
Show HN: A New Tool to Understand and Visualize the News - bmusto19
https://newsphere.org
======
bmusto19
Hi there! My friend and I are working on a website called The Newsphere and
we’re looking for others who share our interest in understanding current
events to help us beta test our platform. The Newsphere acts as a virtual map
of world news, enabling users to see the news as the result of a complex web
of relationships between people, places, organizations, and countries. You can
watch our intro video on youtube here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwgat54KXg&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwgat54KXg&t=3s)
and signup for the beta here: [https://newsphere.org](https://newsphere.org)
or keep reading to learn more about the Newsphere.

Basically, our model analyzes thousands of news articles every day, and uses
natural language processing to extract the different entities in them, as well
as identifying relationships between them. Over time we construct narratives,
which the user can see illustrated on a graphical timeline. The goal here is
to give context to current events, enabling users to view recent developments
in light of past patterns of behavior.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can email us directly at
questions@newsphere.org and we’ll be happy to get back to you. Again, you can
sign up for our beta here: [https://newsphere.org](https://newsphere.org)

Thanks again!

~~~
chris_st
Interesting! I'd love to watch the video on the front page, but it won't work
on Safari.

~~~
me_bx
The video doesn't load either on Firefox / Linux. There is not error message
in the console.

Playback works correctly on Chromium / Linux .

~~~
bmusto19
We're working on fixing the video on our site, if you'd like you can watch it
on youtube here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwgat54KXg&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwgat54KXg&t=3s)

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burnte
Just a sugegstion. Rather than the "Clear. Concise. Comprehensive" tagline,
write a one sentence summary of what it DOES.

~~~
charliepark
Agreed with this. If the premise of the service is that the news is clear,
concise, and comprehensive, _show me that_ with a clear and concise
explanation of the product on the front page (and perhaps a comprehensive
drill-down in the rest of the site). I care far more about the UX of the tool
than the ML behind the scenes.

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prawn
Sooner you can have a workable current affair as part of your front page, the
better. You could even have subdomains or special features on major events,
even a dedicated domain (China, impeachment, etc). Looks like one of those
things best understood by clicking around. Best of luck.

Not sure if he'd have useful info or time to spare, but I think Austen from
Lambda School had a news-related venture (Grasswire or something) in the past
and could have feedback for you.

~~~
bmusto19
Thanks for the feedback! That's something we've been thinking of implementing,
perhaps with a search feature as well. And we'll definitely try to reach out
to Austen, especially with his success in the startup world. Are there any
other people/ companies/ startups you'd suggest reaching out to for feedback?
We've mainly talked to professors/ business leaders from Brandeis University
and a few professionals in the news industry.

~~~
prawn
I'd almost ignore the traditional news industry. You're trying to do something
new and many won't understand it or have useful tips in 2019. Just make sure
you have easy to find and share deep-dive topic pages and you'll soon discover
whether people are interested or not in this style of presentation.

~~~
bmusto19
Makes sense. Do you mean deep-dive topic pages on specific events such as the
syrian civil war, for example?

~~~
prawn
Yep, exactly like that. IMO you want to be the single best page on the
internet for something like that. More interactive than a Wikipedia page,
broader content than a news item, etc.

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ken
Is the "play" icon supposed to indicate a video? Clicking it does nothing.

All I get is the slowly-appearing stock clip art lower on the page, which
doesn't really explain it at all.

~~~
bmusto19
What browser were you using? We've mostly been testing the site on Chrome and
Safari.

~~~
Kerrick
On Firefox (Windows), the .hero-media::before element is disabling interaction
with the video controls. Add pointer-events: none to the element to fix this.

------
juancampa
I like the timeline idea. What's up with the Instagram/Dell/Unilever/Uber
logos? Why are they there?

~~~
bmusto19
Thanks! Those logos were actually left behind from the website template we
were using and have been removed.

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ALittleLight
Looks like a cool project. I'll sign up for the beta.

How many news sites are you pulling content from? I'm curious about how, or
if, you're getting content from news sites that have subscriptions - e.g. The
New York Times. Do you store archives of information?

I know news articles can get updated or lost. It would be interesting to keep
track. I can imagine using this or something like it when writing a book or an
article and the author may want to understand relationships over time.

