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Browser plug-in organizes and contextualizes big news stories for readers

MIT newsroom: “The explosion of digital content has made it hard to navigate news today. This startup’s plug-in will cut down on time and browser tabs, while readers search for information. Acciyo’s name might draw from fiction, but the purpose of the search engine extension is firmly rooted in fact. “When I was first figuring out what we wanted to call it, I went through a list of Harry Potter spells,” said co-founder Anum Hussain, MBA ’18. “Acciyo was very fitting because what we’re doing is summoning information from across the web and making it easier for you, in a similar fashion to how that spell [in the book series, ‘accio’] works, to be able to summon anything you need. We’re just doing that in the context of news.” Acciyo, Hussain said, is a Google Chrome extension that appears to the right of a screen like a bookmark, and presents the user with an “interactive, movable timeline of articles previously published on the subject you’re currently reading.” The plug-in pulls from wire content — the Associated Press and Reuters — and automatically pops open on major U.S. news sites. Hussain said as the company evolves they will explore other news sources to pull from. Because the stories are from the wire, Hussain explained, they tend to be bigger stories that would likely be found on a publication’s front page. For example: the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. The plug-in would include stories on Kavanaugh’s background, his nomination, as well as earlier stories about other candidates considered for the role…”

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