Ryan Sholin » google news http://ryansholin.com The future of news. And more. No funny stuff. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:54:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 2006-2007 ryansholin@gmail.com (Ryan Sholin) ryansholin@gmail.com (Ryan Sholin) http://www.ryansholin.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg Ryan Sholin http://ryansholin.com 144 144 Ryan Sholin on the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education. Ryan Sholin Ryan Sholin ryansholin@gmail.com no no Sometimes, robots just aren’t enough http://ryansholin.com/2008/12/03/sometimes-robots-just-arent-enough/ http://ryansholin.com/2008/12/03/sometimes-robots-just-arent-enough/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:10:51 +0000 Ryan Sholin http://ryansholin.com/2008/12/03/sometimes-robots-just-arent-enough/ TechMeme adds a human editor to make adjustments when the algorithm fails:

“Any competent developer who tries to automate the selection of news headlines will inevitably discover that this approach always comes up a bit short. Automation does indeed bring a lot to the table — humans can’t possibly discover and organize news as fast as computers can. But too often the lack of real intelligence leads to really unintelligent results. Only an algorithm would feature news about Anna Nicole Smith’s hospitalization after she’s already been declared dead, as our automated celeb news site WeSmirch did last year“

Would Google News add humans to the mix to craft a more up-to-date, relevant news site?  I doubt it.

But I’d be interested to see further variations of the algorithms that run Google News, TechMeme, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Digg or Reddit, to see what else is possible when it comes to translating the logic of linking behavior into actual prioritization of “importance,” if that’s still a relevant metric.

via @jayrosen_nyu

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