Back to naming this R/WW Filter - there aren't enough hours in a day sometimes for a 'Daily' :-)
- DEMO roundups
(TechCrunch and Jeff
Clavier are the ones I've been tracking -- I'm liking the sound of Plum and Blurb...)
- More on Feed Grazing ("...we'll always subscribe to a core set of critical feeds but for the vast majority of data blades in our information pasture, we'll just graze.")
- BBC's Feed Factory (BBC's intro page to its RSS feeds... via Nooked blog)
- An ambitious social media project ("...involves blogging, filmmaking, teaching ESL, and producing a Hasidic children’s show")
- John Hagel sounds warning re Disney purchase of Pixar ("Jobs is a product guy at a time when media products need to become platforms.")
- Emily Chang: Design 2.0 (comprehensive overview of current web design trends by Emily)
- Newsgator releases Hosted RSS Platform for Media and Content Companies (private label RSS publishing and aggregation)
- Shore on Newsvine ("Newsvine is in its very early days but it seems to strike the most powerful balance between content from individuals and mainstream sources to date.")
- Don Dodge interview Greg Linden of Findory ("Unlike Memeorandum, Wink, and Digg, every reader sees a different page on Findory, each page personalized to each person's interests.")
- 2005 Vaporware Awards (Microsoft's Vista and Internet Explorer 7 at number 4 and Google betas at number 3! Duke Nukem Forever was #1)
- Jakob Nielsen: Users Interleave Sites and Genres (echoing many of the themes Josh and I covered in our May 2005 Web 2.0 for Designers article...)
Flickr pic by philosophygeek
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP of technical strategy and innovation at IBM, has a post up on AlwaysOn about how the Internet is finally delivering on the long-held promise of convergence:
"There is no question in my mind that convergence is now coming to digital entertainment and consumer electronics. Consumer electronics products are being built using common hardware components from the computer industry, for example, microprocessors, memory, storage, and so on, and most of their capabilities are now being designed as software. The drive toward open standards to link all the components in the home parallels what has been going on in IT for the last 10 to 15 years, and without a doubt, broadband Internet is emerging as the major communications and content distribution platform into the home."
While most R/WW readers already know all this, the article is a nice summation of where we're at circa 2006 with digital media.
Interesting notion of "feed grazing" from James Corbett and Danny Ayers. James actually came up with the concept - this explanation is from a comment he left on Danny's blog:
"I’m actually coming to the conclusion that the whole subscriptions mindset is a problem and that in future we’ll ‘graze’ for the most part instead of subscribing. As Zigbee sensors, RFID chips and GPS trackers proliferate we’ll be drowing in an RSS-everywhere world if we don’t change our approach.
We don‚Äôt subscribe to all the sensory feed in physical world, we sample, nibble, taste, glance. Taskable and OPod (and whatever Kosso‚Äôs working on) are first generation ‚ÄúFeed Grazers‚Ä? IMHO. They allow you to graze feeds without ever subscribing. All we need is for static OPML directories to proliferate and for OPML search engines (like Gada.be) to improve at building multi-level hierarchies on the fly."
Intrigued, I checked out the apps that James referenced. Taskable is described as "a new kind of RSS and OPML browser built into the Windows taskbar notification area." OPod is "an AJAX OPML and RSS viewer widget that you can embed in any web page you like." Uh, right. I'm none the wiser.
In another post, James calls them "on-demand feeds" - which is more grokable. So you only need these feeds for a short time, then you dispose of them... My Auckland friend Charles Coxhead has been exploring the notion of disposable feeds too.
It's an interesting concept and one which I obviously need to think more on - and read more of James' posts (and Charles too, when he gets around to posting about his experiments). 2006 seems to have become the year when we've realised that RSS, for all the benefits it brings of being able to subscribe to information, doesn't actually solve the core problem of information overload. Perhaps feed grazing, or on-demand feeds, is a step closer to solving the overload problem...
In my post earlier today Rating the Meme Trackers, one of the news clustering services I mentioned was Blogrunner's The Annotated New York Times. It essentially remixes the NY Times, by clustering external blog posts that cite NY Times stories. Well today PaidContent.org posted an interview with NY Times VP of Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz, in which Nisenholtz said that they acquired BlogRunner last year. According to PaidContent, the acquisition included The Annotated New York Times.
Only it seems someone forgot to tell the Blogrunner webmaster, because according to the homepage and About page, The Annotated New York Times is "NOT affiliated with The New York Times". Huh?
In any case, it turns out NY Times plans to add Blogrunner/Annotated NYT to their own website, which is a fantastic idea. It will bring blogs well and truly into The Gray Lady's orbit, not to mention remix culture.
TechCrunch recently rounded up a list of Memeorandum hunters, or what Don Dodge is calling meme trackers (I like that term). Seeing as I was one of the first off the blocks with a rave memeorandum review back in September 05, right behind Robert Scoble, and I've been gushing about it ever since - I thought it's only fair for me to analyze the raft of contenders that have arisen since then.
