I’ve been lately very busy with several projects running at the same time. Result of this overload was, that I didn’t get the time to write any posts or even follow my subscriptions. When I opened my RSS Reader today, I had more than 500 articles waiting for me.

What I did to surpass this overload of information and work was to concentrate on specific services, blogs and aggregators. Sources, that I trust for the quality of information they provide.

Since social media have evolved in such a massive form of knowledge with no secure quality filter, information sources are mostly trusted individuals or niche social networks.

The return of the individual: FriendFeed & Toluu

One of the most popular services that puts the individual opinion at the center of attention is friendfeed.

A couple of days ago I joined a new invite-only service, which also concentrates on the power of the individual. Toluu lets you share your RSS feed with your friends. Instead of constantly reading the same blogs denying any diversity to your subscriptions (the RSS Curse) you can change once in a while by reading other feeds.

Although community plays an important role in Toluu, it is the role of the individual that gives the service meaning. You don’t need to have hundreds of friends, just some chosen few which you trust and share same interests.

In that sense, Toluu follows the basic principle behind FriendFeed.

For further information here are a couple of  interesting resources on Toluu:

• 10 Reasons why you are going to love Toluu

• An interview of the  Toluu founder

I still believe in the power of the collective intelligence. But correct aggregation of information is out of the question, when we are dealing with lack of diversity and biased opinions.

Lately it seems to me, that many social networks are in that position where information are chosen by the most connected and popular individuals.

Choosing your field of information: Get invited

As I noted above, I lately don’t have the time to scrouge through all these social networks, so I have decided to choose my battles.

I continue to be positively surprised by the quality of information in Twine. I’ve already given out more than 10 invitations, but magically the number of invitations at my hands increased.

So, if you’re interested in getting in Twine leave me a comment below and I’ll send you an invitation.

Toluu also provides to its members a limited number of invitations. I currently have only 3, so -again- if interested let me know.

And for those of you who scan the text and don’t actually read (which is fine by me) leave a comment if you want to:

• get invited in Twine (more than 10 invitations already given out)
• get invited in Toluu (3 invitations left)

A few days ago, StumbleUpon introduced a new feature, where the user can customize the thumbnails of your own blog.
Before this new option, next to a submission was the avatar of the first submitter. Now, next to a submission, users can see a thumbnail of the submitted content.

While stumbling, I noticed that this feature has a much more important role than I first thought. In fact it seems, that the substitution of the avatar icons with a thumbnail of the site increases the diversity and objectivity of StumbleUpon submissions.

How we scan StumbleUpon

It is a well known fact, that when we visit a website we don’t really read it but mostly scan it.

I’m an active stumbler for quite some time and this minor change made me aware how I actually scan the StumbleUpon site.
My tendency when looking at my “What’s New” tab, was to check first the title of the submission and then the avatar of the submitter. Then I would unconsciously filter the submission according to those two parameters: if the title was intriguing, I would click on it. If the title wasn’t intriguing but I knew and really liked the submitter, I would still click on the link.
So what I was actually doing is putting each submission through a biased filter; sometimes it wasn’t the submission that drew my interest but the person who submitted it.

This is of course a very well observed tendency in social networks; our preferences and choices are highly influenced by the people we know, trust and follow.

The thumbnail feature of StumbleUpon

This thumbnail is exactly in the same position, where the avatar previously was. Since this has drawn my attention so intensively, it should mean that looking at the avatar was really a fundamental aspect of reading the StumbleUpon site.

I believe, that this simple size decrease of the avatar’s icon plays an important role in the way we judge, click and follow stumbles.

This is of course my personal observation on the subject. I really wonder, if you have also noticed the same behavior when stumbling. Did you also scan the stumbleUpon pages according to the submitter?

Now, that’s why I find the web great! Yesterday I suggested that we should share our RSS Feed and just today a social network called Toluu emerged doing exactly that!
I just read a review of Toluu at ReadWriteWeb and immediately joined in. It is still in private beta, so I’m waiting for my invitation. As the invitation mail says: “When you do get in, you will have 3 invites to use to invite your friends and buddies”.

So, who’s interested?

I’ve been thinking lately a lot about my RSS Feed.  I want it to be in constant flux, steadily changing, showing me new blogs, new ideas, new subjects.

I actually wrote about the RSS Curse a while ago, explaining how we get used and accustomed to our Feed; how we are not welcoming change to our established subscriptions. My suggestion back then, was to delete all subscriptions and start looking for some new ones.

Barry Welford suggested checking the sites submitted by like-minded people in StumbleUpon and Justin Kirstner dropped the idea of implementing and using Yahoo Pipes with the RSS Feed. Great ideas both, but they are time-consuming efforts; that was also one of the problems of deleting the whole feed.

