The Time Machine of SAPO has 25 years in news stories - TeK.sapo

The SAPO today, November 28, the premiere online platform Time Machine. The name leaves no room for doubts: it is a tool that allows you to go back a few years to know what happened at the time. The content is filled through news and the shape is defined by the links between the personalities that dominated the media attention at the set time.

25 years of Portugal portrayed through news are 7 million, most which belonged to the Lusa agency that provided the news archive for the project.

The concept was developed in a partnership between SAPO Labs and Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP). The project was presented more significantly in issue number seven SAPO Codebits, having TeK made known at the time the preliminary phase of idea.

During the last year the project has evolved into several areas, as explained the TeK responsible for SAPO Labs, Benjamin Junior. One of the points that has been evolved is related to the entry of new partners beyond the journalistic Lusa, which provides access to information in real time. It was also made great efforts in optimizing the tool to work on both tablets and browsers less capable computers.

Another new feature is the ability for each user to set a personal page where you can have more access right to information of the personalities that tell you.

Project in journalism, investigative tool, interactive tool or historical social network. Either definition fits in Time Machine that was already available in another format across the page “World Views It.”

Benjamin Junior prefers to speak in a democratization of information. “The Time Machine is a powerful tool for information professionals and for all people.” One of the goals of the online platform is to make the files into something that is not boring, because “it takes courage to us we send some files,” said the guardian.

Users can search an event by date or person who scored this season. Benjamin Junior highlights an event – the death of Ayrton Senna in May 1994. When the search is on personalities, a network of connections with other elements that share at the time the media references and that may not even be related to the same news is presented. In case of death of the Formula 1 driver names are related to motoring that arise in the “web”.

“This type of information conveys an emotional connection, brings back memories.’s Name is Time Machine a name chosen to be emotional, “says the coordinator of SAPO Labs in conversation with the TeK.

The whole research process is done automatically and generated by computers. Behind the Time Machine there are many other projects that aggregates from here can continue to evolve.

Currently the SAPO Labs is also developing ideas in terms of classification of videos, treatment and analysis of networks social and educational projects in the area.

Rui Ferreira da Rocha

Written under the new Orthographic Agreement