OT: What is with CNN and Weather?

Sorry this is a little off topic - but what is with CNN International and their Weather coverage?

Every time I turn on CNN I see someone talking about the weather. Switch over to FOX News and they are talking about an exciting (albeit pointless) murder suspect or rape case.

If CNN want to get my Attention and improve their ratings they should probably focus on real news stories rather than cutting to the weather every 5 minutes.

There is a whole channel dedicated to that topic - it's called... the weather channel.

The hardest thing I have to do every day is to decide what to ignore

What a great line:

The hardest thing I have to do every day is to decide what to ignore.

This comes from Jeremy Zawodny.

He goes on to say:

I need to invert my thinking. I should be starting most days with a strong idea in mind of what I want to spent the majority of the day focusing on. If there's time left, I'll tend to the other distractions.

This has implications for both business and media consumption:

Business

Jeremy is correct. We must define our scope of interest first, and then make intelligent decisions about what to pay attention to.

That's what Touchstone does with APML. Your APML file (generated by Touchstone or any other APML compatible service) describes your scope of interest. Toucstone then ranks and filers incoming information for you against that profile.

Jeremy I'd be happy to give you a Beta Invite - drop me a line.

Some might say that this approach limits spontaneity or serendipidy. I'd argue that if you want spontaneity check Tailrank or Techmeme or Digg - they are fantastic Popularity/Meme Engines.

If you want a productive awareness of what you do all day, you need an Attention Management Engine.

Media:
Now some might say this sounds all academic and very 'Business Productivity' focused. But the reality is that this applies to media consumption as well. With a growing underbelly of great niche content, it is becoming very difficult for content creators to find an audience and audiences (or should we say participants) are finding it increasingly hard to pick the right entertainment experiences from a huge range of possible choices.


Thanks to Paul for pointing me to this post

Check your Gmail with Touchstone

Over on our Development blog Paul has made a great discovery - here's a quote:

Unfortunately, due to the complexities of the Gmail authentication system, attempting to subscribe to http://gmail.google.com gets you nowhere. All is not lost however! Subscribe to https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom, enter your username and password, and Touchstone will check gmail for you. Nifty.

That's cool!

Thanks Paul.

Touchstone has a new website - check it out!

Hey guys - for those of you checking out the blog via RSS - you might want to click through to www.touchstonelive.com where you might notice a little change. Ok I am understating it - it's a big change.

Send your feedback - you know we love it.

Thanks to everyone who helped refine the design including Julie, Marjolein, Marianne, Marty, Ben, Blaze, Ashley, Steve and Sofia.

Update: Paul also helped, but he mainly just laughed at the bad ones.

I'm falling in love with my APML file

When you are intimately involved with developing a piece of software you grow to become unattached to your application configuration. At any given time the next experimental build might blow up and kill your settings or you might have to delete your config files to see what a 'fresh install' might look like for a new user.

Over the last year I have destroyed many an installation of Touchstone - each time thinking nothing of it... Deltree *.* (don't you remember DOS?)

Lately though, I have noticed a change. As the app has switched from a Swiss cheese set of features into a complete product my APML file - the file that contains my Personal Attention Profile - has started to become precious to me.

I can no longer just delete it and start again. It has grown to identify me. It produces content results that I like. I want to protect and nurture it. In fact now I back it up and carefully ensure that I never let it die in the process of trying the next experimental build from the dev team.

My APML file is becoming "the digital representation of my physical self" (Morpheus - Matrix 1).

It is obvious that APML is going to become something quite personal for people, and I would like to publicly recommit ourselves to protecting and nurturing it with all our might.

We are the user's ally in the fight against information overload and the search for great, personally relevant content. And APML is our BFG.

Touchstone system resources are kicking butt

In the latest build of Touchstone we have taken the system resources from up to (on my PC) 80% CPU and about 200-300meg of RAM (in early alpha) to now (in early beta) up to 20% and 100meg of RAM. Typically though it runs at 0% CPU and <100meg of RAM.

In fact, my Touchstone is using less resources than FeedDemon - and everyone knows how much I love FeedDemon!



