News At Seven, Virtual News Show
While a lot of organizations are creating Digg like sites to listing news and videos, News at Seven came up with an exceptional idea to present news. News at Seven which was developed at Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory (InfoLab), backed by National Science Foundation’s Grant(Grant No. 0535231). It is an automatic system that crafts daily news shows in a very exceptional way. It finds the news you are interested in; edits it; finds relevant images, videos, and external opinions; and then presents it all using a virtual news team working in a virtual studio. News at Seven is a completely automated system that combines 3D avatars, images, videos, alternate opinions and generated speech to deliver a simulated news show. All these except few editorial stuffs, everything is automated without human intervention.
The interesting part is users can express interest in geo-politics, sports, entertainment, or local news and be given a news show tailored to their interests. They can also alter the way that the news in presented, from which anchor to use to what environment each story is presented in. Any world that can be built and any character that can be crafted can be integrated into the News at Seven experience. Sports stories can be presented by a player at a football game, stories of geo-political conflict can be presented by a soldier in the field and entertainment news and gossip presented by an actor walking down a red carpet. Imagine President Bush reading war news in war torn Iraq, just the difference is 3d Avatar not the real person. Though this customization of 3d avatar isn’t yet available, and there is no indication in their website when it will be in effect. But nonetheless exceptional method of presenting news.
But i do have to criticized some of the things, fist they should have elaborate how and when 3d modeling customization will take effect, not just saying “if you can imagine it, we can build it”. Second they build an exceptional piece of technology, but still hosting video under YouTube, that is totally lame. Why not have their own flash player and own hosting. Finally I am not sure US$268,112 tax money for building this was really a smart idea. After all US$268,112 doesn’t grows on the trees.
