Information Aggregation Overload Recovery

Tired of information?

It gets to be too much sometimes. How is it ever possible to keep on top of it all?

It is impossible to keep on top of it all. Adding hundreds of feeds to an RSS Reader or creating user accounts for each new burgeoning social bookmarking/news aggregation website soon makes life more complicated than it need be.

Don’t even try to keep on top of it all. Rather, simply read that which meets certain self-defined criteria.

Here are a few thoughts on sorting through the morass.

Computer Generated Information Aggretation

Google News is a prime example of computer generated information aggregation. Just sit back and let it display news of interest. Of course, this content can be massaged to a user’s liking. By personalizing Google News, users can enter keywords that Google News will search for and then return stories of interest for that topic. There are other similar sites, like Topix, Findory or even the new Memeorandum. Though the latter is not personalizable. The key to personalization is keeping the focus narrow. Widening the focus will open the floodgates of information again.

Community Generated Information Aggregation

Social bookmarking is a form of community generated information aggregation. It is a great way to see what people find interesting and a great way to learn about new things. However, there are now way too many social bookmarking sites available. Choose one and stick with it.

Sites like Digg are another form of community aggregation. Users can submit sites (sorta like social bookmarks, but not really) and other users ‘vote’ on each site bumping it up in the Digg listings.

Individual Generated Information Aggregation

RSS Readers allow individual readers to add numerous RSS feeds of interest. The problem however is when the number grows too large. The key to effective use of an RSS reader is two fold. One is self-editing. Play the role of newspaper editor and begin deleting feeds that are no longer of interest or newsworthy. It ok, you have my permission to hit the delete button. Second, and not all readers have this feature, is a ’smart feed’ feature. While it is nice to have 100 feeds, it is would be nicer to set up keyword searches on those feeds. A separate feed is generated for that keyword search. Another way for RSS Readers to tackle this is having a better set of filters.

In order to put some sane controls on news intake, I recommend the following recipe for news/infomration gathering:

1 computer generated aggregation site - Keep it sane. Choose only up to 5 topics of interest.

1 community generated aggregation site - in particular, just one social bookmarking site.

1 RSS Reader with a self imposed limit on the number of feeds entered. It may be 25, 50 or 100. Set a number. Once that number is met, no feeds can be added until another one is deleted.

01.11.2006 @ 9:48 AM — Filed under:

• RSS Solutions
• Social Bookmarking

|

Be sure to review our list of recommended web tools.