This whole 'space', of real-time news clustering, is one that I anticipate a lot of growth in this year. As I wrote back in September:
"My bet is that mainstream news media organizations will be beating a path to Gabe's door to either invest in it or license the software."
I'm actually somewhat surprised that mainstream media hasn't taken more notice of this space already - perhaps they need to hire someone like me to keep on top of these 2.0 things for them ;-) Anywho, here's my impressions of the current crop of meme trackers, using their Technology tracks as a comparison point.
Has 6 distinct categories so far, including a newly launched 'Television' category. Plus 'World' and 'Health' are on the way apparently. Interface needs more work - they don't cluster results and some topics appear more than once in different places - e.g. currently Engadget's Citizen's reversible atomic clock post is at number 13, 14, 15 all at once.
The Annotated New York Times tracks blog postings that cite articles published by The New York Times. Interesting way to remix the NY Times and bring in external citations. I especially like the "On the move..." column on the homepage, for stories that are increasing in popularity. Has a large array of topics, but somehow the NY Times filter makes me feel like I'm missing out on breaking news...
Desperately needs to work on their layout - pretty plain list format. Also there is no topic focus. Features I do like: most clicked on in BlogsNow; most linked to flickr pages; most linked to in the IMDB (but why is Groundhog Day currently #2?!!); most linked to wikipedia pages. All in all, some promising features - but needs more focus and better layout.
Nice layout, seems a little bit slower than tech.meme - e.g. Sifry's State of the Blogosphere is number 7 here but currently #1 on meme. The inclusion of excerpts doesn't really work for me - makes the page too busy (even though hidden behind an expand/collapse button). I like the tag cloud and inclusion of Flickr pics.
Megite is very comprehensive, but I think it needs to find ways to reduce the 'busy-ness' of the page. The #1 FON story (at time of writing) totally dominates the page and it took me 3-4 scrolls to get to number 2 on the list! Megite needs to learn how to layout its clustering, a lesson which Memeorandum learnt back in September. You know, people diss meme's layout - but when it comes to cluster layouts, Memeorandum is still streets ahead of its competition.
Well I feel a bit guilty now for once again showing my bias towards Memeorandum. But note that it's not a bias towards Gabe (who is a friend, I admit), but towards the technology. It's just faster and better presented - currently - than its competition.
Newroo (pre-launch)
er, nice kangaroo... Nothing else to report thus far.
Has Superbowl #1, Sifry #2, FON #3 - which is pretty good. I'd rate this number 3 behind Memeorandum and Topix.net (see below) right now, but again I have issues with the layout. Too much information. The excerpts are a nice idea, and presented fairly well on TailRank, but to be honest they quickly become a blur. My intention with a meme tracker is to quickly scan information - and excerpts just get in the way. However TailRank at least tries to minimize this... maybe just needs more refining.
I suspect it needs more topic focus too, but then it seems to be aiming for this with its tagging feature. I dunno... I like TailRank and what it sets out to do, but I just feel it isn't quite there yet.
Has a wide variety of topics, as you'd expect. Not really a clustering service as such, so unfair to compare it to memeorandum or tailrank. Ranks articles by "Recent Authority" by default, so is biased towards A-List blogs. But I use Technorati's tag features quite often to find new stories, so for what it does Technorati Kitchen is very useful.
Tinfinger (pre-launch)
Empty pages currently. Hurry up Paul! Less talk, more action ;-) I know, pot calling kettle black...
My number 2 pick behind meme. I haven't written enough about Topix.net, but I love this service. The mix of 'official' news and blogs is now very compelling. And the Tech page for instance has a wide range of techie topics covered - Linux, security, programming, etc. I give Topix.net high marks for coverage and it is also presented nicely. If anything, I'd like to see more done with story clustering - especially now that it includes blogs. An under-rated resource, IMO.
This is one of the forerunners of news clustering sites and is mainly focused on politics and non-tech subjects. But the techie meme cluster servcies listed above could take a few notes from TLB - nice 3-column layout on its topic pages, interesting use of graphs too.
All in all, Memeorandum still comes out trumps in terms of clustering layout, speed and relevancy. Topix.net and TailRank are strong services too. Also I suspect Chuquet and Megite will pick up the pace once they've enhanced their interfaces. A very interesting space to watch!
I listened to the Gillmor Gang today, because it featured Gabe Rivera talking about Memeorandum. After wading through all the Gang's talk about Sun.com, which didn't interest me in the slightest (what was that about?!), I noted this gem of a quote from Doc Searls:
"Memeorandum is what google news should've been."
Gabe also spoke about filtering and how Memeorandum is more organized, smarter and faster than traditional filters. Also I liked Mike Arrington and Dan Farber's bits on how the best news reporting these days is infused with passion, authority and reputation. As Mike said, that's mostly seen in bloggers - but Dan was right to say that mainstream media can also have those elements too.
