Three companies and only one is not a news organization which is Google. The guys at News York Times and Washington Post are collaborating with the guys at Google in a project called Living Stories. OK, so you say what on earth is this that requires 3 companies to pool their resources together? Living Stories is probably just one of the new ways for Google to keep good faith with news organizations and news fans. News organizations’ big bosses such as Rupert Murdoch and others have been complaining about Google is not playing fair when news contents are at stake. For an example, Google indexes news contents from news organizations, place relevant advertisements next to the contents, and making not just good but a whole lot of money without sharing any of those to the news organizations. OK, Google knows where Mr. Murdoch is heading, and so lately, Google has launched several things to keep the news organizations at ease. For an example, Google also has announced new rule for search engine users which limits how many news articles that can be shown in full lengths in a day, the rest will only show a summary of the news contents and there are links to direct users to the news sources. Living Stories is something fun for news readers, but it is here to make a point that by being constructive, news contents are going to be the stuffs of the future and benefiting the news publishers.
Google and the two news organizations are constructing (on going process as in testing stage) Living Stories in a unique way to benefit news readers. For examples, there is a time-line where news readers can click on to dwell down to a specific time for time relevant news contents; Living Stories grayed out news that perused by you, displays longer summaries for more important stories; and so on. News readers will find Living Stories look very much like a newspaper as the format of displaying news are very similar to a physical newspapers, but with a tangible paper, you cannot interact with it, but on the Living Stories, you can interact with news with some limitations. There is a part where Google announces Living Stories are a work for all publishers to use, although right now, it’s not for everyone but only for News York Times and Washington Post. This means Google may have planning an open source software project (open source Living Stories) that will be released for all publishers to take on in the future.
In my opinion, Living Stories are for the people that want news to be like the old day, but in an electronic format with modern ways to ease the news reading process. After all, Google and the two news organizations are trying to make a point that news in the brave new world — it can be done! Just not in the format where ink and trees need to be wasted (one could argue that more energy of all types needs to be wasted). You can check out Living Stories from Google Lab, or you can go directly to here to start your news reading in a new way. For your information, at first you will see a very bland page with links, click on those will lead you to news contents that are formed in Living Stories format. Check out the YouTube video on Linving Stories after the jump! Source.
