DailyDirt: Adapting To A TL;DR Future

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jan 9th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

With the ever growing amount of content to read/watch/hear, humans are going to need to figure out much more efficient ways to consume information. Speed reading will only get us so far, and then we're going to have to rely on ways to filter out irrelevant stuff so we can focus more on just the things that we really need to see. Here are just a few early attempts to get computers to help us out with information overload.

Clipped is a software tool that tries to extract key bits of information from long pieces of text. Tanay Tandon, a 15yo kid, created it and also filed a patent for his algorithm.... [url]
TLDR is a browser plug-in that tries to create short summaries for articles. These algorithms aren't perfect, but then again, neither is human comprehension. [url]
Another teenager wrote news-summarizing software and raised $1 million for it. It was originally called Trimmit, but now it's Summly -- and 16yo Nick D'Alosio is looking for some "serious scientists" to help him improve his algorithms with that VC funding. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: algorithms, automation, information overload, software, summaries, td;dr

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Travicane, 9 Jan 2013 @ 8:17pm

Miles Wide and an Inch Deep:
Useless and counterproductive, unless accompanied by tools and, the desire, to drill down into the resulting river of superficial shit to actually learn something useful and productive - not just more bullshit talking points.

Politicians and Cable News networks already have superficial fully covered, and traditional print news are aggressively working towards the same sort trivialization.

End of small Rant!
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Josh (profile), 10 Jan 2013 @ 12:47am

I consume TL;DR by only reading the headlines on half of these articles. It's not that I don't want to read them, but I only have so much free time.
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weneedhelp (profile), 10 Jan 2013 @ 11:36am

"Tanay Tandon, a 15yo kid, created it and also filed a patent for his algorithm"

Wonder when we will see his legal team start suing?
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