NewsFlash

Inspiration

"News? So many perspectives...I don't want to read long articles..." Most young people do not want to read the news due to our short attention span. However, it is important to be informed of current affairs, or learn more about our topics of interests. Moreover, news networks might also have biases, which might affect their objectivity. As a result, readers might be led down a rabbit hole and only have a one-sided perspective. Hence, we developed an app which scours the web for your interested topics through multiple sources. Then, the app displays it in a bite-sized manner, keeping you informed on the go and empowering users with a well-rounded summary. As students, we liked the idea of flash cards as it was a digestible way of displaying information. Hence, we decided to combine that idea with lengthy news articles, presenting them in a flash-card manner.

What it does

Makes staying informed easier and more efficient Key Features:
Bite-sized, easy-to-digest news summaries
Curated based on user interests
Focus on balance by pulling stories from multiple sources
Avoids bias by offering a variety of viewpoints
Helps users form a well-rounded understanding of current events Benefits:
Personalized news experience
Avoids overwhelm
Reduces exposure to one-sided narratives

How we built it

Google Gemini AI API for scouring the web and summarising
Stable Diffusion for thumbnail image generation
Flutter for the app development
Python for the APIs

Challenges we ran into

Initially used a Python package to get trending news from Google.
Discovered the package only returned RSS links, which Gemini AI couldn’t process.
Pivoted to retrieving news directly from Gemini AI.
Decided to create thumbnail images using OpenAI's DALL-E 3.
Encountered rate limits with DALL-E 3, impacting thumbnail production. (it's also expensive to use)
Pivoted again to using Stable Diffusion for generating thumbnails.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finishing the app in such a short amount of time despite the problems faced.
Sleep

What we learned

Creating an API
AI Integration
Creating an app using Flutter
AI calls are very expensive
Google's Google couldn't Google
Human's ability to lock in focus and sustain attention on tasks is a hallmark of our cognitive capabilities. This ability, often referred to as "deep focus" or "flow," allows individuals to immerse themselves fully in an activity, achieving higher levels of productivity, creativity, and problem-solving. This is us.

What's next for NewsFlash

We want to include more niche topics so that people with specific interests can feel seen and heard. We could also work on a social feature so users can share and discuss stories, building a community of thoughtful, informed readers.