Hi, hypernarrative is a blog by Wilbert Baan about Art, Media and Technology with a focus on interactive storytelling. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed with Google or Netvibes. I'll post a few messages a week. Thanks for visiting!

Since we started with the concept of EN we had a certain idea of what it would be like. Now we have the first working version the possibilities seem endless, but what is the killer application or function? What is it that gives new options to the things we do with news?

In this post I’m just thinking out loud and writing down some thoughts. Please share your ideas or fallacies you see in my thoughts.

In News presentation we see the article as an article. It’s a finished story. On a news website, newspaper or television broadcasts we present a collection articles and items. These articles are also objects. Finished stories presenting a near live experience, but not live.

For the presentation and sorting of these objects news media are using a few options.
1. We show it by editorial selection (the far most popular by newspapers, television and news websites).
2. We show it sorted on time (often combined with the first)
3. We show the article list sorted on popularity (often somewhere on an extra page or column)

This works very well. We are used to see a pre-selection made from all the information and from this selection we choose the things we like. News reading is scanning through a pre-selection made by editors.

But the object (article) itself has a very interesting set of meta-information. This is what we potentially know about, and can extract from an article on EN.nl.

Tags, time published, pageviews, updates, incoming links, comments, votes (1-4), urgency levels (1-3), edits, editors, editors popularity, dateline (geocoordinates), related articles, favorites, pictures, videos, hyperlinks

This is information we know about each article. It is metadata connected to the object. What can we do with this information? Obviously presenting the news is critical for a news website, but the added value is in the selection made by editors. Why do these selections work so well? A selection by editors is based on the values of the presenter (newspaper) and often focus extra on certain aspects of the news. Left, right, popular, politics, celebrity, sports, art…

Most news media present the same facts. Is it the hierarchy and presentation that really counts? Is it what you show or don’t show that adds value? Is it what you’re friends read and what you can talk about with them? Do you go to certain websites for coverage about certain items? Are it the extra stories that add value? Are it writing skills? Is it the fast coverage?

Adding relevancy and new value
How can we make the selection and the sorting of objects (articles) more relevant to your needs? Should we ask you what you like? Should we track what you read? Should we ask you social profile? Should we ask your social network? Should we do things with your location? Should we read the tagging you did on your blog, del.ico.us, flickr and youtube and use this to determine what you like? Should we make your music taste count, the weather or how you feel today?

I think news is social by itself. We want to be able to talk about it with friends. Serious news, but also weird or funny news, sports and celebrities. Every real-life social network connects to certain news media. Your friends are often reading the same newspaper or same websites.

Would you be interested in what news your social network reads? Or your favorite bloggers? If you look at articles as if they are objects with metadata you can think up a lot of new ideas and possibilities. But what does really add extra and new value to presenting the news?

Last night I made my first iPhone website. The iPhone has a full Safari browser, but you can also use some iPhone specific styling to make a website better accessible on an iPhone. Today we connected the stylesheet to the EN database making the EN newssite available on the iPhone platform.

en.nl/iphone

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

I have said it before, but I really think that the future of information is in databases, meta information and API’s (public or not). Making this website was done really fast (20 minutes CSS & 20 minutes coding by a programmer) because all the information was easily accessible.

If you want to make an iPhone website make sure to check the User Interface Library for Safari development on the iPhone. For mobile phones we also made en.nl/mobiel

EN.nl (and.nl) is a new project where we are experimenting with new media, users, technology and journalism. This project is an open project where the public process plays an extremely valuable part in designing and shaping the news website.

The online news industry really changed over the last years. I think we’re at a point where every self respecting news organization takes the web as a serious medium that requires a different approach then previous media (newspaper, television, radio).

Some see these new possibilities as a threat and try to protect what they have. Which is I think the worst possible strategy (looking backwards into the future). Others see chances, new competitors, new technology, new journalism, new markets and new ideas.

I love a quote I heard in an interview with someone at the Washington Post. He said his ambition is to be the new CNN. With new media and technology this ambition is realistic. A company like the Washington Post (newspaper) can see CNN (television) as its competitor.

Google / AP
Google can be a news service. Why wouldn’t they? They have the database of intentions, Google knows what people are searching for and they can - like any other company - subscribe to press services. The value of press agency news is devaluating in a way that it often ends up in duplicate copies with a different lay-out. Try to search for an AP article headline. I’m sure you will find a dozen versions of it, all exactly the same.

Online news is moving to something where added value counts. What can you add to the news (omnipresent). Is it a personal or political view? Is it the selection you make? Is it a community? Are it your reporters or journalists? What is your added value?

In technology communities, collaboration tools and social networks are redefining most services and institutions. Why shouldn’t services and technology like this redefine how we consume news?