Apart from that, I agree with the opinion, that deleting all your feeds is a harsh measure - maybe necessary, but harsh. So, I started looking for new ways to expand my feed and discover new blogs.

Share your RSS subscriptions

I noticed, that most RSS aggregators have this great function called Export. All you have to do is press Export and the aggregator makes an *.opml list of all your subscriptions. This list can be read by any aggregator.

So, instead of searching new blogs and entries all by yourself, clicking submissions in SU and wondering through Mixx, you can just read the RSS Feed of your friends. This is certainly something missing from the social web; we can follow our friends in almost every social network, but it would be great to follow their subscriptions in their RSS Aggregator. (am I missing something, is there such a network?)

Until such a network comes along, I’m still interested in sharing my subscriptions. So you can download my *.opml list and simply import it in your feed.

I’ve thought about the best way to use this import/export trick:

• You export your own feed and save it in a Folder,
• In this Folder you don’t have only your feed, but also the ones of your friends
• with the import/export function you can change feeds, whenever you feel like it, without actually losing your own.

 How to share

I’ve been trying to find the simplest and fastest way for us to share our feeds.

1. One thought was to put an upload button under this post and everyone could simply upload the file. I don’t know how to do that, so if anyone has an idea, speak up!
2. You send me your *.opml file, I upload it and make a list of all the feeds, of course with a link back to your blog.
3. We start a meme, you write a post in your blog and share your *.opml file there. I then put a link at the bottom of this post, pointing at your article.

I think, that’s a great way of discovering new things; having a constantly growing list of the feeds of your friends, people you trust and have the same interests. Much easier than deleting all your subscriptions and of course much more fun.

It is also interesting to see, how many blogs overlap between these feeds. Are we all reading the same stuff?

Go Share

Go

• write a post in your blog posting your *.opml file or
• send me your *.opml file and I’ll upload it here with a link to your blog   or
• tell me how to put a damn upload button here!!

Let’s share our subscription lists, I’m really interested in reading new blogs. Aren’t you?

Download my feed list.

I just read a very interesting post about data portability on Mashable.

In short the author argues, that data portability is boring because:

• the average internet user probably isn’t active in many web 2.0 sites.
• the average internet user probably doesn’t want to take his friends along every web 2.0 service he signs up for.
• what rights do users have to control where shared data goes?

So he says, that there is actually no demand for data portability.

I can see his point and I actually agree completely. Data portability is probably referring to extremely active users.

Moral Data Portability

The way I have understood data portability, it is about data. You can take your facebook friends and put them on kaioo. You then use kaioo as your platform, while not losing contact with your facebook friends.

So I see a moral side of data portability. If I want to move my data/friends from one site to another I want to be able to. It is not only about who owns the data, it is also about not monopolizing your network.
Data portability gives you the option to decide which platform suits you best. This doesn’t necessarily mean being active in 10 different social networks. It just means choosing how you communicate with your friends in the community you are in.

I believe that has a value, which every average user could understand.

Reaching the average user is another subject. Data portability must extend to data usability too. The process of moving your contacts from one network to another must become as easy as signing up.
That’s where data portability might lose the game.

Blogs are almost 10 years old. They are probably the first tool, that gave a voice to the wider public. The revolution they brought, started slowly but developed steadily. it hasn’t been long, that almost everyone has the power to express himself/herself and literally contribute to media production.

In these 10 years, blogs have also expanded in a variety of forms:

• Video/Photo- blogs: instead of writing copy, people have used their camera to express themselves.
• AudioBlogs: similarly, people express their thoughts verbally. The iGeneration, subscribes to podcasts and listens to discussions, interviews, books, ideas, disputes, etc.
• MicroBlogs: a relatively new way of blogging, which facilitates the wide use of mobile phones. People follow each other, to see what they can say in 140 characters.
• LiveBlogs: that’s the IRC version of blogging; anyone been online for 10-15 years can see the obvious similarities.

These genres are just a representative example of the possibilities of blogs. But purpose of this post is not to define these categories. Instead, I’m wondering if the blogosphere’s potential is actually exhausted.

Remediating

For anyone blogging actively and daily for more than a couple of months, probably understands what I’m implying.
Bertolt Brecht in the early 1930s was talking about the radio as a communication apparatus; a medium, which people can use not only to listen but also produce and communicate. His vision got realized in the cyberspace and blogging era.
The revolution of the blogosphere was 10 years ago, when it brought the production process to the public. Previously, we were witnessing few producers providing data to many readers; now every reader is a potential producer (what Inke Arns described as ‘small media production‘).

