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!

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.

Last week I did an experiment with a linear story and loading photos from Flickr. This week I made a second experiment using the same code and adding a map. I will try to tell a second story.

About the story
This story is about how fast urban areas are growing. These growing areas aren’t in the west. Of the 100 fastest growing urban areas only two are located in what we call the western world.

In an era where our lives get globally connected through similar culture, mass production and consumption these emerging areas will play a very important role in the near feature.

I’ll try to tell this in a short linear story with the latest photos loaded from Flickr and a map that shows the lights of the world. I love that map.

Try it yourself http://www.wilbertbaan.nl/flickrcities/

“UN figures for urbanisation, published this week in the State of the World 2007 report, show that more than 60 million people - roughly the population of the UK - are added to the planet’s cities and suburbs each year, mostly in low-income urban settlements in developing countries. Unplanned urbanisation is taking a huge toll on human health and the quality of the environment, contributing to social, ecological, and economic instability in many countries.”

Guardian January 17th 2007

Difficult
The most difficult part in making this animation is to actually tell a complex story in slides. I want to make something that will make you think about things for a while. The previous Flickr project was easy because you didn’t have to pay much attention. It was a collection of things. This one is more a story making it more difficult to make an impression.

Storytelling tips
The most important thing in interactive storytelling is probably to kill your darlings and only use effects, technology and interactivity if you think it will benefit to the story you want to tell.

Make sure to write out what you want to say. It doesn’t have to be final, but it gives you an idea of what you want to do.

Focus on what you want to say. Focus on the impression your story will have.

All data used in the animation is from this list. Hypernarrative won’t be updated until the first week of March.

Share your best tips and tricks to tell an interactive story? How can I make this better?

Today I experimented with the Flicrk API. An API is an external programmable interface that connects to a database, it allows external developers to access the content in the database. In this case I can access the photos on Flickr by using a free license (API-key).

2.269.526.982 photos
Everyday millions of photos are uploaded to Flickr. While writing this post 4.871 pictures are uploaded every minute and the total of photos uploaded to Flickr is 2.269.526.982. Most of these photos are tagged with meta information, like a title, description, user generated tags and device generated (shutter speed, type of camera, coordinates). That’s a lot of information.

Slideshow experiment
For this first experiment I use thirteen slides to tell something general about myself. Every slide loads the most recent images from the Flickr database based on a tag that corresponds to the slide.

The slideshow plays by itself and has no interaction, it’s linear, but not static. Every time you play the slideshow the content can be different, the story won’t.

www.wilbertbaan.nl/flickrapi/

How would you combine live data feeds with storytelling?

I like how easy it is to control a webcam inside flash. A lot of people have a webcam and the flash plugin so you can easily use it for a project or website.

I already did a few experiments with webcams.

1. Fade in- fade out, when you stop moving you will fade out.
2. Time for time. Based on the first experiment this is an installation that will only give you time when you give it time. You have to stop moving.
3. The third experiment I did used motion detection and connected fading logos to motion.
4. For eclectro we started doing DJ-sets using webcams and the Ustream service, I was the first to play.
5. A few years ago I made a short video about war. I recorded television with my webcam and changed meaning.

This is experiment 6. The Aphextwinalizer. With this webcam application you can make a screenshot with your face on your favorite record cover. Right now there is just one cover by Aphex Twin. I will post this also on the Eclectro blog and ask readers for other great covers, so I can extend the application.

A screenshot of the application, make your own cover at www.wilbertbaan.nl/aphextwinalizer/, have fun.

Help me to make it better
I’m looking for more great covers, if you know a great one, please let me know by leaving a comment with a hyperlink to the image. The minimal resolution should be 500 pixels width/height. And it should be possible to cut out the face.

The original album cover

The record Two of Us by the Kompakt duo Supermayer is voted as the best dance record for 2007. The last month of 2007 almost 20.000 people made a total of 113.000 votes.

[audio:http://eclectro.freshheads.com/audio/twoofus.mp3]

The voting machine we used is a widget like object. Websites can embed it. And with this the websites that embeds the voting widget decides the audience that does the voting. This has some effect on the results, because the election is a choice out of two random records the effect is limited.

For example when the popular music website Resident Advisor wrote about and embedded the election you could immediately see its influence on the results. Artist Nathan Fake ended third and this has a lot to do with taste of the Resident Advisor readers.

Overall I think we did another great election with great records and a really interesting and representative list of the top hundred dance records of 2007. I hope you have enjoyed the election and thanks for voting.

This is what we did in 2006 and this is what we did in 2005.

The voting widget. You can still listen, but your votes won’t count anymore.

If you have ideas how we could enhance the election mechanism or find another subject for the machine your ideas are very welcome.

I was thinking I could fill the election machine with points of view from US election candidates. You could find out what people think is most important and see which candidate supports it.