Erstellt am: 8. 10. 2013 - 11:29 Uhr
Today's Webtip: The Future of News
There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the news world the last couple of years. Aside from the whole money thing, many forms of traidtional media are having a hard time keeping up with the fast pace of news distribution on the web.
It's the type of thing that has probably been putting good amounts of cash into consultants pockets, even if we haven't seen a whole lot of change just yet. Yes, almost everyone has discovered the need for social networking, many have worked various feeds into their workflow and show concepts, but not many have decided it would be a good idea to completely rethink their news set.
But Fox News has. They have turned their on-air news room into a massive touchy feely playground for information workers. And they are pretty darn proud of it.
I'm not going to embed the promo video they have done explaining it. Instead I will link to an article on www.theverge.com that covers it. It's like watching a mid nineties news report on the wonders of the internets. The new set includes giant touchscreen workstations, officiall called Big Area Touch Screens. Or BATS. Sort of like Big Friendly Gun, I suspect. The screens feature camera friendly interfaces that do an incredible job of displaying 4 or 5 tweets from a stream. It might not be enough to do any serious work on, but it is just right for the viewers to be able to see what's on the screen.
And that's important, becuase one of the stated purposes of the new design is to be able to help you (well, the viewer) get a better grip on their personal news stream. Because Fox is going to get out there and vet some tweets for you.
It's about time.
I just feel sorry for the anchor. He doesn't get much to play with. Just a funky white wand that looks a lot like a Wiimote. THey didn't tell us what that was called...