PostRank

It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.

A great talk by Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo that nicely encapsulates a lot of what we think around here.

Information overload isn’t new or evolving, really (just getting more noisy with new sources for some). It’s just “what we swim in”, to quote Mr. Shirky.

To some of us who had to live, work, and get educated before these here internets became ubiquitous, stumbling a bit while getting used to this “always on” world isn’t that surprising.

For the upcoming generation who won’t have lived any other way, it won’t be a big deal. Especially since their brains will be trained to deal with an excess of input as a matter of course, and they’ll be used to having tools for information management seamlessly integrated into their lifestreams. (Oh yeah, there’s the other generational difference — they very much live outloud, all over the place — something that can horrify those of us old school types who still care about what other people think.)

To borrow a phrase from Hugh MacLeod, our secret, evil plan around here (not really, actually we’re very nice, and pretty transparent) is to ensure that that upcoming generation never knows information management tools (especially RSS-related) that don’t have social engagement filtering built right in.

I love talking to folks who’ve had that “Wow!” moment when they start putting PostRank to work, and folks who’ve happily integrated filtering into their information workflows for some time. However, from time to time I still talk to folks who don’t use PostRank or any other information management tools other than an RSS reader (and sometimes not even that…).

Sure, a few don’t manage enough feeds to really need information management tools, but more often these folks do experience information overload from time to time; they just don’t trust the tools to still give them what they want.

I’ve seen their reasoning expressed a few different ways, but it boils to two things, which are actually pretty closely interconnected:

• I don’t want to miss anything
• I like to discover cool, new stuff.

(more…)

We’re always pretty jazzed when we’re alerted to cool new stuff that third party developers have done with the PostRank API, and this one is no exception (Ilya’s already downloaded it).

The App Store has just released Daisy Feed, a new, PostRank-powered mobile feed reader for the iPhone or iPod Touch. (Yeah, it’s got lots of fabulous features, but we’re a bit biased…)

With Daisy Feed you can display PostRank-filtered items for all your favourite feeds with one touch. Totally slick — and it’s free!

Big kudos to the Daisy developers. It looks great! And in their own words, they’re just getting warmed up. Can’t wait to see where Daisy Feed goes from here.

Download Daisy Feed via iTunes!

Google has launched the new version of iGoogle, their customizable homepage. It looks pretty cool. You can tweak and view and manage pretty much everything from there!

Of course, if you’d like to pipe Google Reader through iGoogle, of course you won’t want to lose the ability to Read What Matters.

Fear not! We’ve updated the AideRSS Google Reader extension, so updating your installed version to the one currently available on our Google Reader Extension page will ensure PostRank keeps working just fine if you use Google Reader within iGoogle.

Fred Wilson has a great post up: The “Feedization” Of The Web, in which, as usual, his excellent insights are accompanied by equally interesting comments. (I left my thoughts as well, of course.)
It really is true these days that the bitstream flowing into Google Reader, Bloglines, or your RSS reader of choice is just the tip of the iceberg. We are ever-increasingly managing relationships via RSS as much as we are managing information with it. This isn’t native behaviour to us, though, so we need to learn how to use the tools, as well as the analytical finesse required in successfully mechanizing aspects of relationship management. How analyzing and filtering of relationship engagement could/should work is something we’ve discussed here on more than one occasion.

Information management, especially online, is undergoing a fascinating evolution, I think. And one that is very much embryonic and ripe with amazing possibility. It can be hard to wrap your brain around, too, for a lot of folks, though. The realization that we can’t actually keep up with everything and everyone we wish we could actually comes accompanied with guilt for many of us. Guilt over failing to keep up with people makes sense, but guilt over failing to keep up with information? On paper it seems very strange, but it’s real enough.

Of course, the technology is still quite new (we’re only just over a year old ourselves, after all), and as with many platforms, apps, and services online, there’s a lack of standardization. As I noted in my comment on Fred’s post, there are all kinds of ways to publish a blog and accept comments, as one example. Not all apps offer public APIs, nor offer the same depth of access to their data. Of course, users don’t necessarily know this, or care. They just want to be able to access what interests them. How do you choose which issues to tackle? It’s a question that needs to be asked and addressed constantly.

As always, we rely on your input. Feedback on how things are working, what would make your lives easier, questions on how to do things, etc. And we really love the demonstrations of how AideRSS helps you lifehack, both personally and professionally.

Even in the three months I’ve been part of this community, the collective genius I’ve been exposed to has been thoroughly impressive. And combined with the innately collaborative nature of the community members, I have every confidence that we have more than enough superpowers at hand to turbo charge the evolution of information management and make it an integral part of nearly all aspects of online life. It’s gonna be so cool.