Project Overview
Project Summary:
GlobalTimes is a service designed to make diverse global news easily accessible to users, helping them overcome language barriers and experience a broader range of perspectives. We aggregate news from various countries through open APIs, summarize full articles into the user’s preferred language, and offer an AI-powered Q&A feature for deeper understanding. By integrating global trend data through Google Trend RSS feeds, we also ensure users stay updated on real-time trending topics around the world.
Identifying the Challenge
The Social Problem:
Issues of information bias and accessibility are becoming increasingly critical in today’s society. In many countries, press freedom is restricted, and events may be reported with completely different perspectives. Language barriers and the digital divide further limit access to international news, leading individuals to rely only on information available in their own language or country. Additionally, when news content is complex or difficult to understand, it creates further obstacles to accessing important global information.
Innovation and Uniqueness
Why Our Project Stands Out:
GlobalTimes is more than just a news translation service. By aggregating news from multiple countries, we deliver diverse global perspectives rather than relying on a single national narrative. Our platform keeps users informed with real-time trending topics by integrating global trend data. Through AI-powered summarization and an instant Q&A feature, even complex articles become easy to understand, allowing users to quickly resolve any additional questions. Furthermore, by providing all news summaries and interactions in the user’s native language, we help break down language barriers and ensure that information is accessible to a wider audience.
Insights and Development
Learning Journey:
Throughout the project, we faced several technical and operational challenges that required quick adaptation and problem-solving. Early on, we realized that open news APIs often did not provide full article content. To address this, we implemented URL-based article summarization. We also learned the importance of prompt engineering and fine-tuning API interactions to ensure precise multilingual support, without resorting to costly model retraining. We learned how to respond flexibly to challenges and create solutions that can grow with user needs.
Development Process:
We structured the service design using Figma and developed key features such as news aggregation, multilingual summarization, and AI-powered Q&A integration. Throughout the development process, we strengthened collaboration by actively utilizing continuous feedback through issue tracking on GitHub. By conducting systematic code reviews, we were able to merge individual contributions and manage tasks transparently, which enhanced both the quality of the project and the efficiency of development. This focus on systematic collaboration greatly strengthened our team’s ability to solve problems quickly and maintain a high development standard.
