Research Document: Interactive News Formats // Living document

Crossmedia Research on the lifecycle of a newsitem

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Remotely.TV

Last week I used the second screen application Remotely.tv on the iPad while I was watching the 8 pm NOS news broadcast. For each television program Remotely.tv combines Twitter conversations with extra information gathered from Wikipedia and Google Maps about the subjects related to that program. In this way all social conversation about the different television programs are shown on one website.

The extra information shown is quite basic for now. Information about chemical elements, geographic locations and persons are shown in the Remotely.tv timeline. At the moment it really works for detailed information about persons referred to in a television program. At a glance you see the current age, occupation and resent work for each person mentioned on television.

Remotely.tv is currently in Beta-status. Sometimes extra information is given for obvious matters like water, Europe and the Netherlands on unnecessary moments. And every now and the algorithms portray the wrong information altogether. Like during the NOS news broadcast I watched: where the Dutch queen Beatrix was mentioned on the news and Remotely.tv interpreted her Majesty not as the queen of Holland but as Linux-based operating system BeatrIX, based on information on Wikipedia.

So Remotely.tv needs some time for fine-tuning but they will get there in the end. We like the idea behind Remotely.tv, and are very interested in the possibilities this platform has.

Somewhere next week we have a brainstorm session with Mark van de Crommert from Remotely.tv. We will write about our ideas and first concepts later this week. So stay tuned…

A meeting with the assigner

An early morning for us students, as we were expected at the NOS head office on Hilversums’ Mediapark at 9 in the morning. In store were a tour of the NOS news floor and a meeting with James Tjan, project coordinator New Media. Our primary goal: gather information on NOS’s new media projects, inform Maike of our progress  and get an overall feeling of NOSop3’s atmosphere.

First of all NOSop3’s Maike Olij gave us a grand tour of the NOS news floor. The actual news floor of NOS is enormous. “The biggest of Europe”, as Maike proudly stated. The news floor consist of several ‘islands’, all with their own subject (ie. economy) or specialization. The Sports-department has their own floor. We had the chance to see the actual broadcasting studio, which is much smaller than it looks on television. Well, they say television adds a few pounds, right?!


The tour finished right in time for the daily NOSop3-meeting. During this meeting all possible subjects for internet, radio and television are discussed. Our team was given the opportunity to contribute to todays news, resulting in a post on NOSop3’s website. Team Interactive News Formats represent!

After being delayed by meetings we met up with James Tjan. James is the big man when it comes to the implementation of New Media formats and researching possibilities. During this useful meeting we learned a lot about the efforts the NOS has been putting into the development of Second Screen-apps and Connected TV opportunities. Result is a good overview of these efforts and how we fit into this picture. James was visibly happy with the fact us four MediaLAB-talents whereworking on format design as well.

We strive to keep him happy and blow NOSop3 away with an incredible format. So stay tuned!

Check that promo!

It’s monday today, in our freezing MediaLAB-office on the seventh floor of the Singelgracht building. Introduction week is over, and time to get serious. In this post:  our first meeting with the assigner, MediaLAB possibly powered by Nespresso, Curating Reality-seminar and as promised our promotional movie.

Our first week was a busy one. Lots of meetings, getting to know the team mates, presentations and a day of seminars on thursday. Wednesday we had our first meeting with Maike Olij. Maike is our assigner and works for the NOS. Being very open, Maike gave us the opportunity to fire our questions, enabling us to precisely clarify the scope of the project. We have learned that just about anything is possible, as long as it’s innovative, fresh and involves the watcher. The project emphasis on the web.

The MediaLAB kindly supplied us with a Nespresso coffee machine, but no pads. As we all know Nespresso pads are expensive and students are poor. All of them. So we initiated contact with our hopefully soon-to-be friends of Nespresso, asking them for a half year supply of coffee cups. In return we offered them a bumper in our promotional movie. Let’s see what Nespresso responds.To be continued!

Cool speakers on friday’s seminar Curating Reality at the OBA (public library of Amsterdam). Tunesian blogger Sami, who played an important role in the Tunesian Spring online, gave a presentation on the important role social media played during the rebellions in his home country.  Jeroen Smit, Professor of Journalism at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen, inspired every aspiring investigative journalist to take matter in own hands and “stop complaining and start thinking”. Webwerelds’ Brenno de Winter elaborated on his ventures with Trans Link Sytems’ OV-chipkaart and The Guardians’ Roger Smit showed how masses of data can be streamlined and simplified with infographics. Useful stuff!

In the previous post we promised you our promotional movie and we are very proud to show you our final result. The movie was edited by team member Marcha-Lie Moal. Idea by all team members and the shots where made at the Magere Brug in Amsterdam.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikRZnqejY0w[/youtube]