Fuse Labs, a research arm of Microsoft. FUSE, which is the shortened form of Future Social Experiences Labs is an applied research team that ideates, aims to develop, and deliver new social, real-time, media-rich experiences for home and work. They have now releases a new blogging tool called NewsPad.
NewsPad Blogging Tool
NewsPad is a web app that allows/permits communities of people to work together on news articles, even if they lack experience of working as writers. The tool helps people choose a headline, structure their article, and ask others to add material. NewsPad uses popular websites like WikiPedia, Storify and others as idea source and supports real-time collaborative editing and content curation.
NewsPad, has been rolled out for anyone who wants to use it as an open source effort.
The blog states:
NewsPad also incorporates lessons from the network structure of local communities. During the summer, as we built NewsPad, we were also learning from research by Shelly Farnham and Emma Spiro to map out local Twitter networks, in combination to deep qualitative research on the health and information resources of Seattle’s communities. By comparing Seattle neighborhoods’ Twitter networks to blogging networks, we were able to identify patterns of interaction and information access across dozens of Seattle neighborhoods.
It combines four powerful design ideas:
Sharing effort with real-time collaborative editing – NewsPad allows anyone to create and edit articles in real-time.
Structured stories establish purpose – Since contributors lack writing experience, NewsPad offers helpful structure for stories. A headline generator helps creators focus on the main point.
Improving stories with social recruitment – In NewsPad, readers can share specific requests for improvement: add a photo, explain an issue, caption a gif. These requests can be sent to individuals or broadcast to an entire network.
Reaching communities with real-time syndication: Real-time syndication assumes much importance to build the story since any reader can make requests and edit the article.
