Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

December 26, 2009

Information Overload [image]

What is better than an infograph? An infograph about the internet :)

This nifty infograph called “A day in the Internet” is a little mind blowing. We all know that there is TONS of information being shared online through email, l media sites, and mobile technology, but when it is compared to something as regular as a photo album, one can’t help but be a little humbled.

Here are the statistics:

A Day in the Internet

An average day online is basically information overload

An average day online is basically information overload

Created by Online Education. Click on Image to Enlarge.

Is User-Generated Content Dumbing Down Media?

With this information overload, I can’t help but have a little debate in my head on whether or not this plethora of user-generated content is making the world a better or worse place. Of course, I personally think it’s making the world a better place,  but I am a digital utopian, which makes my opinion rather biased.

It reminds me of Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur” where he argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering its superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” This is what happens, he says, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”

What do you think? Is media for better or for worse, with the increasing importance of user-generated content?

December 22, 2009

There Are People Who Tweet By Fax! The Perfect Granny Xmas Gift :D

While we said half-jokingly that there is a Twitter by snail mail service, we never imagined that there is an actual market for it!

Apparently, 87 year old Dorothy Miller uses a service called Celery to update her Twitter and Facebook accounts by fax to stay in touch with her family. Yes, the old telefax! She is also a fan of short messages since she complains about how her daughter “she talks too much and it takes too much of my time, but she can read my Twittering here and see can see what her mother is doing.”

The Celery service also supports RSS feeds, blogs and email. You can also receive full attachments and color copies of your emails. Now I wonder how people using this service will understand what an RSS feed is in the first place.

Any ideas? Will you give this to your Granny is Christmas?

Filed under: Offbeat — Tags: , , , , , , , — M. Bamieh @ 11:59 pm

October 17, 2009

August 4, 2009

HOW TO: Blog About the Latest News Scoops Using Yahoo! Pipes (Part 1)

A good chunk of a blogger writings is usually based on fresh news stories that are making the headlines. The fresher the story, the higher the chance for the blogger to make an impact. We, Thoughtpickers, are carrying a social media blog which aims to bring a variety of informative and interesting discussions and topics about social media. As a part of our job, we have to deliver you our perspective and commentary on fresh social media news, and thus we were inclined to figure out how to get that chunk of fresh news as soon as it is reported.

Y! Pipes Screenshot

Y! Pipes Screenshot

A brief about news sources:

Our experience and research led us to the following 4 sources of fresh news, and the ways to obtain them as they develop:

One-way broadcast news sources (Web 1.0 style):

  • News agencies and news networks which operate in the real world. The best news aggregator we found is Google News. It aggregates many of the main news sources including AP, Reuters, CNN, NYTimes, …etc. It is also categorized which, in turn, allows us to pick the category that interests us the most – tech news in our case. In addition to that, it also offers alerts via emails or RSS feeds.
  • Press releases issued by companies around the globe. Press releases are covered partially by Google News if a company issues frequent press releases and  is listed as a news source by Google. Some of the top press release distribution services we found are: prweb.com, prnewswire.com, businesswire.com, pr.com, marketwire.com. Moreover, one of the best press release search engines we stumbled upon is EurekAlert which also sends alerts – as the name suggests. But again, after a lot of hours spent clicking around and comparing different services, we believe that Google News covers press releases in a reliable and fast way, so there is no need to consider other sources for press releases.

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