NEWSDIVER
NewsDiver, Software Application for Newsgroup - 2000
What it is
Newsgroups are unarguably the least utilized and appreciated aspect of the Internet. In contrast to the visual seduction of the World Wide Web and the ease of use of e-mail, users are overwhelmed by the volume of articles on Newsgroups and unimpressed by their interface.
My graduate project, Newsdiver, is a user-focused software tool that attempts to bring order and elegance to this confusion by allowing information to be visualized in a clear and useful form.
This improvement brings with it an increase in function: searches are more comprehensive and faster, results are organized more efficiently, and the ties to the community of other newsgroup users vastly strengthened.
Advisors : Brenda Laurel, Peter Lunenfeld, Fred Felau, Andy Davidson
Problems of Current Newsgroup Readers
• Existing newsgroup readers are limited by their hierarchical structure. The hierarchical structure organizes information very logically. However, for a decentralized system used by millions of people it can be confusing. Many topics and issues today are increasingly interdisciplinary and, as a result, people tend to possess different concepts for the same (or similar) thing.
• Content is usually in the form of one-dimensional lists of messages. To find information, a user needs to scroll down a seemingly endless and continuous text list, reading each line one at a time. In this format, scanning information is inefficient compared to two or three dimensional sorting systems. It also doesn’t show relationships between pieces of information sorted across multiple criteria.
• The search results are almost always only a list of messages, which contain the searched words in subjects, taken out of their original context within the threaded discussion.