Fairnews

This is the first post in the Fairnews blog. This blog was added so that users and developers of Fairnews could comment and make suggestions on the functionality, look and feel of the site. Please feel free to make any comments. I will be checking the blog frequently so you should notice a follow-up message from me on the post trail before long. My hope is that together we can build this site into something truly powerful.

I've added a button to the main GUI (looks like a gear). Right now if the article you're reading has been read by Fairnews the gear will have a check mark on it. If it has not been read, there will be a + sign. I am working on implementing a user initiated Fairnews article read. If you click the icon when it has a + sign, within seconds the article will be read and correlated against the database. Results will pop-up shortly. I think this could prove to be very useful. To start the article will need to be from a supported news site, but perhaps in a second release we could eliminate that requirement.

I know of a few news sites that I would like to add next to Fairnews. What news sites would you be interested in having added to the list of supported sites?

Keith mentioned Aaron F. was thiking of a new user interface for Fairnews. We could implement a bar (probably on the top) of your normal news browsing window instead of a hovering menu. I'd like to have both implemented so that a user can choose. What do people think of this idea?

Aaron- Just thinking...this is an interesting thought, and when you iron it out a little, I might try and Fark it (or buy an ad on Fark for it). The site will probably get crashed, but Fark is just a big internet news junkie site, so it would be perfect for drawing traffic. Other than that, this will be a great way of tracking wire services-once this starts going, you'll notice a lot of very, very close repeat stories. These are very common amongst CNN, ABC, Fox, etc, but the BBC, CBC and all newspapers use the same services, so a lot of stories will be almost verbatim between newspapers and stations; if you use Google news, this will be familiar, with 200 stories about one topic, with very few have any different information. Anyways, good luck, and have fun with this!

I knew latency would be an issue with this website. It's very demanding on bandwidth and I'm running off my home linux server. I do plan to move the service to a real server when I can afford it =P. For now try to deal with the speed issues. If you are experiencing serious connection issues (server comes up unavailable) let me know (here or by email) aaron@causal.ca.

After perusing this site you might be asking, "how does Fairnews differ for Google News?"

There are a few things they have in common. They both want to offer the reader the ability to read many view points on an article. They both attempt to correlate news written in english to accomplish this task.

What's different is that Fairnews doesn't want to obscure the way you'ld normally read the news. Think of it as an extra tool at your disposal, not a whole new system you have to adapt to. While currently only a few sites are supported the numbers will grow. Eventually the reader will be able to drive Fairnews, initiating on-the-fly correlation on articles from sites that aren't even supported. Remember this is an open community, that will respond to your needs if you make a request.

I think these points differentiate Fairnews from the pack and truly add value for the reader. What do you think?

Just a note that I'll be restarting work on this project very soon. First task will be to add a few more news sites to the list of supported sites. Second priority is the new GUI which promises to be less buggy and more helpful.

So much for restarting work right away. I am pleased to say I've fixed fairnews after a long period of not working. I also took some time to activate some automated data integrity checking so there should be no more "long periods of not working".

I won't make any promises but I do plan on continuing on the work set out in my last post. Now is a good time to make suggestions.