This is what EN.nl is about. We want to experiment with everything around news from a practical point of view, let’s make things.

Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds believes a group is smarter than the individual. The Wisdom of a crowd can be very valuable for news. In the public opinion the idea of a wiki collides with news. I think a wiki-based system can work for news if you make sure the process is transparent and everyone can join the discussion.

Sure you will have to deal with vandalism, this a technical problem to solve. A reader doesn’t have to be an expert on everything, the valuable wisdom of an individual can be something he has read or seen somewhere else. The Wisdom of a crowd is about all the knowledge, not just the expert knowledge. The biggest challenge is get the knowledge and use it as a contribution.

Traditional media floats on the wisdom of a few wise people who create value by the choices they make. Social media uses the wisdom of your network en wiki media taps into the wisdom of a crowd. All have advantages and disadvantages.

The design
For the design of this new website we also experiment. The most important object is the database, we designed the database from a view that almost everything is possible with the data. We store a lot of information that might be valuable in the future. This allows us to experiment freely with the design and think up new features. The database is the most valuable asset of a news organization.

The newsriver navigation

The newsriver is a principle that regards news as a continues flow of information, where you can hook in whenever you want (An RSS feed). For the first version of EN we are experimenting with this idea in the navigation. I don’t know if this is it, it’s different from the navigation we are used to.

What we can do?
Almost everything. We can make mash-ups, feeds, aggregated pages (screenshot draft design below). Hook in to social networks, extend the wiki functionality, and more. Technically everything is possible.

What does the news site of the future look like? Join the debate and discussion here or in Dutch at http://ontwikkelen.ning.com.

Infosthetics writes about the game audio-surf a racing game where the song you pick decides the course and speed of the game. This game uses rhythm as an extra navigation layer. Music is build from small loops and these loops are easy to learn and predictable, making it possible to navigate faster because you are using more than just your eyes. You know what will happen before you see it.

Music producers are connecting with the game industry for a while now. Producing game music is a genre by itself. The music gives that extra boost of adrenaline when it’s changing along with the gameplay. The music goes faster or louder. Audio design makes the game more exciting.

The last years we have seen the rise of a new genre of audio games. Where the audio in a game is used as navigation. Guitar Hero became very popular with this. Based on the everybody-can-be-a-popstar culture the game makes it possible for everyone to be a guitar virtuosi. You control the game by learning rhythms and loops using your eyes, ears and fingers.

The follow-up on Guitar Hero is Rock Band, making it possible to play with friends and more instruments. At the same time the developers of one of the most interesting games released for the Playstation Portable; Loco Roco come with a new game titled Patapon. In Patapon you are a tribe navigating and fighting based on the music you make.

Do we need more complex stories?
All these games use audio not primarily to emphasize emotion but to navigate. In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steve Berlin Johnson talks about how movies and television series changed plotlines to keep it interesting for the viewer. He compares old movies (cinematic milestones) with the Sopranos. No matter how good Gilda or Rear Window are. Compared to todays movies and series the are kind of slow and simple.

We need ever more complex stories to be entertained. We are getting used to media. As an example Steve Berlin Johnson uses the Sopranos, the television series combines a story throughout all the seasons, a story through a season, a story through multiple episodes, a story through one episode and all this for different characters as well. This is a story we simply wouldn’t have understand or liked in the fifties or sixties.

Is the same thing happening with games?
We are speeding up games for years. Ask your mother or grandma to watch you playing a game, it’s just too much information for them. They block it and see it as an unorganized chaos and can’t understand what you like about it. At the same time these games aren’t challenging players enough. We need to play faster, use other input devices and gestures for navigating. Our eyes, mind and culture is getting used to the speed. We need more complex games, more stories, elements, control options and speed. We need a bigger challenge.

Is the auditive component helping in this? Is the loop based structure used in music making our games more challenging? Does it allow us to play games at a higher speed? I don’t know this is all just a wild guess, but based on history we know stories and games will only get faster and more complex.

Frozen (on Flickr)

Last week I went snowboarding in the popular Val Thorens, France (2300/3300m) and took my camera.

This rock holds a glacier (on Flickr)

The Street
During the week I photographed the street several times from our apartment on the 6th floor. I don’t know why, I just liked the top shot and how it changes every day.

The set on Flickr

And I took one of the valley (on Flickr)

And the clouds (on Flickr)

This is me and my EOS (on Flickr)

And this is the map (on Flickr)

The last day I made and off piste jump and broke my board :(

A great Flickr mash-up by Erik Borra
While I was playing with snow Erik Borra was inspired by my second Flickr experiment and made a great piece of code mashing up Flickr and Google News into a wonderful combination.

Anne Helmond was inspired by both projects and asks MTV to be MADE into a killer PHP programmer.