Category: News

Reuters Labs, the laboratory of the news agency Reuters, automatically recognises people in video with advanced pattern recognition software. If you search for George Bush(you get a choice of two people with the same name), George Clooneyof George Harrison you are very quickly presented with a list of the videos in which those people appear (via dc, Dutch).

Sounds advanced, but soon we’ll be able to walk down the street, point our camera at our surroundings and use face recognition (and other characteristics such as the ‘walk’) to see who is walking past us. We won’t need to tag any more photos or videos because it will be done automatically. The online identity and the real identity will meld completely. It will have an enormous impact on society. For example, in maintaining public order or restricting access to offices. But you could never again walk straight past a friend who you hadn’t seen for 30 years. Your personal contact brand will know exactly who it is.

British broadcaster BBC personalizes the homepage for the national and international editions. You can choose categories, colors, and the number of items per category. No commercials are shown (mf, Dutch). Thus brands more and more start to provide consumers the information the way they want it. Now by actively make changes, soon BBC will look at what we watch, what colors we like, what reaction we give, and then automatically will adapt the content selection, the colors and the dynamics. This is a small step in that direction. And in the long run the information becomes so personal and relevant, that we are more than willing to pay for it.

Via Yahoo Live every webcam now can be seen live at the internet (dc, Dutch). Thus another sort of live-TV evolves. Now through the webcam. Soon we will make live television productions which people can tune in to. And in the long run, they will pay for this. In the short term these initiatives will keep growing rapidly, we will get access to cameras in mobile phones (or is this already possible?) and we will also be able to get live views at the mobile phone. Especially the live reporting of news then gets a totally new dimension.

If you want to write a reaction on news site MSN Reporter, from now on you have to first create an account, or log in through an existing Live/hotmail account (dc, Dutch). At first sight, it looks like a user unfriendly step, but it will improve the quality of the service, and with that the satisfaction of the users. As people who react can now be identified, comment spam can be avoided more easily, and also people who purposely write very negative or very positive don’t get much chance any more: they will be traced down quickly. Also, an individual can only vote once. Through that, a poll evolves toward market research: it becomes more and more representative (although lots of steps have to be taken to make it statistically relevant). Furthermore, MSN Reporter can build visitors profiles by looking at the reactions of an individual, and with those start developing dialogues necessary to become a personal news brand.

New York Times with MyTimes make it possible not only to personalize the New York Times, but even to add external sources. Thus personal news brands further develop. Now we personalize content. Later New York Times look over our shoulder to see what we find interesting. First, they will look at how long you watch a web page, based on the time between clicks, later they will use eye-tracking (are you really looking at the content, or are you distracted by a banner or a phone call, or are you not at your computer any more), and even later NY Times will ‘read’ the emotions off your face. Brands will get better and better in selecting text, audio or video content we are interested in. This however goes step by step.

News site eKudos now offers the possibility to register a network of contacts who share your interest in news. This way, you quickly and easily keep each other informed of news that absolutely deserves attention (dc, Dutch). Brands more and more use personal relationships to be able to serve you on a more personal basis. At the moment many brands start their own services to maintain your social network, later they will connect to personal contact brands, or their archetypes from 2007: social networks. The result is that in the end we will have one central spot for maintaining our contacts, and we will select brands which may use our contact list. This development is a side step which in the end will work out fine.

Google News now provides access to original press releases of press agencies. Among them are American press agency Associated Press (AP), French Agence France-Presse (AFP), British Press Association (PA), and Canadian Press (CP)(dc, Dutch). Now it is limited to a handful of countries, but this will lead to direct consumer access to all press releases that have ever been made. Thus the quality of web log postings will increase, as they can easily cite the original piece, and link to it. And the amount of postings will increase too. In the end personal news brands will help us, based on our personal preferences, to make a selection of all news items available in text, audio, or video. Google News is a personal news brand in development.

French newspaper L’Echos will soon be available on ePaper: electronic thin and rollable paper that has the same sharpness as print, and that doesn’t use any power once it is loaded. This ‘paper’ is integrated in the iLiad, a kind of pda that contains the ePaper (later it will be available separately), which thus can show the texts and images. Users can download an actualized version of the paper through a wifi-connection a couple of times a day. It is also possible to take notes on the paper, which then are stored in the iLiad (em, Dutch). Now newspapers are experimenting with e-paper in a PDA; in the future all brands will be accessible through these kinds of displays. This again is a new interface to the virtual world.

Dag is a new news brand in the Netherlands. The media consider it the fourth free newspaper in the Netherlands, however the organization rightly announced it as a cross-medium news brand. And it has the ambition to grow into a personal news brand, a brand that stands next to you and follows the changes in society with you. And if you see something yourself, Dag happily listens to you. In the navigation they have a tag ‘participate’, you can rate every item, and give your reaction on everything. Later we will be able to ask Dag in a spoken dialogue (in the car, in the shower, or at the railway station in Cape Town): “Is there any news?” Then we will get, in text, image or sound (whichever we prefer), the latest news since the last time we asked that question. This is a small step in that direction.