[Sigia-l] GoogleNews

[Michael Kay]

I think google news is mainly a novel idea, but a damn good one. It's 
probably better as a wire service for journalists than for mainstream 
consumption. News needs an editorial voice. No algorithm could 
consistently pick the 3 most relevant stories to lead with. (Even 
human editors have trouble figuring this out.)

I wonder a couple of things:
- In time, will we be able to tell the political slant of the google 
algorithm (and don't say neutral, because there's no such thing)
- If google adds a few half decent editors I wonder if they could 
give CNN news a run for the money

At 8:20 PM -0500 9/24/02, Challis Hodge wrote:
>  > That's not to say GoogleNews won't make waves...but I agree with Victor
>>  that this represents more of an opportunity than a threat to information
>>  architects.
>
>I too agree. IA has arrived to take the Web to its next level of maturity. I
>think we're just entering that phase now. The need exists for strategic IA
>including the creation of algorithms, etc. as well as the tedious task of
>tagging, labeling and organizing the huge amounts of information into
>something usable. This is a huge endeavor and huge opportunity for IA.
>
>It's only after this has been completed that we may begin to think about the
>dreams of folks like Ray Kurzweil in their pursuit of true artificial
>intelligence and machines working as fast as the human brain. It's
>interesting to note the need for IA to achieve true AI.
>
>-challis
>

-- 

Michael Kay
Information Architecture - User Experience
Author, The Web Wizard's Guide to Flash - http://www.peep.org/wizard/