This is, of course, using the same OPML file + Touchstone is also finding additional information for me based on my Attention Profile beyond my RSS feeds.

Your turn Nick! :)

White and Nerdy

Last week I posted a great video about Web 2.0.

Here's one about the Web 2.0 community. A little less... academic... and more funny.



Via JuiceFever

Too much to see and do - where do you start?

Robert Scoble is like Dave Winer - he's feeling overwhelmed. Not him personally, but he is clear that most of us are. He rightly asserts that there are too many ideas and companies now and many of them will not achieve critical mass - not because they're not great, but because there isn't enough attention spectrum left.

I think one way to avoid this overload is to stop aiming products at our own sandbox and start aiming them towards mums and dads, executives, knowledge workers, cafe owners and others who don't care about myspace, or social bookmarking or making youtube videos.

Another way is to just let the information flow over you. Stop trying to hold onto it.

As I have written previously to Dave Winer and about Constant Pile Reduction Mode it's important to remember news was never supposed to be read like email. No one went through their newspaper and marked off each and every article. They browse and they get what they can about their world before going off to live their real lives.

With this in mind, publishers need to start offering tools to their users that are designed with this reality in mind.

I am reminded by a great quote from the movie "American Beauty"

"it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment..."

Great movie - I suggest you rent it!

Sacred Facts

I just found this quote from Richard Shambrook's blog:

"Comment is free, but facts are sacred. "Propaganda", so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal. Achievement in such matters is hardly given to man. We can but try, ask pardon for shortcomings, and there leave the matter" - C.P. Scott

It seems to be relevant for the times.

Peter Kim and Robert Scoble join Media 2.0 Workgroup

I'd like to publicly welcome Peter Kim (Senior Analyst at Forrester) and Robert Scoble (Host of the ScobleShow) to the Media 2.0 Workgroup.

Peter and Robert are distinguished additions to the group and I look forward to getting to know them better.

Welcome!

Please be sure to subscribe to the aggregate feed or OPML file to hear their commentary.

The Wizards of Buzz - The influencers deciding what's cool on our behalf

The Wall Street Journal has an interest post about "The Wizards of Buzz".

From the article:

"Most sites are based on a voting model. Members look around the Web for interesting items, such as video clips, blog entries or news articles. A member then writes a catchy description and posts it, along with a link to the material, on the site, in hopes that other members find it just as interesting and show their approval with an electronic thumbs-up vote. Items that receive enough votes rise in the rankings and appear on the front page, which can be seen by hundreds of thousands of people. When an item is submitted by a popular or influential member -- one whose postings are closely followed by fellow members -- it can have a much better shot at making the front page."

It's a little scary. They imply that services like Digg, Reddit and Netscape have made influencers out of little-known everyday people. Why is that scary? Because we don't know these people. They have not been vetted by public opinion and to many users they are an opaque part of the process. It's not democracy if there is a small group of people pulling the strings.

No one diggs around digg looking for the 'Top Diggers List' - in fact now they CAN'T dig around Digg for it - because Digg has taken it offline. Check out the article to get a list of the top Digg, Reddit, Netscape and StumbleUpn user they found. It's not a list of people I want deciding my news for me.

So these popularity platforms are giving rise to micro-influencers who are actually having a huge affect on our news and information choices and most of us have very little idea who they are. That doesn't sound very social, transparent or desirable to me.

As I have said in previous posts - while popularity engines are fine for working out "what's cool" the real question should be "what is personally relevant: - finding news that affects my life and aligns with my interests.

Then, the only influencer in my media consumption is me and my Attention Profile.

Jason Calacanis thinks having top influencers is great. I guess he would because he also thinks paying the top contributors is great too. I'd invite him consider the Personal Relevance angle (he seems to be taking up challenges this month so why not).

Thanks to Marianne for pointing out the WSJ post to me.

MeeVee is collecting your Attention Data

It seems like Attention Data is becoming more and more pervasive. Now MeeVee is asking users to specify their interests so that it can find videos for you.

