Google Wants to be Your AI Edited News Radio

So Google will control editing and presentation of news.  Placement of Ads.  Assembled with AI analysis.  Already being delivered to some assistants.  Right now assistants stream selected radio stations.  More control from mega computing?  What are the implications?

Google wants to replace your radio as an audio news source

Google is getting into AI-curated news playlists
By Shannon Liao@Shannon_Liao  in theVerge

You’ll soon be able to listen to an audio news playlist curated by Google Assistant to inform you on the topics you’re interested in. Google’s latest Assistant feature uses artificial intelligence to help make these custom news bundles, and it’s available today for a limited number of users.  ... "

More on the NYT's VR

More details of the apparent success of this test.  Also about some of the production differences required for producing VR content.   How do you get advertisers to try this?  When is it appropriate and engaging?  Beyond just novel.   In Adage: 

How Mini, GE, Google and The NY Times Created a Watershed Moment for Virtual Reality ... Publisher Delivered One Million Google Cardboard Devices and Plans More

The New York Times' virtual reality app was downloaded more times in its first four days than any Times app before, and viewers spent an impressive average of nearly 15 minutes using it, according to the Times. That's a welcome result for the involved players, which spent unusual time, energy and money trying to achieve liftoff with a nascent consumer technology.

The project was the biggest ever for Cardboard, the VR viewer from Google that is literally made mostly from cardboard plus two plastic lenses. Its largest prior effort came last July, when Google distributed 100,000 of the devices on behalf of AT&T for the "It Can Wait" campaign against texting and driving. Last weekend, around 1 million Cardboard viewers landed on the doorsteps of Times home-delivery subscribers along with the paper.  ... " 

Times VR App Launches

Will this increase the exposure to VR enough to engage the general public?
  In Engadget:

" ... At a time when virtual reality is changing the way we experience entertainment, it was only a matter of time before news outlets turned to immersive storytelling. The New York Times was one of the first major news outlets to announce its VR efforts last month. Today they launched the NYT VR app with three poignant portraits -- a 9-year-old Sudanese boy, a 12-year-old Syrian girl and an 11-year-old boy from eastern Ukraine -- to highlight the plight of 30 million children who have been displaced by war. The Times is making a Google Cardboard kit available to its domestic subscribers along with their Sunday editions on November 8, but the stories can also be viewed without a headset on both iPhone and Android devices.  ,,, " 

Recommendation Engines for Newspapers

Language Log describes the new NY Times article recommendation engine.  This piece is interesting because it discusses the problem from a linguistic, rather than entirely from a computer science direction.   Newspapers used to recommend by simple placement on a page, now they have the opportunity to recommend online in new ways.    Will this slow their demise?  Consider the links to storytelling and content analytics.  But does this lead more directly to pre established narratives?

" ... The New York Times publishes over 300 articles, blog posts and interactive stories a day. ... Refining the path our readers take through this content — personalizing the placement of articles on our apps and website — can help readers find information relevant to them, such as the right news at the right times, personalized supplements to major events and stories in their preferred multimedia format. ... " 

Future of Print Newspapers

A Darker narrative on the future of print.  In the NYT opinion page by Clay Shirky.   It will not go away, but will continue to be marginalized.   A look at the economics.

Channels Become Apps as Advertising Changes Forever

In Adage:   Remarkable piece about the conversion to digital TV happening now, and how it will change advertising.  And create a new flood of advertising data.    " ... The start of TV unbundling is upon us, with HBO and CBS leading the way, but we're not just about to see a new way to discover and consume TV content -- we're going to see what happens when TV advertising becomes fully digital. ... Slowly but surely, a lot of the words we use to describe media and appliances are becoming rather inappropriate. We may use a smartphone, but the phone app for many is one of the least-used apps. We listen to the radio, but we do so from a tablet. We read newspapers from a laptop, and we're about to have watches that have little to do with the time. ...  " 

Newspaper Goes to Virtual Reality

A curious example of how newspapers are looking at using virtual reality.  Look at the tag link below  for examples about how we experimented with this.   I have not though, been in Second Life for a number of years.  It has not led to the establishment of useful virtual spaces in VR as yet. The gaming angle in VR has not combined well with serious business applications.

" ...  Gannett (GCI), publisher of USA Today and dozens of regional publications, has released its debut report made specifically for the Oculus VR headset: an interactive view of a farm in Iowa designed to accompany a series of newspaper articles being published by the Register this week. It’s the very start of what will likely be a wave of journalistic experiments with virtual reality in the next few years, and this project shows that there’s still some thinking to be done about what news organizations should be trying to accomplish in the medium. ... " 

Jeff Bezos and the WaPo

One of our little businesses uses Jeff Bezo's infrastructure. So I am always interested in his directions.   He plans a 'Golden Age', perhaps linking newspapers more directly with the Internet.  An article in the WapPo: Describes how he plans to he manage the ownership.   Although he can be seen as one of the Post's major competitors: " ... The Post is the first newspaper that Bezos has owned and will be operated as a stand-alone business, independent of Amazon. Bezos intends to keep his “day job” as chairman and chief executive of Amazon and will continue living in Seattle, where the company is based ..." 

Science and Search

In Ars Technica:  How media influences how science is perceived.   In the past it was about how science was influenced by the popular press. Now the ubiquity of links and search and social strongly influence how the public sees science.   And how that perception can be manipulated.  " ... The 2012 report also challenged the view that individuals were simply using the Web versions of newspapers to get their information about science. Almost half of respondents relied on online sources rather than traditional ones: blogs, social networks, and Internet searches. Data suggests that scientists are also starting to rely on these alternative channels to stay up to date with developments in their fields. In 2010, one in five American neuroscientists reported using blogs to follow news about scientific issues, and one in four physicians used social media at least once daily to stay current on medical information and innovations. ... " 

Media Influence on Purchasing Decisions

A research brief on media influence.  " ... According to The Media Comparisons Study, from TVB with Knowledge Networks, consumers credit TV ads as most influential in making a purchase decision. Television reaches more people, and people spend significantly more time with television each day than they do with radio, newspapers, magazines, the internet, and mobile, and TV commercials drive viewers to go online to find out more.... "