The technologies and genres developed after that explosion are not revolutionary anymore. They just apply the revolution to new fields (video, audio, mobile, etc.).
What audio-, video-, audio-, micro-, live-blogs in the end bring is the practices of old media to the immersive environment of the blogosphere. The similarities of blogs to newspapers, videoblogs to television, audioblogs to radio are more than obvious.

Are blogs really a new medium, which will change the way we perceive media production? I believe it is. The problem is again comfort and convention. Mass media production is so deeply embedded in our flesh, that we take it for granted and continue producing with the same old tactics.

Redefining

So is there a way to redefine the blogging process and take advantage of its full potential? In order to re-revolutionize the blogosphere, we should keep some important aspects in mind, aspects, that seem natural to us but we usually forget about them:

1. Communication. We don’t write content for passive users to read, but for active producers to discuss.
2. Connection. The six degrees theory is very insightful, but in the blogosphere people seem to be more connected than in any other network.
3. Combination. There are thousands of tools that can be implemented in a blog. It is our job to study their applications - and hopefully find new ones.
4. Exploration. We should not only explore the blogosphere for new, insightful voices, but also the topics. Blogging is a powerful tool, we shouldn’t use it only to write about making money online.

Conclusion

Redefining the blogosphere and providing something honest, intriguing and revolutionary is certainly not a simple process. I cannot provide a step-by-step guide on doing something radical with this medium; but instead of thinking about our next post, its content and its subject, we should also think about the medium.

Is it possible to use blogs in a completely new way? How can we expand the blogging experience?
I’m interested to see if you are using or thinking about using different tools to evolve your blog.

The way Robert Scoble used Twitter to get questions of the public and directly pose them in the Davos meeting is a great combination of the existing tools and an example we should all get inspired from.

The explosion of the social web has redefined the way we perceive social connections, our individual role in the social grid (may it be online or offline) and the importance of the collective intelligence. We, the user of the social web, take full advantage of this revolution by promoting our blogs, our work, our affiliates, our software. To an extent all our practices in the social web are working for our self-interest.

Social Connections

before the social web, we were dealing with the interesting, intriguing theory of the ‘six degrees of seperation‘. The main principle of the six degrees theory simply says that

everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we’re so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we’re so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection… I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.

Anyone who is deeply engaged in the social web, will argue that this theory underestimates the power of the web. Blogs, social networks, forums and communities enable interaction between two individuals in less than six steps; or at least that’s how it feels like.

The role of the individual

Sometimes when we analyze the tree, we lose sense of the forest. If we observe social networks from really high above, we will notice that they have reestablished our trust to democratic procedures. How many times have your heard people saying: “one vote never made a difference”.
It seems, that in the social web one vote does make a difference. That’s why we put a ‘thumbs up’ at StumbleUpon, or digg a submission, or cast our vote in Mixx. It is just one vote; but we trust that collectively this vote will bring a change.

The collective intelligence

A direct result of our trust to the individual is our belief in the collective intelligence. That’s why we firstly read the top news of all these news aggregators. Because we know, that these news are the most important/intriguing/thought provoking/interesting ones.

Machines were not made to sleep

So just our interaction and participation in the social web, actually proves that we believe that one vote, one individual, one voice, one computer can make a difference - can provide to the commons. In one way or another our participation in the social web is self-interested. We vote other submission, because we hope people will vote ours too; we comment on other blogs to learn more about a subject and hopefully receive a comment on our work; we use news aggregators so that we will not have to search for the most interesting news in this sea of data.

Maybe it’s time to do something completely altruistic, which will prove that we really believe in the big difference one individual can make.
The first step is to leave your computer on, when you are not using it (it isn’t energy waste if the computer actually works). After all, machines were not made to sleep.

Distributed Computation

There are several scientifical, mathematical, ecological, biological, astrological projects out there, which could use the power of your computer for their research. You can actually use the idle time on your computer (any computer, any OS) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover life in other plants, etc. These projects are based on the ideals of volunteer computing and grid computing.

The projects are numerous, but here is a list of the ones I use:

• World Community Grid: humanitarian research on new and infectious disease, natural disasters and hunger.

• Rosetta@home: determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases.

• SETI@home: saying that we are alone in the universe is the most selfish thought I’ve ever heard. SETI’s goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth.

A detailed list of the projects and their description can be found at boinc projects. This list doesn’t have all distributed computed projects; if your aware of any other, please let me know.

The process of participating in these projects is simple 3 step process:

1. You choose the project(s) you would like to participate and register.
2. You go to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) site and dowload the software.
3. The software has an easy wizard to incorporate any project in it.

Both images taken from BOINC.