According to VentureBeat:

"So far, MeeVee has let you create a calendar showing you whenever say, performer Jay-Z appears on a TV show. Today, MeeVee has unveiled a way to track Jay-Z related videos, too. You simply hit the “add interest” button, scroll down to the bottom, and add a keyword “Jay-Z.” MeeVee then surfs the Web and returns the most recent and relevant videos tagged with Jay-Z. You can then click on the videos and watch. See screen shots below for the Jay-Z example. A tab at MeeVee lets you toggle between TV programming and video."

It seems like MeeVee is becoming a great interface to manage and view your Media 2.0 video!

The question is, though, will MeeVee let you take that investment in it's service and allow you to export it for use in other services.

If you think signing up to multiple services is hard, imagine trying to maintain your attention profile across services as well.

I'd like to see MeeVee and others support APML in order to give users control of their own attention profile.

What do you think?

Via Touchstone

Follow up: Web 2.0 creating world peace

I have posted before musing if Blogging could create world peace. Another weekend rolls around and am prompted to ask a similar question. Can Web 2.0 create world peace?

Check out WikiLeaks (referred to me by Cass!).

From the homepage:

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources

We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Many governments would benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. Wikileaks will facilitate safety in the ethical leaking movement.

Seems like they can't wait for Web 2.0 platforms to create organic and measured transparency in government institutions - they are going to force it by providing an anonymous platform.

We often say that new forms of media lower the barrier to entry for participants to have a voice and therefore strengthens democracy. And it's clear that this latest iteration of our media platforms is the most democratic of all. So does democracy include complete transparency?

This is a philosophical question as much as a logistical one. There have been books written about total transparency - and what such a world would look like. Some paint a very rosy picture.

Interesting Concept. I can't decide if it will result in anarchy or the end of corruption (or the beginning of new ways to hide corruption!).

What do you think?

Piping the internet - Yahoo Pipes released

Everyone is talking about the new service from Yahoo - Pipes.

Pipes is cool. It does a lot of stuff. Mainly it lets you take RSS (Ray Ozzie has referred to RSS as the "Unix pipe of the web") and literally pipe it. Through what? A series of services and transformations until it comes out look just like you want it.

Think of it as a super FeedRinse.

Unfortunately though, it's not exactly useful 'out-of-the-box'. But that's ok - because it is more a piece of Internet plumbing than it is a consumer facing service. Which is strange considering it's coming from Yahoo!

My friend Ian Forrester loves pipes. He has been talking about them for a long time. In fact he correctly noted that Touchstone is a sort of pipeline. Data comes in from a set of Input Adapters, is processed by our engine for Personal Relevancy, Cache and Routing, and is then passed on to one or more Output adapters for presentation to the user.

Of course our pipe is not as flexible or configurable, but it is immediately useful for consumers. It's interesting in fact that the first example that Yahoo provides (and O'reilly catches on to) is the idea of using pipes to aggregate and filter news alerts. But filtering is so 5 years ago.

Chris Anderson says "Steal my book"

Chris Anderson is happy that his book is now available on BitTorrent. The reason for his happiness makes me happy.

"My publishers want to make money, and I like them so I usually do what it takes to keep them happy, but in truth I just want to be read/listened to by the largest number of people. Leave it to me to figure out how to convert that reputational currency into cash--just get me in front of the biggest audience and I'll do the rest. My agent doesn't want to hear this, but I'd rather take a smaller up-front advance or lower royalties in exchange for more liberty in distributing free versions, because I think I'll actually be better off in the end.

As Tim O'Reilly puts it, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy".

As I always say - people just want to be heard.

I have had a fascination with this idea ever since my first major project - both on real radio and online which boasted huge levels of audience interaction (forums, chat, participant generated content etc) back in 1997. The slogan - "Don't just listen - Be Heard".

It has been a constant theme in my work.

Chris won't go hungry because of this little breach in his rights. He will only earn more audience and a louder voice. He will make his money from better jobs, more opportunities and a bigger booking fees.

The reality is though, us other content creators who are far less well known will have to find another way to make money from the long tail.

Fellow Brisbane Developer on Techcrunch

I'd like to give a shout out to a fellow Brisbane developer who just got on the front of Techcrunch today with his parody of all the signing up to services we have had to do lately. He calls it 'useless account' where you can have 'unlimited account editing'. Unlimited! Now that's a good deal...

