The day often begins with a screen full of headlines. Robotics, artificial intelligence, materials, defense, industry: everything seems urgent and asks for attention. The time available remains finite.
Sphere begins with a practical question: how can each reader find a useful perspective on technology news while keeping the work of the publication recognisable?
The answer takes the form of a personal HERALD edition. Readers choose their interests, reading language and available time. Sphere composes a selection from published articles. The publication provides the common foundation; each reader defines a point of view.
A perspective you choose
A business owner may follow AI and industrial infrastructure. A designer may prioritise autonomy and materials. A reader working in defense may narrow the field to sensors, simulation or data security. Interests can be combined and changed: the perspective is an explicit choice, rather than a permanent label assigned to the reader.
Sphere uses these preferences to compose a personal edition. It preserves the headline, published summary and source references, with a link to the article. A personal account lets readers find their choices across devices.
Three, seven or fifteen minutes
Reading time becomes part of composition from the outset. Choose a budget of three, seven or fifteen minutes: a short window before a meeting, a break during the day or a moment to explore further.
This estimates full-article reading, separately from the time needed to browse the cards. It sizes the selection; it is not a stopwatch and does not require a fixed reading speed. When available content does not meet the choices, the edition can be shorter. No news is invented to fill a space.
Tin Man, with a defined role
Tin Man enriches HERALD’s public corpus to contribute to ordering and connections between content. Results enter composition through checks on article references and permitted metadata. Personal selection works on published texts; it does not rewrite a story to match a reader’s opinions.
Provenance stays visible, and the edition explains why a card appears: it matches a selected interest, follows a validated relationship or belongs to discovery enabled by the reader. If Tin Man enrichment is unavailable or fails validation, Sphere indicates that deterministic selection is being used. AI is not presented as a guarantee of infallibility.
A measured comparison with Google
Google Search finds pages relevant to a query. Google News already offers personalised news and controls over interests and sources; Google has also announced further briefing personalisation. Google describes these capabilities in its Search documentation: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works/ , News help: https://support.google.com/googlenews/answer/9005749?hl=en and product updates: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/personalize-search-discover-news/ .
Sphere proposes a bounded editorial experience: it starts with HERALD, its publications and its responsibility for selection. Its proposition is the combination of explicit preferences, a reading budget, selection explanations, preserved copy and comparison with the general edition.
A search engine remains valuable for exploring the web and investigating a question. Sphere is designed for another daily situation: opening a technology publication and finding a front page composed around declared choices. We present this combination as the direction of our project, without claiming a universal first in personalisation.
Leave a door open to discovery
Interests help readers navigate. They can also be a starting point for encountering something unexpected. With exploration enabled, Sphere can include at most one story beyond selected topics, within 25% of the edition and when available space permits. This addition is excluded from the short reading budget.
Comparison with the general edition makes it possible to see what changes in the personal selection. Readers can widen their view, adjust their preferences and return to the shared front page.
Choices in your account, credentials outside the model
Sphere’s personal composition uses declared preferences without building a behavioural reading history for its selection engine. Tin Man works on public content: account email and credentials stay outside the model input flow.
Readers can update their preferences and use account management, export and deletion functions under the service’s privacy notice. This boundary concerns Sphere and does not replace notices governing other HERALD features.
A shared publication. A personal perspective.
Sphere’s philosophy is to give attention a shape: bringing together the reader’s freedom to state what matters and the publication’s responsibility to make texts, sources and selection criteria recognisable.
From the homepage, Tin Man offers the edition’s audio briefing; Sphere opens the path to a personal edition. Two ways into HERALD, with the same editorial foundation. Your front page starts with your choices. The context remains shared.