Feel like you're not getting the most out of all the information the web has to offer because it's just so overwhelming? I really believe that optimizing our RSS reading practices can go a long way, but Robin Good of MasterNewMedia.org offers a more sophisticated vision in which our organizations have dedicated NewsMasters. These NewsMasters focus on using RSS, search, filtering and more to get us the best information on our area of interest as quickly as possible. We just get the good stuff. I like it.

I just interviewed Robin over at Net Squared. If you'd like to hear him explain the big picture of NewsMastering in his own voice and words - here's a quick sound clip to go allong with the text write up. The full interview has lots of good details and links for online research in general.

Robin Good on NewsMastering (1 minute 30 sec)

A group of primarily Republicans calling themselves the "Suburban Caucus" have moved to require schools to block access to all commercial web sites that enable the creation of web pages by students, user profiles and the ability to communicate between users. Otherwise they would lose their federally subsidized internet access. It's MySpace-o-phobia gone nuts. It's despicable, but I've never liked school much anyway. I wrote a snarky post about it over on Social Software last week and some very interesting commentary has emerged in the comments section. The best commentary I've seen yet, however is from the Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis. Davis is an outspoken Christian, a private school teacher in Georgia - and she's got a long, scathing critique of the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) congressional proposal. I highly recommend checking it out. Vicki points to some great resources on the topic and her post is a good place to start if you want to learn more or help do something about it. Thanks Vicki!

Technorati Tags: DOPA, MySpace, Christian, web2.0

Today I posted an interview largely about the open source content management system (CMS) Drupal with a neat group called Post Carbon Institute over at Netsquared. Funny thing, same day they released a totally revamped look for their Drupal web site. What an improvement.

Check it out:
Old PostCarbon.org site
Today's PostCarbon.org site

Doesn't it look more proffesional, serious and credible? The difference on the most basic level? Rounded corners and darker colors. More than just a trend, rounded corners show that you care. I think it was a great move.

There doesn't appear to be a direct link to their blog anymore, just posts headlined in a frame at the bottom of the front page. I think that's a real shame and it's the second Drupal site by a nonprofit I've seen that doesn't have a direct link to the front page of a blog on the front page of the site. I think that's bad. But overall, nice new look for a very cool group.

Again, the interview about their work is posted over at NetSquared.

Technorati Tags: nptech, drupal, postcarboninstitute, interviews, blogging

I just posted an interview with the editor of super-blog Lifehacker over at Net Squared. I'm pretty stoked on it. It's titled "On the care and feeding of a techno-garden: an interview with Lifehacker's Gina Trapani."

It's been six months since I wrote about the fantastic meta-bookmarklet blummy.com, but I use it every day. It's a system that allows you to drag and drop bookmarklets (like "save to del.icio.us") into a box that then drops down from your browser every time you hit the blummy button.

I was just turning a client on to it and noticed that all kinds of new functions have been added. It's not hard to add functions, I've added a number of tools to the system myself using drag and drop javascript or their very simple wizard. Here's a glimpse at my blummy box - some of these things I didn't even know were possible until I grabbed them and started using them. Fantastic! I can't recommend this one highly enough.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
bookmarklets, blummy

Well, an information scientist is more like it. I just posted an interview with OCLC Research Scientist Stuart Weibel over at NetSquared - titled Metadata for the Emerging Future. I used another Grazr box at the end, too. I love that!

Tech Soup is running an in depth comparative review of the open source and free Open Office compared to Microsoft Office. See also the Mac version of Open Office, NeoOffice. I'm going to be interviewing a man from Open Office as soon as I can get myself together enough to make it happen. It'll be in the Net Squared interviews section. Did you know that Open Office has an estimated 40 million users and 60 language projects underway?

Maybe it's naughty and I ought to just forge headfirst into the open source world, but I feel like I need compatibility with Microsoft format every once in awhile at least. In that spirit I'm going to check out ThinkFree Office Online. See also AJAXwrite (thanks Noka for pointing that one out).

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Word, OpenOffice, FOSS, excell, powerpoint, ThinkFree

Anybody know a good solution to the problem of wanting more than one (like personal and work) social bookmarking accounts? If you're logged into one, you've pretty much got to log out of it and log into the other if you want to switch. This is totally counterintuitive to the river of content that is web 2.0. Workflow or tech solutions anyone? The best I can think of is to just use two different systems. Save work in Spurl.net and personal in del.icio.us, for example. Really no fun, though. And it complicates the use of otherwise fantastic tools like OnlyWire.

Maybe if I link to Identity Woman she'll come save the day and help us out with some ideas or perspective.

Grazr is one of apparently several mini OPML browsers, but it's the one I've used so far and I like it. If you haven't seen it in action, check out the "my favorites" box in my sidebar. I think there are lots of different and interesting ways that this kind of tool could be used, so here's a list of ideas I've come up with so far (please feel free to add more).

1. When you create an OPML file to share with people, give them a way to look inside it by posting a Grazr box next to your write up of the file.
2. Have a blogroll on the side of your site? Save space and display more information by displaying your blogroll in a Grazr box. (I have.)
3. Planning an event someplace? Pack a whole lot of information about the event, its participants and its location all into one OPML file displayed in a box.
4. Going to a conference and want to share info with your loved ones? You could set up a box to display your flight schedule's RSS feed, your blog posts, flickr photos tagged for the conference, etc.
5. Have a project that you want to discuss that has multiple subsections with subsections therein? Put it into outline form and display it with one of these groovy boxes.
6. Create a list and let readers click through to the most recent photos, audio or text regarding each item in the list.
7. Schedule tasks with progressively more granular descriptions or instructions. Some people will only click through to see that Jane is working at 2:00, others may click through to see that she's calling Joe on the phone to talk about subjects A, B and C.

This list has infinite potential, but I've run out of time. You get the idea. Working with OPML outlines is going to get easier and easier and this new way of displaying them is a key step. Heck, this list could be elaborated on, have lots of details added, and work great inside one of these dynamic boxes itself.

Check out the awesome new Explore feature over at the mapping service Community Walk. Not only increasingly functional but professional looking too. Search, tag clouds and so much more. I should write up a comparative review of these different mapping services. I said I was going to awhile ago, but the head of Community Walk told me I should wait a bit for their redesign. Now I can see why!