Drinking water from a firehose – web 2.0
In the new media, information is rampant – do you get swept away, do you manage the flow, or do you dip just a toe?
Leading a workshop at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Annual Conference with Bill Kenower of Author Magazine Online, there were inquiries how to best utilize facebook, twitter and such.
And so, some items we discussed, and others we didn’t:
* Google Reader: For my gmail brethren out there, you may like Google Reader, an application in your gmail account that compiles site subscriptions in one place. (Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, has a great article predicting Google’s future steps in establishing its own social networking medium.) I love Reader because it gathers everything separate from my email or another external site – convenient, nearby, but not globbing up my email.
* Online bookmarking (Digg, del.icio.us): Share your faves online for others to see – a great way to create a tipping point.
* Chris Brogan: So much good advice on managing new media, Brogan deserves his own bullet point. See his Three Changes and Five Tasks.
* Library Thing and Shelfari: Somehow we didn’t talk about these at the writers’ conference – ironic, no? Both are social networks to share beloved books and connect with others. (We did discuss Readergirlz as a great example of a linked, vibrant online book club.)
Leading a workshop at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Annual Conference with Bill Kenower of Author Magazine Online, there were inquiries how to best utilize facebook, twitter and such.
And so, some items we discussed, and others we didn’t:
* Google Reader: For my gmail brethren out there, you may like Google Reader, an application in your gmail account that compiles site subscriptions in one place. (Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, has a great article predicting Google’s future steps in establishing its own social networking medium.) I love Reader because it gathers everything separate from my email or another external site – convenient, nearby, but not globbing up my email.
* Online bookmarking (Digg, del.icio.us): Share your faves online for others to see – a great way to create a tipping point.
* Chris Brogan: So much good advice on managing new media, Brogan deserves his own bullet point. See his Three Changes and Five Tasks.
* Library Thing and Shelfari: Somehow we didn’t talk about these at the writers’ conference – ironic, no? Both are social networks to share beloved books and connect with others. (We did discuss Readergirlz as a great example of a linked, vibrant online book club.)
Drinking potable water sustains us. Drinking from a firehose has always come with a warning, "Not Potable Water, drink at your own risk." This should apply also to the barrage of rampant information currently bombarding our sources. So much of it can be hazardous to our intelligence. Be careful what you drink. Make good choices and the best decisions, as Brenda suggests.
ReplyDeleteAnother great place to aggregate news is alltop.com
ReplyDeleteIt's run by friends of Guy Kawasaki (founder).
It has become my personal homepage (overtaking Google homepage) since you can customize it to news YOU are interested in. <3 it
my.alltop.com/mdtrahan