A new project called Keen is launching today from Google’s in-house incubator for new ideas, Area 120, to help users track their interests. The app is like a modern rethinking of the Google Alerts service, which allows users to monitor the web for specific content. From a report: Except instead of sending emails about new Google Search results, Keen leverages a combination of machine learning techniques and human collaboration to help users curate content around a topic. Each individual area of interest is called a “keen” — a word often used to reference someone with an intellectual quickness. The idea for the project came about after co-founder C.J. Adams realized he was spending too much time on his phone mindlessly browsing feeds and images to fill his downtime. He realized that time could be better spent learning more about a topic he was interested in — perhaps something he always wanted to research more or a skill he wanted to learn. To explore this idea, he and four colleagues at Google worked in collaboration with the company’s People and AI Research (PAIR) team, which focuses on human-centered machine learning, to create what has now become Keen.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot