EveryBlock: News visualization goes local

So... back to one of my favorite topics: visualizing news.

As I've mentioned a few times before, innovations so far in the space have been quite lacking. Often big and flashy, but of scant use to someone actually out looking to catch up on some news.

So here's a welcome change: EveryBlock is a hyper-local news site with a simple layout and visualization tools that look like they might actually come in handy.


It offers neighborhood-specific news feeds, a simple news map, and city stats such as police calls, liquor license status changes, and restaurant inspections. It's also available as an iPhone app, which I'll be sure to check out.

It's definitely a good start and I like that their focus is clearly on utility.

Not surprising therefore that it was recently sold to MSNBC, which is at least trying to come up with some creative solutions to revitalize the online news space. Check out their Spectra Visual Newsreader while you're at it. I still think it falls into the category of More Flashy Than Useful, but at least it's a step in a different direction.

Curious to see how EveryBlock will fit in.

The future of news visualization: Still waiting

Since my recent post about the inadequacies in current means of presenting news, I've stumbled upon another news site that seemed worthy of mention: MSNBC's Spectra Visual Newsreader.

And sure, it's visually intriguing, and surprisingly easy to use. It lets the user select specific interest areas, and then surfaces related news with a combination of text and images.



But still... I'm not convinced that translating news into a vortex of color-coded flashcards qualifies as a significant advancement in the field. It looks nifty at first, but it's not innovative in any meaningful way.

So yeah: no.

The future of news visualization

So I've been spending some time thinking about how news is conveyed, and I'm thinking we have room for some serious innovation...

Pick up a newspaper and what do you see, at a very first glance? Words. Black type on white. An image or two. Perhaps a big headline catches your eye and you read it; it registers in your mind as Big News. You read a few more articles. Now you know a subset of today's news, but little more.

Seems to me that a whole lot of information is falling through the cracks, and online news sources are not much better. Google News tried to create a richer news experience, by aggregating news from different sources and by organizing stories topically, but it wasn't a huge improvement.

Here are a few more interesting approaches:

Newsmap.jp I just discovered today, and it's quite smart: it displays all news on a single screen, color-coded by topic, with the biggest stories occupying the most real estate. The user can either search for a specific story, or filter based on topic, recency and geography.



Another conceptually interesting news site is BreakingNewsMap, which pinpoints breaking news on a world map in real time...

Unfortunately, despite its theoretical coolness, in practice it's too scattered and conveys information far too slowly (just one story every couple of seconds), so the user gets no sense for the big picture. I could imagine idly following it for a minute or so, but I would get frustrated pretty quickly.

What I want to see is a combination of the two... I like the idea of putting news on a map, but I want to see more stories at once, color-coded based on topic, featured more or less prominently based on how much buzz they're generating. I want to be able to apply filters to my news. I want to zoom in from national/world news to local and hyper-local news. Oh, and I want images too!

All you geniuses out there, make it happen!