Don Patterson: Why can't you just moniitor an AP feed?
Mike Perkowitz: though i guess as soon as cnn has it, everyone else will follow
Don Patterson: Exactly
Mike Perkowitz: well
Mike Perkowitz: think about reading blogs of people's opinions on some story
Mike Perkowitz: perhaps this would help you get a range of opinions
Don Patterson: But can this system identify novelty in opinion?
Mike Perkowitz: not sure
Mike Perkowitz: also, is named entity tagging a solved problem???
Don Patterson: It can't possibly be.
Mike Perkowitz: right
Don Patterson: Especially at the word level.
Don Patterson: How do you know John Doe is an entity?
Don Patterson: And not a john and a female deer?
Mike Perkowitz: maybe they jst look for the cap letters
Don Patterson: That's probably likely.
Don Patterson: A bunch of hueristics to manage the POLs
Mike Perkowitz: what does POL stand for
Don Patterson: People, Objects and Locations.
Mike Perkowitz: ok
Don Patterson: This just begs the question of news anyway.
Don Patterson: My solution to news overload was to unsubscribe from all newspapers.
Don Patterson: To not watch CNN...
Mike Perkowitz: sure
Don Patterson: and to subscribe to a two-week news magazine
Don Patterson: :
Mike Perkowitz: nice tasteless animation of the pizza delivery guy being blown up
Don Patterson: US News and World Report
Don Patterson: Ha!
Don Patterson: Wasn't that black girl in a MS ad?
Don Patterson: Great momemts at work
Don Patterson: But the news magazine has *editors*!
Mike Perkowitz: not sure
Mike Perkowitz: well some people want to disintermediate the editors
Don Patterson: So what I have done is delegated my news analysis and summarization to professionals who seem to do a good job.
Mike Perkowitz: yeah
Don Patterson: Well, so I'll extreme...
Don Patterson: I also watch all the news feeds from BBC to keep track of buzz
Don Patterson: But I use the editors to summarize and ensure coverage of the important facts and stories.
Don Patterson: It's the same as stock trading.
Don Patterson: You are not going to do a better job than a team of dedicated professionals working 80 hours a week with a dial-up connection and 2 hours on the weekend.
Mike Perkowitz: it may depend on whether you can find a magazine that shares your interests/viewpoint
Don Patterson: True. But there is a magazine for everyone view and topic.
Don Patterson: every view.
Don Patterson: This just screams MS cash cow.
Mike Perkowitz: how do they make money off it
Mike Perkowitz: i guess
Don Patterson: It makes MSN Newsbot better - it's a premium service for newsbot...
Mike Perkowitz: oh they have a paid news summary service?
Mike Perkowitz: or you mean they could?
Don Patterson: I've never checked, but he mentioned it at the begining.
Don Patterson: Google has one, MS must be interested.
Mike Perkowitz: i didn't know there was a pay version of googlenews
Don Patterson: sorry, there isn't.
Don Patterson: I was suggesting that MS could justify a paid news service with a feature like this.
Mike Perkowitz: for busy professionals
Don Patterson: you've got it!
Mike Perkowitz: i doubt it would work enough that anyone would pay for it
Don Patterson: One person would pay for it.
Don Patterson: and then email it to everyone.
Mike Perkowitz: ha
Mike Perkowitz: instead of this, give me a news reader that looks at all the foods and combines all the novel info into one summary
Mike Perkowitz: FEEDs
Don Patterson: CNN has a breaking news service which is generated by editors.
Mike Perkowitz: it seems like it would be hard to beat CNN
Don Patterson: They will email you the garbage they think is interesting.
Mike Perkowitz: at least for straight news
Don Patterson: The other advantage of US News is that there is a mean of one week of reflection that the editors can apply before saying what is really important.