We have come a long way. If you begged me for it, I would still not go into detail about my knowledge of the old Usenet News Groups and the text-based non-graphical ways to read them. It is too painful. Does anyone still remember that certain groups could be used to post job ads or to source for candidates? It is interesting to know that today’s technology has moved light-years ahead of its beginning, but it would be just about as useful today to discuss sending messages by drums and smoke signals to look back. I love it when some of the disrespectful not-invented-in-my-generation crowd points a wagging finger at my generation because we did not “grow up†with technology. No, we were too busy growing the technology for you! Thanks to those early internet pioneers… and the open minded pioneers of today… we can all enjoy the ability to use social media and all of its tools with a seemingly unending progression of new products and improvements. We take for granted that we can communicate instantly with just about anybody, anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately, we have also ushered in the age of information overload and clogged brain filters.
If you are still fumbling around by manually crawling through sites looking for the information you need, I’m begging you to get out of the dark ages and get some help compiling your data. Almost every browser in use today and most email clients have some form of functional capability or add-on that gathers information from the web and organizes it for us. RSS feeds (Rich Site Summary, sometimes called Really Simple Syndication) is such an aggregator that is actually family of web feed formats that allow news headlines, blogs, web sites, and videos to be compiled in a summarized format. One of the most popular standalone feed aggregators (the one I use) is Google Reader available free from Google. Clicking on the RSS icon in on a website or blog allows you to select Google Reader or any other aggregator to accept feeds from that site. Alternatively you can click on the “subscribe†button to enter the URL of the site you wish to capture. For example, to subscribe to my blog posts you would click subscribe and enter http://www.leute.com and all of the updates to that site will be compiled in your reader.
Other than the self-serving example I just gave, why is this important? Part of the dilemma with having a tsunami of information washing over you is being able to filter out the crap. There are other tools to help in selecting information for special projects and research, but some information should be readily available when you want it. Most people fall into one of these data-use categories.
Curious – An aggregator give you the ability to assemble an easy to digest, pre-selected list of articles, opinions and trends to keep on top of your craft. Select job specific or industry related feeds and you go to work daily informed and ready to add value to yourself and those around you.
Consumers – Searching for data when you need it is easy, but announcement of new products, programs, applications and opinions happen daily. Â
Commentators – If you follow the blog posts or newscasts of a particular individual, this is a great way to know when new ideas have been published and you can immediately give feedback and comment on them. Expanding the whole body of acquired knowledge is benefited by everyone’s participation.
Contributors – News creators and writers of articles and blogs need to keep in touch with the topics that are trending and feed their passions. Not everything written is sending accurate signals for best choices. To communicate with anyone, first the target audience has to be identified and their thoughts understood.
Curators – A valuable service is performed by those human aggregators who take the time to study the body of thought around a topic and rebroadcast the message through Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or any other avenue to tell an important story.
The theory of data filtering through aggregation would not be complete without discussing some of the latest technology tools that take it a step further. There are dozens, but one of the most popular (and the one I use daily) is Flipboard. I call it my “aggregator aggregator†because it marries information I have chosen to go to my Google reader and combines it with all my social media sites and other curated information into one concise app on my iPad. It is available for iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire and NOOK devices. It is a free app, but this is one that I would have paid for… shhh, don’t tell them!
What other tools and tricks do you recommend? I’ve only shared a couple of tips that have been the result of my quest for data shortcuts. If these help you, that’s great but I’m also ready to learn a better way as well.
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