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
Trackbacks zu diesem Beitrag
itligenz.twoday.net - 19. Feb, 22:50
tagging my newsfeeds
Due to a comment to my last posting... [weiter]
Foo (anonym) - 15. Feb, 15:08
I just throw out feeds that I regularly skip over. You would be amazed by how well that separates the good stuff from the bad.
OAndreas - 17. Feb, 21:15
Dear Foo,
I give all the feeds and newsletters that I skip probation period and if I do not miss them I delete them too.
But I often have the situation that a topic that I am interested in is on hold for some time and in this situation a deleting of the appropriate feed is no solution for me, so I just lower it´s priority.
Best wishes
Andreas
I give all the feeds and newsletters that I skip probation period and if I do not miss them I delete them too.
But I often have the situation that a topic that I am interested in is on hold for some time and in this situation a deleting of the appropriate feed is no solution for me, so I just lower it´s priority.
Best wishes
Andreas
Florian (anonym) - 17. Feb, 11:40
tagging
I still don't quite understand, how the tagging of information is done? Are the auto-tagged according to certain criteria? Do whole categories receive tags?
Do you have to skim everything first and then tag it?
I am curious to know.
Florian
Do you have to skim everything first and then tag it?
I am curious to know.
Florian
OAndreas - 17. Feb, 21:38
Dear Florian,
I tag every newsfeed when I add it to Google Reader, so the feed itself has tags and every item coming out of him inherits these tags.
When I then read an item and want to do something with it I add additional todo tags on the single item itself.
An example:
the newsfeed of your blog http://www.creaffective.de/blog/ has the following tags in my Google Reader:
_prio3_weekly
type_blog-entries
the feed of my brothers photos at flickr has:
_prio2_daily
type_pictures
service_flickr
When I now skim the items and I see an interesting posting I just star it if it is a longer posting and read it later. If it is a short posting I read it immediately.
Your mind mapping rules http://www.creaffective.de/blog/archives/06-02-2007.html for example caused more than one action (read article and add it to del.icio.us) and a todo (is use the tag !comment for that - "!" means "todo" and the action is following directly behind).
The nice thing is that I have the same tag in Google Reader and in del.icio.us so I can do this tagging all in once in del.icio.us if I want to bookmarks and/or share the address.
Regardless where I post the todo tag, both resulting todo feeds (one from del.icio.us and one from Google Reader itself) are then again subscribed in Google Reader, so my todo list is there automatically. The next optimisation is already in beta since I built a todo gatherer with Yahoo!Pipes:-)
Best wishes
Andreas
I tag every newsfeed when I add it to Google Reader, so the feed itself has tags and every item coming out of him inherits these tags.
When I then read an item and want to do something with it I add additional todo tags on the single item itself.
An example:
the newsfeed of your blog http://www.creaffective.de/blog/ has the following tags in my Google Reader:
_prio3_weekly
type_blog-entries
the feed of my brothers photos at flickr has:
_prio2_daily
type_pictures
service_flickr
When I now skim the items and I see an interesting posting I just star it if it is a longer posting and read it later. If it is a short posting I read it immediately.
Your mind mapping rules http://www.creaffective.de/blog/archives/06-02-2007.html for example caused more than one action (read article and add it to del.icio.us) and a todo (is use the tag !comment for that - "!" means "todo" and the action is following directly behind).
The nice thing is that I have the same tag in Google Reader and in del.icio.us so I can do this tagging all in once in del.icio.us if I want to bookmarks and/or share the address.
Regardless where I post the todo tag, both resulting todo feeds (one from del.icio.us and one from Google Reader itself) are then again subscribed in Google Reader, so my todo list is there automatically. The next optimisation is already in beta since I built a todo gatherer with Yahoo!Pipes:-)
Best wishes
Andreas
Florian Rustler (anonym) - 14. Mrz, 07:48
Done!
I have now switched to Goolge Reader! The tagging functionality is really very cool. There are unlimited ways to reorganize the way my incoming information is displayed a function which is not available with netvibes.
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