Folded Cards — A New Format

Sometimes one card is not enough. Some things can’t be expressed in 140 characters, some links need commentary, and some topics are just too complex to fit them into a single graphic. Plag is made for information. It is made to spark new thoughts and foster understanding.

That’s why we have come up with a new format: the folded card. That’s a stack of up to ten connected cards that can be unfolded with a swipe and viewed card by card. Let’s say you want to spark an in-depth conversation about global warming, a controversial and complex cluster of topics. By creating a folded card, you can combine a link to a documentary about the melting of the Arctic ice with an article outlining the causes of hurricane Katrina, a graphic that shows the anticipated rising of the sea level, a poll about the acceptance of green energy and an open question about people’s personal experiences with climate change.

By providing a range of sources, you will get a much more thorough discussion. If you use Plag as a journalist and post a link to one of your own articles, you can, for instance, attach a poll to get your readers’ direct feedback or provide links to related works.

Moreover, Plag learned to read. And to summarise. Whenever you link to an article, the app will propose to extract its main points and provide a summary of up to ten cards — which you can, of course, review, change and combine with other links, pictures, polls and text. Right now, Plag understands English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Dutch, Turkish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Russian and maybe some other languages. We are constantly working on the quality of summarisation.

What you use the new features for is entirely up to you, of course. You can post articles that moved you, series of pictures or book reviews, put together mini-guides to the city you live in, provide overviews on your area of expertise or write very short novels. You will think of something.