Slashdot Mirror
News at a Glance
chris writes: "If you're too lazy to read headlines, a new way to find writings might just save your soul. Paradoxically, this site is showing all the pictures found in news and reviews over the Internet. Nothing to read there, just thumbnail galleries sorted by theme (with, of course, links to the original articles). This format is showing some interesting side-effects. First, you can see what's hot lately because the same picture is repeated over your screen. It is also very effective when looking for reviews of tech toys or computer gizmos... spotting a CPU or a japanese robot among other items is almost instantaneous. Another thing to notice is that pictures of human faces seem to keep the lead over pie charts and battlefields... they are a good clue to figure what an article is about."
It would be much more useful if it adds a short caption/title under the images instead of just the name of the source. I think it is quite good for slashdotters, as most of us don't RTFA. Now we can simply RTFP.
how is that any better than the pictures already at news.google.com ?
Sorry, but it seems something that someone with good scripting abilities can do in a matter of hours.
This paid my last vacation, it mi
A nice feature is it you can get pictures from various country-specific news sources. This is one thing I think news.google.com lacks. I can't do " site:.au" on news.google.com :/
Another thing to notice is that pictures of human faces seem to keep the lead over pie charts and battlefields... they are a good clue to figure what an article is about.
The first thing this reminded me of was this quote by George Orwell:
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face
forever."
This site doesn't strike me as being very different from Google News. The only difference seems to be that Google includes short captions for each item, while this one just shows you a picture.
If they could just include some text/descriptions etc., it could be a worthy competitor to google.
My mom never taught me to sign.
Not really, we've already had TV for years.
I do believe that we will some day move to a more pictorial language where the alphabets will be replaced by pics
I don't. Pictorials alphabets are the equivalent of complex instruction sets, and besides pictures mean different things as you move across cultures. Letters carry less cultural inertia, and are "lighter" -- you can do a lot with only a few alphabets.
It isn't a coincidence that the spare, 26-letter, nearly-unaccented Latin script that English uses is the most popular script is so popular and recognizable -- from street signs in India to the official script of Indonesia (and several other countries).
we will look at cluster of pics to grasp the articles
We already do. The 'pics' are a low-overhead, universally understood set of building-blocks called alphabets. And while I am no Chinese expert, considering the number of "simplifications" and "rationalizations" that have happened in ideographic languages like Mandarin or Japanese, plus the fact that you only need to know ~6000 ideograms to read a newspaper, I would guess they feel the same way.
Go somewhere random
did you notice the palm 515 review as part of a "headline"? that thing has been out for years!!! there are two pics below... i wonder how they choose their stories, but as far as i am concerned, i will swtick to google news for the time...
The basic diffrence in our conception is that you want to convey as clearly as possible what needs to be conveyed as if it is being done to a machine, or a machine-like human. I assume the communication is between people who are looking for more than just unambiguous clear-cut instructions. Ambiguities do not have to be resolved in human communication. And things don't have to be made "lighter." They just have to be made as light as possible, but not lighter than that .... (with apoogies to e=mc2)
.. I don't. I believe the GUI is a move from the "lighter" characters to the "heavier" graphics - and people skinning their interfaces are making this even "heavier."
.. not text only ... if it were, people would be happy with ftp and telnet ... maybe you are happy in that world but I wasn't specifically speaking about you ..
I am assuming that people want to convey many more shades when they are communicating, and ambiguities should not be resolved if they don't have to be resolved. My comment was in context of communication between people and other people, and encompasses more things than just instructional.
Also, letters communicate sparingly and that is why they are used in programming. But there are a lot of people who prefer the GUI IDE even for programming because when info is spread in the XY plane is it more natural to grasp the underlying framework - as that is how we see the world. To insist that all that must be reduced to "lighter" characters is unreasonable.
There is a generation that still likes the command line, and thinks that the GUI is a waste
The world wide web is all about "images and text"
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
What, this is supposed to be /useful/? Aside from the aforementioned lack of context with graphs, the other pictures aren't too helpful either. Here's what I gleaned from a quick look at the site: Arnold Schwarzenegger did something, some guy in a bike helmet did something, a fat dude in a suit sat down.
How this serves as anything other than a mildly interesting diversion is beyond me.
My comment was in context of communication between people and other people, and encompasses more things than just instructional.
I don't mean to denigrate images as a means of communication -- after all, we do have paintings, sculpture -- objects that speak when words fail us.
However, as a way of disseminating news, images suck. What do you make of this image? Is this a guy inspecting a bunch of tanks? Or this? Is this some kind of pervy kiddie porn?
Actually both these pictures are classics, communicating outrage, shock and sorrow -- but they wouldn't if words didn't accompany them and provide context.
Also, letters communicate sparingly and that is why they are used in programming. But there are a lot of people who prefer the GUI IDE even for programming
GUI IDEs make extensive use of text. Perhaps I'm biased towards text because I'm a programmer, but I'd like you to make me a make-like tool using only visual manipulation. IMO, GUIs are useful for tasks involving spatial orientation, but the power of text to communicate complex instructions cannot be beat.
Go somewhere random
Already done but forgotten: Egyptian hieroglyphs
What's in a Sig ??
What's in a sig?
The news is supposed to "influence public opinion" and "stimlate change" not report the facts so you make your own informed judgment.
That is the "purpose" of the news media according to members of it.
You have to make pictures to fit your facts, not pictures that represent the facts. How else can you stimulate changes that are supportive of your agenda what ever that unannounced agenda may be.
The fact that the press has self appointed it self as the source of facts and truth and as an agent of change is what is outragous, not just the use of manipuluated images. Using a lens as in this case is a manulipulation of an image just as surely as a photoshop job on an image. Neither one is acceptable.
The press can not become part of the story and then claim to be independent and unbiased as is does on a daily basis. A fact the news media will deny when confronted. It's arrogance that shows how little respect the news media have for it's consumers inteligence.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
If comic book writers didn't have writers like Shelley to plagiarize, they'd never meet their monthly deadlines. Sort of like how people who do movie scores rape the classics.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Wait... only reading the headlines is what lazy people do. That's why 99.9% of humanity lives in near complete ignorance.
To be too lazy to even read headlines you have to be, like, in a vegetative state or something. Headlines are your least concern. Somewhere there's a family member looking to pull the plug on you.
--- Ban humanity.
First, you can see what's hot lately because the same picture is repeated over your screen
Doesn't that just mean that the AD/PR campaign for that particular item has been launched?