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Qwiki - interesting new way of organizing and presenting info


UstadKhanAli

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It's sort of a different way of presenting information, as opposed to the current search engine, which gives you a bunch of hits and then you click through it. This actually offers a multi-media presentation instead with a voice narration. What they appear to want to do is present the information like this when you go to search for information on their Qwiki search engine -- at least, when it gets out of "alpha mode".

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It's still in alpha, although if you go to their website, you can sign up to be one of the testers. They demonstrate how the thing is going to work in that video that's on my link. Towards the end, the designer says, "I don't think people believe that this is a computer doing this." and then takes several search suggestions from the audience, after which their search engine makes its presentation. So ideally, what they want to do is make everything searchable, such as it is with Google, but present it in this multi-media manner. And I would think that a lot of people would be interested in this new presentation if they can get it to fly.

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One of the criticisms I read is that it doesn't go that "in-depth", usually presenting information that is only the first 3-4 paragraphs of a typical Wiki entry.

 

So if you're a fast reader, as I am, you can actually often get information faster if you go to a Wiki entry or other entry.

 

I did like their restaurant review example in the video, though. They searched for a restaurant, and instantly, you saw videos/photos while the narration described it perfectly saying something like, "This is a Asian fusion restaurant located in the such-and-such district of NY, and it's rated...yadda yadda...etc. etc." which is just the sort of information that someone would likely want if they wanted to hear about a restaurant quickly.

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The reason it interest me is that I'm involved in trying to provide information on topics that can be a bit overwhelming and hard to convey in a concise yet deep way. So for now, a simple, well written youtube style video seems to fit the bill. However... this looks really interesting if we can use the technology for our own authoring.

 

Well, interesting either way actually.

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http://www.qwiki.com/


Presents info in visual (video)/photo form while speaking, an interesting way of presenting info.

That's really interesting. (Needs a progress bar/timeline, though. But I like the fact it has the text, too. Might be amusing to see that with a bouncing ball -- and if you could feed in MIDI and get the robo-voice to sing... er... maybe V.2...)

 

 

Mind you, I really loathe trying to take info in via videos -- when people link to informational videos, it almost always pulls a groan out of me because, whether your smart or not, whether you read fast or not, whether you're interested or not, you get the exact same presentation, no matter. As a consequence, it's typically much faster and better for me to absorb info in printed form.

 

That said, this isn't video. The quick presentation (almost breathless robo-speak) of spoken text combined with the whirlwind of images actually packs a fair bit of info in a short period.

 

Mind you I didn't retain much from the Great Barrier Reef QwikiI saw, but if you were really focused and interested, you probably could do a lot better; I'm told that speeding up speech actually causes most folks to pay better attention and retain more. But I'm told a lot of stuff. ;)

 

While the robo-speak might be somewhat off-putting, any vaguely compulsive person who has done any voice over work probably will jump to the conclusion that feeding a text file in is going to beat trying to do even a quick, sloppy v.o. And, hopefully it will have delivery annotations -- that's one of the key things missing at places like Xtranormal, which allows you to create robo-speak animations like Hamlet's soliloquy below. With only gestures and a choice of long and short pauses, it can be a real trial and error getting a natural flow. That said, for something like Qwiki, you probably only care about getting the info across.

 

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