datacloud

Tools for Symbolic Analysts

Piece by Dan Gillmor in the Mercury News about news aggregators and working with (and in) information:

Every morning I learn the latest from a variety of news organizations, Weblogs, newsletters and other online information sources. But I don't use my e-mail program or go surfing from Web site to Web site.

Instead, I use a piece of software called a news aggregator or newsreader -- in my case, it's called NetNewsWire and runs on Mac OS X -- to scoop up headlines and summaries, along with links to the places where they originated.[...]

One fan is Mitchell Kertzman, a friend who has run several Silicon Valley companies and is now a venture capitalist with the firm Hummer Winblad in San Francisco. When he saw an RSS newsreader for the first time, he says, ``I had the same instinctive feeling I had years ago when I saw my first primitive Web browser -- a feeling of amazing and unlimited possibilities.''

Here's a shot of NetNewsWire, which includes tools for posting to weblogs (I'm posting this to MovableType from NetNewsWire):

[larger version (128k) here]

Aggregators are important tools because they provide a method for re-shaping information space. Browsing the web is, in general, a relatively slow and linear process. (Even if you jump around, you're still moving primarily in a line, albeit a crooked one, for the most part.) But news aggregators condense that space, folding the linear threads of websites up accordion-style, stacking one site up against the next to provide a smaller, condensed space, sort of a neutron star version of the web.

Posted by johndan at August 18, 2003 07:16 PM | TrackBack