Customized newscasts coming to your computer
News At Seven lets people choose the topics covered in
their Web newscasts
The program was created by two graduate students and a
professor
The free program launches October 31
By April Daley
Special to CNN
CNNU campus correspondent April Daley is a freshman at
Northwestern University. CNNU is a feature that
provides student perspectives on news and trends
from colleges across the United States. The views
expressed in this article are not necessarily those of
CNN, its affiliates or the schools where the campus
correspondents are based
EVANSTON, Illinois (CNN) -- Imagine having your
Facebook friend updates and news about your hometown
football teams delivered at the same time as updates
about Iraq and the presidential campaign.
News At Seven is a customized, free nightly newscast,
with highly animated anchors.
Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Lab
hopes to make that image a reality with its October 31
launch of News At Seven, a system that creates
a daily virtual news show based on topics the user
chooses.
The program is the product of two Northwestern
graduate students and Kristian Hammond, a computer
science professor and founder and CEO of News at Seven
Inc.
Hammond said the system will help users wade through
all of the news available.
"Instead of tracking information and news, we can help
track it for you in the same way that Google is a
search and Yahoo is used for mail," Hammond said.
For no cost, users of newsatseven.com choose topics
that interest them ranging from weather to
international news.
The system then searches for relevant articles from
established news sites and rewords them in spoken word
format.
Two main anchors, Sam and Kaitlin, deliver these
typically one-page articles.
The system also searches for snippets of video related
to the story and plays them in the background.
Throughout the newscast, the system provides a list
of links to all of the articles and videos.
Users can also pause and switch between the news
stories or change their setting at any time.
Northwestern Graduate student and News At Seven
programmer Nathan Nichols said the system will also
eventually let users customize the look and sound of
the anchor
and subscribe to the personalized newscasts of
celebrities.
With or without the improvements, Hammond said he is
not sure what impact News At Seven will have, but the
system is not meant to replace traditional media.
"Katie Couric can't give you news you want, she has to
give you the news everyone cares about," Hammond said.
"Our goal is to give you your own news experience."
Northwestern freshman Maggie Elmarakby, 18, said a
program like News at Seven would be a useful addition
to her life.
"If something happened in the Middle East tomorrow, it
would take a while for me to know," Elmarakby said. "I
have problems keeping up with the world outside
of Evanston. If the program would help, I would use
it."
Tiarra Medley, 19, said as a journalism student at
Northwestern she is always checking the news and
filters out what she finds interesting on her own. She
said she has mixed feelings about News At Seven.
"It is more likely that you will stay informed but
less likely that you will know about everything,"
Medley said. "If you only focus on entertainment news,
you will miss interesting political news."
According to Hammond, the program may eventually be
able to suggest related stories to users and help
expand their interests. But for right now, he said
he looks forward to the responses of the first users.
"If I can give everyone that comes in contact with it
a news experience, I'm happy," Hammond said.
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