For those of you who are wondering - Touchstone will not require a signup to use. Just download and run. That's when we are out of private Beta of course. Until then you will need an invite so make sure all your friends are on the mailing list (that one to the left of the blog).

Brad Burnham asks "What's Next?"

Brad writes a great post on the Union Square Ventures blog asking "What's next?". In it he explains that innovation moves up the stack and that we are now at the 'data' layer.

"In the early days, the central value proposition in the computer business was hardware. Later, it shifted to systems software, then applications software, and then networks. As more software functionality was delivered to a browser over the Internet, the basis of competition shifted from features to service level metrics like reliability, accessibility and security. I believe that today, at least in the area of consumer web services, we have already moved on to a new focus of competitive differentiation based on data."

I am glad VCs are starting to ask these questions. It shows they are thinking beyond 'me too' services.

He goes on to write:

"One way to look at that question is to argue that we have arrived at the end of history. The progression to date has been up the stack in a classic architecture diagram, data is on top of that stack, and nothing sits on top of the data. I disagree."

I disagree too Brad. Here are a few more layers to think about.

Once data is structured and syndicated, the next job is to:

1. Aggregate - And I don't mean like a feed reader. I mean like Edgeio and Vast
   
   
2. Personalize - Using Attention Data
   
   
3. Visualize - Using all sorts of techniques. With Touchstone we are using escalating alerts. The more personally relevant the content (from step 2) the bigger the alert.

The super RSS Mashup by Marjolein

My good friend Marjolein is usually one of those people who works in the background. Everyone seems to know her because she is an unsung hero that connects people and ideas to create spontaneous innovation and improvement in our web 2.0 ecosystem. And I love her for it.

Today, though, Marjolein has burst out of the shadows with another one of her great mashup projects called "RSS Enabled Marketing Search Engine". She has combined services such as NewsGator online, mySyndicaat, Feedburner and ReFilter to create a collaboration with marketing and PR specialist Todd And.

Check it out and see how creative you can get with mashups!

Well done Marjolein.

We need to rethink... ourselves

This is a poetic and informative piece of video. I encourage you to check it out. One of the most impressive presentations about Web 2.0 and structured data I have ever seen.



Via Somewhatfrank and the Media 2.0 Workgroup Aggregate feed.

Scoble sells out - Accepts invitation by PayPerPost

The issue of content authenticity is very important to us here at Touchstone. When you are delivering news and information to users you want to feel assured that you're giving them authentic voices saying authentic things so it's in our best interest that the blogosphere is a place of trusted content (or at least a place where content trust can be measured).

So when the issue of PayPerPost (getting paid to post stuff about a company) pops up it piques our interest.

Robert is getting a lot of flack today for his announcement that he will be speaking at a PayPerPost event. Even Shel seems to be disavowing his writing partner!

The fact is though I think Robert is once again doing the brave thing. He is the most visible content producer in our little revolution. He is on the bleeding edge when it comes to facing all the real and emerging issues.

Issues that most bloggers don't have to worry about like balancing content creation, revenue and disclosure or reading AND responding to hundreds and hundreds of emails a day in an effort to maintain the social part of his social media. Or issues like remembering his responsibility to link to us z-listers.

The fact is though - Robert has been most transparent about his struggle with these issues. In many ways though, I think it's that transparency that has been attracting so much criticism lately. People expect more from him than Boing Boing! or Engadget exactly because he makes it clear that there is money involved and that money can and does change the game.

So that makes him the perfect person to go into the lions den and find out what these PayPerPost people have to say. To champion full disclosure and face the reality that where there's an audience - there is money. And where there is money there will always be scammers. We need to face this fact.

With great power comes great responsibility. And today, the barrier to gaining power is lower and lower. First we had Spam, then we had SEO tricks and now we have Splogs and paid posts. Someone has to find a way to define and declare our moral standard - and someone (or a group of someones) should document our best practices.

Maybe that's a job for a good wiki and the Media 2.0 Workgroup. But it is definitely a job for the Scoblizer on the front lines - demonstrating how it can be done by doing it. Stumbling, and doing it better.

Good luck Robert!