~~~
bmusto19
Thanks! Currently for our MVP just AP News, which we're getting from here:
[https://newsapi.org/](https://newsapi.org/). We're working on perfecting the
site with one or two news sources first before expanding to more options.
Definitely a good point about articles changing/ getting updated, something
we'll be looking into how to address going forward.

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kburman
I'm working on something very similar. I do also have built a feature similar
to the timeline. (your version is much cooler.)

I had a question. Mostly the title are clickbait and doesn't represent what
actually news is and many news site are biased and distort the meaning by
carefully selecting the words.

How do you handle it or have plan to do it?

~~~
bmusto19
It's great to know other people are also trying to tackle this problem! I
agree, the titles of news stories are often to grab one's attention rather
than convey the true contents of a story, and we're still trying to solve this
problem. Perhaps some feature that visualizes the mood/ topic of a story based
on the full text, but it's a difficult problem to solve. We're open to
suggestions though!

~~~
kburman
One solution i can think of it to not use the title. Rather use the backlink
text. Found it more useful and descriptive.

This is involve crawling irrelevant page or probably the whole internet.

~~~
bmusto19
Could you explain this a bit more? I'm not sure I'm following how this would
be implemented

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alixaxel
I wanted to do something very similar. This is amazing! May I ask, where do
you get your news feed from? The sources I enquired at the time were quite
pricey.

~~~
bmusto19
We've been using [https://newsapi.org/](https://newsapi.org/)

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fouc
I think you'll need some major UX work done. It looks like a product made by
engineers so far..

~~~
bmusto19
For sure, our beta is pretty bare bones but we'll refine it over the next few
months, especially after we get feedback from our planned beta launch at the
end of the month

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prepend
Is there a demo or set of screenshots for the tool? I would like to learn more
before signing up for a beta.

~~~
bmusto19
Our demo video is on the main page of our site and can be found on youtube
here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwgat54KXg&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwgat54KXg&t=3s)

Additionally you can check out our one page user guide PDF here:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-D7MmRph8mRC9MUL55Vh5hNy...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-D7MmRph8mRC9MUL55Vh5hNyIX8yJZj_zr1_Fojldk4/export?format=pdf)

The PDF also includes a link to a more in depth explanation of Newshpere

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spiraldancing
Nice idea, I signed up.

Curious to see how you handle weighting/filtering of the sources, the whole
"fake news" issue.

Not your primary concern, I'm sure, but I don't (normally) use Google, nor
allow Google-tools into my browser. I am a small-but-vocal minority. There are
good alternatives to Google's recaptcha, Google-docs registration, etc. Just
sayin'.

~~~
bmusto19
Great point, we'll have to work on that going forward. We've been using AP
News as our main source for the moment as it is fairly neutral, but we're
looking for ways to handle different sources going forward. We went with
google but are open to other suggestions for future forms

~~~
mistermann
I strongly suggest you make it user-configurable, history shows it's difficult
for any individual to reliably predict what news is fake vs not. Rather, tools
such as this might actually help one differentiate, provided the news sources
aren't censored.

~~~
bmusto19
User-configurable does sound like a good option, hopefully something we can
integrate into the site soon

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JaimeThompson
One this is out of beta how much will it cost?

~~~
bmusto19
We are still working on our pricing model but right now we are looking at a
doing freemium model. Free version would have some limitations (ex: a limited
number of news sources that stories can be pulled from, so choosing 3 sources
from list of options) but the average user would still get a ton out of the
site. Premium version would be subscription based, giving users full range of
features (ex: pulling from as many news sources as you wish). We would love
feedback on any suggestions for pricing though, we'll be tinkering and
tailoring it based on how the beta goes/ what changes we make to the site +
idea

~~~
bmusto19
We've created a slack channel to continue the discussion and receive feedback
on our site. You can join here:
[https://join.slack.com/t/newspherecommunity/shared_invite/en...](https://join.slack.com/t/newspherecommunity/shared_invite/enQtODEwNjI3MTc3OTUyLWEyNjI2ODZlNDExNjY1OGY3NmY4MWViMzdjMWI5ZWI3MWVlOWRjNjc2N2VmYjhhYjMyMTliYzVkZTMwN2ZmMzE)

