Lighting Up Media-Geek Brains
Posted on | November 19, 2009 | No Comments
“Let’s make like economy and act,” joked a computer at a recent Tech Thursday.
Yes, the computer told a joke. More accurately, a program dubbed Manatee Comics generated the quip and placed it comic-strip style over a tryptic of images selected to fit the content.
The humorous cyber suggestion could be an apt mantra for the entrepreneurs who attended the November 11 networking event at OfficePortCHI, the collaborative workspace in downtown Chicago from which I run Sally On Media. Like the economy in the joke, we entrepreneurs are «acting.» We are doing whatever we can to make our companies profitable in tough times.
Manatee Comics, the high-tech tool that created the comic strip, was one of six mind-twisting, context-aware technology projects demonstrated by Northwestern’s Intelligent Information Laboratory (InfoLab) and the Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism—a partnership between the engineering school and Medill.
Meeting the Northwestern team was particularly meaningful for me. When I was getting my master’s in journalism at Medill in the early ’90s, nothing resembling today’s Internet existed. We did all our research at libraries, read books and periodicals (what a great old term), met people in person, called them on the phone, and sent faxes. When we wanted to be really high tech, we turned to LexusNexus. So, to see animated avatars delivering news at OfficePort made me realize, again, how quickly our lives and professions are changing.
Patrick McNally, a Ph.D. candidate in engineering, developed Manatee Comics around word relationships, including the theory of opposites. “If x is opposite y, then one man’s x is another man’s y,” Patrick told me Thursday night.
My friend, David Garcia, said he liked the computer’s jokes. “I just laughed out loud on the spot,” he said. He used the word “politics” and the system generated the joke, “One person’s politics is another person’s sex.”
We’ll leave that subject alone and move on to Lisa Gandy and Nathan Nichols, two of the minds behind News at Seven.
News at Seven
While Lisa and Nathan, also in the engineering doctoral program, tended to focus more on the product, I wanted to know who would use this—or be made irrelevant. Could I, as a blogger, be replaced by News at Seven? Could News at Seven generate more newspaper layoffs?
Kris Hammond, the Innovation Center’s director, said the school is not trying to put anyone out of business. Nevertheless, I found News at Seven’s avatars a little intimidating. While it does seem like a tool that media companies might use some day to tailor news for consumers, Nathan emphasized how individuals could use it. Lisa and he showed me a video with two avatars giving a review of the movie, “The Invention of Lying.”
Did Nathan and Lisa write the avatars’ scripts? No—the avatars voiced words that the News at Seven system culled from stories on the web. In fact, the avatars expressed different opinions on the movie, reflecting the variety of reviews on the Internet. I could imagine how a movie buff might enjoy such a service, although the Northwestern team wasn’t prepared to discuss commercialization. I suppose I could also see how bloggers might use automation to enhance their own reporting and opinion writing. Saddened by the news industry’s problems, I don’t want to think about more journalists losing their jobs because of avatars. What would my grandfather, editor of the Decatur (IN) Democrat think?
Tell Me More
Tell Me More is another tool that could possibly be used by a media company to, say, facilitate investigative reporting, according to Francisco Iacobelli, also a Ph.D. candidate in computer science.
Say you’re reading a New York Times story on the killings at Fort Hood. Tell Me More will search the Internet for stories that reveal facts the Times doesn’t. Those facts show up as little sidebars next to the article. I could see how a news junkie such as myself would enjoy this. You spend time learning as many different facts as possible, without having to reread stuff you already know.
Listening Post
Listening Post fascinated the marketing side of me–brand managers and community managers would love this.
Mike Smathers, a Northwestern grad who is now a consultant to the InfoLab, showed me how it works. Using retailer American Eagle as an example, Mike demonstrated how Listening Post gathers consumer opinions from Twitter and blogs, analyzing comments as positive, negative or neutral. What’s more, Listening Post builds tag clouds about the people who tweet about American Eagle. We’ll know if Susie is tweeting about her favorite band or her favorite food, for example. “We can figure out the demographic and what they are saying,” Mike told me.
Listening Post also engages consumers on a personal level. “We’ve set up a rule for a human [on the brand side] to craft a response to consumers,” Kris said. “If someone complains that their jeans shrunk, the rule associated with that sentiment could prompt someone to issue that person a coupon.”
Kudos to the Northwestern team for making these concepts real. We’ll stay tuned on plans for commercializing. As we all know, media will continue to evolve—or, shall we say, sally on. When we adapt, experiment and change, life is more interesting.
I would like to acknowledge Jason Goodrich, the “co-working evangelist” at OfficePort, for bringing such illuminating presenters to Tech Thursdays.
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