they’d like join the site: