Regulating your 'River of Information'
Dave Winer coined the phrase 'River of News' to describe a way of reading newsfeeds. In February 2005 he wrote ".... It's like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by. ..." and he was right. Putting all your feeds in Google Reader and scrolling through them in the "all items" view gives you exactly this feeling.
But sitting on the bank of a river has its downsides too. The Moselle for example has the tendency to leave her riverbed and to flood the banks. And if I would like to look at the fish and not the boats I have to dive into it.
And that is the same with the 'River of Information' where I have different needs in the way I watch the river going by.
But the solution for that problem is already there and I do not even need other tools. I only need a method in using the features to help me fulfill my needs.
The following diagram shows how I am able to regulate my 'River of Information' by tagging the feeds with different priorities, topics and types of information.
I am then able to watch the river as a whole, to read only the most important items or even to look out for specific topics only. And by tagging feeds according to the type of data they carry I may even just look at the newest pictures from all the picture services I have subscribed to.
This method is especially helpful after some time offline, where a unprepared newsreader (and the mailbox) is full with lots of unread items and you are in the need of getting the latest information to do your job.
In my newsreader (Google Reader) I just click on the lowest priority tag and then on the "mark all as read" button to get rid of all the 'nice to have' information.
I then I click on the highest priority tag and scan all the news there quickly without marking them as read.
If a certain topic is of interest to me I then just switch to that topic by clicking the tag for that topic and voila, all the information is there for me to consume.
And this regulation is possible not only in newsreaders but in e-mail too as you can see in my personal information workflow diagram.
I´d be glad to hear from you and to see your methods of dealing with the 'River of Information'.
Best wishes
Andreas Weinberger
But sitting on the bank of a river has its downsides too. The Moselle for example has the tendency to leave her riverbed and to flood the banks. And if I would like to look at the fish and not the boats I have to dive into it.
And that is the same with the 'River of Information' where I have different needs in the way I watch the river going by.
But the solution for that problem is already there and I do not even need other tools. I only need a method in using the features to help me fulfill my needs.
The following diagram shows how I am able to regulate my 'River of Information' by tagging the feeds with different priorities, topics and types of information.
I am then able to watch the river as a whole, to read only the most important items or even to look out for specific topics only. And by tagging feeds according to the type of data they carry I may even just look at the newest pictures from all the picture services I have subscribed to.
This method is especially helpful after some time offline, where a unprepared newsreader (and the mailbox) is full with lots of unread items and you are in the need of getting the latest information to do your job.
In my newsreader (Google Reader) I just click on the lowest priority tag and then on the "mark all as read" button to get rid of all the 'nice to have' information.
I then I click on the highest priority tag and scan all the news there quickly without marking them as read.
If a certain topic is of interest to me I then just switch to that topic by clicking the tag for that topic and voila, all the information is there for me to consume.
And this regulation is possible not only in newsreaders but in e-mail too as you can see in my personal information workflow diagram.
I´d be glad to hear from you and to see your methods of dealing with the 'River of Information'.
Best wishes
Andreas Weinberger
OAndreas - 14. Feb, 22:26
