Hello World News

Icon for the project
Pointer on the map

Inspiration

The news that goes on in the world outside of our own country is often ignored by news outlets and it is important to stay informed on what goes on around the globe. Realizing this, it became our mission to create a project that would help inform everyone about what happens globally. We simplified the process of finding global news by making the process much more interactive and fun! This project tested our web development skills and using APIs, something that most of us had not previously at a Hackathon.

What it does

Our project simplifies and makes the process of finding global news more interactive! Rather than pouring news article after article, the user can instead choose where they want to see the news from. This is doing by interacting with the map. After selecting a country, the most recent new articles occurring in the selected country are presented to the user.

How we built it

Our project is mostly built using Javascript atop of the shoulder of titans. HTML and CSS are used on the front-end, while Javascript is used on the back-end to manipulate the cite and manage the APIs. The following APIs were used: Google Maps: allows for an interactive map in our project that can capture the location on the map the user clicked. GNews: our source of news; a powerful API that takes our search queries and finds news articles on Google News.

Challenges we ran into

Our toughest hurdle was working with these APIs. While some of us had experience with APIs, the ones we used in the project were a completely new challenge. For some of us, it was new material to discover while for others it was like trying to ride a bike again. Tweaking them to our use cases and debugging took up a lot of our time. Finding the perfect API for gathering news was also a hurdle that took plenty of time. Plenty of research and testing was done before deciding that GNews would suit our project perfectly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

With our project, we set out the goal to make finding global news more accessible and we accomplished that. Scouring the globe is always a fun adventure, and finding an interesting news article based on the destination is enlightening.

What we learned

Whether we had past experiences or not, we learned a lot about working with APIs, some limitation they might impose, and how much they can elevate your project. We stand atop the shoulder of titans and we can reach for even greater heights.

What's next for Hello World News

While we want to spread the joy of global news, it is important to make sure that we sharing the truth. Fact checking will become an important issue to tackle in the future in order for our project to be used for the greater good. The news is also filled with a lot of unfortunate events that can bring sadness to learn about. To spread positivity, we want to add a feature that will share happier news so we can show all that is good that is going on around the world!