Summary
YourNews is an attempt to address the question “why is it easier to initiate interaction with strangers online than it is offline?”. Specifically, how do we encourage the development of relationships between two people situated in the same place, but with no reason to interact?
YourNews combines the RSS feeds of registered users and generates a NewsMap. The goal is to produce a common object generated from otherwise latent “attributes” of the people near a display. The hope is that the object (i.e. NewsMap) will highlight areas of common ground on which the individuals can begin to interact with each other.
Technology
Bluetooth, coolApps framework
Research Goal
The main question of interest is looking at whether people can discover and develop relationships with other people with whom they may share interests by presenting them both with an object that originates from their personal interests.
Educational Goal
Learning about the use of public displays and other such shared interfaces for initiating interaction between strangers.
Deliverables:
- Working module
Situated Interactions 
Could you point me to where the internet paradox talks about the ‘need for technology to facilitate in person interaction’ ?
Beyond that point, I think it’s a really cool project, but it hinges on someone being a user of the system.
How might someone who is not a user of the system use this tool?
There was no direct reference in that paper. I removed the references in the proposal to eliminate the confusion.