Incidentally, I'd love to see The Gillmor Gang become much more focused and time sensitive. Much as I enjoy listening to smart people like Steve Gillmor, Dan, Mike, Doc and Gabe - I'd prefer to spend 30-45 minutes listening to a tight and focused discussion, than 90 minutes trying to filter out all the things I'm not interested in (e.g. whether Sun invites bloggers to its conferences). Even if they are big issues, I tuned in to listen to talk about Mememorandum - not this other stuff. Just a suggestion...
p.s. Dan has a good text summary of the discussion.
- Esther Dyson talk
(Yahoo is "intelligent design"; Google is "blind evolution.")
- CES Storylines (nice quote: "By the time Vista hits the street... it will be less about the OS itself, and more about the vast array of services surrounding it.")
- Consumer Internet, Digital Media and Technology Conferences for 2006 (very useful list)
- Dave Winer defines Reading Lists: "Mashups" of feeds, forming virtual publications (I'm really excited about what Dave comes up with for Reading Lists!)
- Neil Budde from Yahoo News talks to paidcontent ("I think the area that's growing and is most interesting, particularly in news, is behavioral.")
- Shore: Neil Budde Looks at Content Blown to Bits by Users ("This will be an exciting year in news aggregation, and tools and deals being developed by Yahoo will be a key part of that excitement.")
- It's all in the mix (Guardian article about mashups... I liked this quote from Ben Metcalf: "rather than simply combining data feeds, the future of mashups is with people providing interfaces that enable you to display data in ways you wouldn't normally see it.")
- TechCrunch: The Memeorandum Hunters (Excellent round-up by Mike. I'll be investigating some of these in-depth soon...)
- Mark Evans ponders Memeorandum's next move ("I suspect he's trying to build a viable business rather than positioning memeorandum for an acquisition by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.")
- Don Dodge on the meme trackers ("There will be a few winners who make a lot of money, and a lot of "also rans" who will fade away. ")
Flickr pic by cpurrin1
Some great quotes on this page. My favorite:
"Not all content wants to be free but it needs to be easy. We allow people to find the content they want. There is a big market for the best, not just the cheapest."
-- Sergei Brin, founder, Google
Memeorandum's Gabe Rivera was interviewed by Don Dodge from Microsoft. I found this comparison with Slashdot, Digg, Reddit interesting:
"For readers of Digg (or Reddit, and to some extent, Slashdot), I'd say Memeorandum is:
- More focused (on either "Tech" or "Politics")
- More expert/authority-driven
- Better organized, visually
Of course for a certain type of reader, Digg's quirkiness, developer orientation, and community are all pluses. Many who aren't as interested in these things prefer Memeorandum. Many use both sites. It's all good!"
As I found out when interviewing digg's Kevin Rose, the 'focus' aspect is soon coming to digg - as they expand out from just tech news. The organization/design issue is one Slashdot/digg/reddit might quibble with, but where I think Gabe nails the difference is when he says Memeorandum is more "expert/authority-driven". Although this is precisely the thing that has proven most controversial in Memeorandum, as accusations of A-List favoritism and group gaming fly. But as Gabe mentioned further into the interview with Don, Memeorandum is by nature a filter. And I think he has a point...
Strong individual voices will emerge and eventually be discovered by Memeorandum's type of filtering, whereas with digg and Slashdot individual points-of-view are more likely to be drowned out by the 'voice of the community'. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because a lot of times the wisdom of the masses lives up to its moniker. But the 'wisdom of the filters' approach of Memeorandum is much more of a threat to tradional broadcast media, because it bubbles up new expert voices and 'edge' stories.
Incidentally, a Memeorandum competitor has emerged - the weirdly named Megite (but at least it's easy to spell!). TechCrunch says its a contender already - and indeed I found some useful links from it this morning. One to watch...
A final note, Adam Green is doing some mashup experiments with Memeorandum. I can't wait to see the results of that!
In Part 1 of my interview with digg founder Kevin Rose, we discussed digg's popularity, reputation systems and recent issues with GroupThink. In the second part of this interview, Kevin and I talk about digg's battle with spammers and the upcoming release of new personalization features, plus an API. Full story on ZDNet...
Incidentally, I so enjoyed doing this interview that I'm keen to get back on the Larry King circuit and do more. Remember my classic interviews from 2004 with Marc Canter (who I now do work for), Tim O'Reilly (who I'm now writing a book for) and Lucas Gonze (who I'm not working or writing for, but maybe he can get me a job at Yahoo!).
All of those interviews were very much 'two-way', because my style is to go back and forth - by phone and/or email - with the interviewee and bring out all the best stories and themes. Too many interviews these days are hit and run affairs, rather than being more thoughtful processes with feedback on both sides.
So I'd like to ask you all: who should I interview next? Suggestions welcome in the comments below!
